This One Simple Calculation And Metric Can Make The Difference Between Success and Failure

The numbers don’t lie. The problem is, many of us don’t know the numbers and pay little to no attention to them.

I’m not talking about your website metrics. I’m talking about something bigger than that, yet much simpler. That simple metric is…

What is your TIME worth?

Have you ever actually calculated it?

Here’s a simple equation you can use to calculate what your time is worth:

Your Annual Income / 2080 = Your Hourly Rate

This is actually super simple. Assuming a full-time 40-hour work week for 52 weeks per year, you have 2,080 work hours per year. Obviously, I’m aware that there’s a give & take to this for varying reasons, but we’re just keeping it simple here.

So, if you make $100,000 during the course of the year, your effective hourly rate comes in at just a bit over $48/hour.

Why Does This Matter?

Obviously, with an equation like this, we’re assuming a lot of things. We’re not taking into account weeks we don’t work. We’re not taking into account costs of doing business (such as taxes). Those things don’t matter here one bit.

The point here is to get an actual dollar value for what your time is worth, with a real dollar figure that is based on real numbers.

When you know what your time is worth, you can make much better decisions on how you spend your time.

I mean, when you think about it, time is the ONE resource that, when you burn it up, you’ll never get it back. Ever. The clock just doesn’t run in reverse.

The “Gotcha” I Know Many Are Thinking…

I know, I know. You might be thinking something like, “Well, I’m not making any money with my website yet, so this doesn’t count. My hourly rate is zero.”

🥴

Oh, the things people say. 😇

If you’re already running your own business, then the calculation is simple.

If you’re an employee of another, then just take your annual salary and work it. Doesn’t matter if that income is coming from blogging or not. The point is… your time IS worth something. The moment you start thinking like that, the closer you’ll be to whatever your income goals from the Internet are.

You absolutely have to assign a value to your time. If you think your time is worth nothing, then you’re not truly on a pathway anywhere.

Using This Information To Make Better Decisions

Would it be worth it to hire a virtual assistant to do work for you? Or a developer?

One of the big mistakes I see from a lot of newcomers to this business is concentrating solely on the outflow of cash rather than the tradeoff. What I mean by this is that they focus only on the fact they have to spend money – and how much they have to spend. They don’t consider the personal opportunity cost of that cash outlay.

Do you do this, perhaps?

For example, let’s say you want a nice blog design. You know about the premium themes out there and you know you can hire somebody to do it. However, that costs money and you’re trying to avoid spending money at any cost. So, instead, you spend countless hours trying to do it yourself. Between research, learning and doing… plus the fact that you have other things going on in your life… you end up taking three months to “perfect” your blog design.

In the end, you either come up with something that probably looks pretty amateur… or you give up. And, it took you 3 months to do it. 😇 How many actual hours you spent on that, who knows.

OR… let’s say you decide to pick up a license to Kadence Theme and decided to put a few Anytime Credits on your account here and have me whip up a new site for you. For a simple site, I can usually put it together in a matter of a few hours. I do this stuff all the time, so I’m very fast (especially with Kadence). I’d have a functional site online within a day or two.

Or, one can even look at the potential of enrolling their website into the Concierge program. The Core plan runs $99/month and it would be easy to be of the mindset of just looking at that as an expense only.

But, look it from the perspective of your hourly rate…

First off, Concierge already includes a suite of services using premium tools, licensing of multiple premium plugins, quality hosting through Rocket, and much more. So, even just the costs of those things along would add up. But, even putting all that aside, you ask…

• How much time do you spend every month researching issues with your WordPress site and trying to fix it?
• How much time do you spend every month over-analyzing plugins or trying to build something on your own when you may not have the skills to do it?
• How much time do you spend maintaining the website?

Then, what is YOUR time worth?

It starts to put the fee of $99/month in perspective.

Now, I know full well that that was a rather self-serving example. 😉 But, you can apply that same thinking to evaluating other things you buy, people you hire, and the things you choose to do (or not do) on your own.