One of the questions we get asked most frequently in emails from our readers is, “what is your schedule usually like working on the site full-time?” Apparently some of you are curious what we spend our time doing, so today we thought that just for fun, we’d share what a typical day for us is like. Some people think bloggers work in their pajamas all day long while watching TV and writing at the same time. For serious full-time bloggers like ourselves, we can tell you that’s definitely not the case!
- 6:00 AM – The alarm goes off and like some of you, on occasion, the snooze button does get pressed once or twice. Especially on the bitterly cold days that we’ve been experiencing lately!
- 6:20 AM – Walk across the street to the gym (yes, it’s rather convenient) for a workout.
- 7:15 AM – Come home from the gym, shower, and begin working
Usually we spend the first two hours of the day searching through about 500 different feeds and around 10,000-20,000 feed items looking for what we feel is the best news, or the news that would appeal to our readers the most. Surprisingly, there are many days that after going through all of the news, we find little to nothing that catches our attention that’s worth writing about.
- 9:00 AM- Around this time we start the actual writing. Ryan starts with the Daily Download article (which he manually puts together every day) while I usually start with the first “news” article.
- 10:00 AM – Our first article usually posts around this time, and then we go back to the feeds or our email to check for breaking news. From this time until around noon, we continue working on the daily articles.
- 12:00 PM – Lunch! We got into the bad habit of working while we eat lunch, so it’s no real break here.
- Until 3:00 PM – this is usually the time we’re done writing the daily articles for the site, but our day isn’t over quite yet!
Depending on the day, different things happen at 3:00:
- Mondays: we perform general maintenance to the site, go over advertising opportunities, catch up with email, etc.
- Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays: This is the time that we write our CyberNotes Articles for the following week. On Tuesdays Ryan does his Time-Saving Tuesday article for the following week while I work on the Fun Friday Article. On Wednesday’s Ryan works on the Web-Browser Wednesday article (again, for the following week) while I work on the Weekend Website article. On Thursdays, Ryan completes the Tutorial Thursday article while I work on the Microsoft Monday article.
- Fridays: This is the day that we write the extra articles that are posted on the weekend so that we can have weekends mainly off.
We’re usually done with those tasks from anywhere between 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM. At this point we stop working, eat dinner, and relax for an hour or two, and then around 9 or 10 PM right before we go to bed, we’ll go back and reply to comments that readers have left on the site and in the forum, and visit and comment on other sites as well. Some days we get done earlier than others, it just depends on what’s going on in the news that day and how long our CyberNote’s articles take us.
So there you have it, a typical CyberNet workday. It’s fun, challenging, and busy, but we are enjoying it!
@Ashley:
I was exhausted just by reading your post.
That’s a lot of work, much more than if you have a nine to five job. The sixty thousand dollar question is: Can you make a decent salary working on a site like yours?
I have contradictory answers. Some say it’s worth it, but still other say only a selected few are successful as independent bloggers.
Regards,
Omar.-
Nice article. I find it really interesting what goes into making a quality website. Like most things, a lot of hard work.
Wow that’s a lot of work. Truly hope it’s worth it for you guys (and I’m not just speaking about the fun!). Respect.
Good to know! My typical day:
Get up at 5:30, off to work for 9 hours!
Get home around 5:00 and blog until 10:00 simultaneously while watching to kids under 5 years old (playing with them, feeding them, etc.).
Looks like working at home wouldn’t be much less work
Wow, I thought you had the website just as an hobbie and not as a full-time job. Hope it is worth it (financially). I like your website a lot and it has been realy useful to me. Congratulations and keep up the good work!
Zé, Portugal
Wow, this is why I love Cybernet News!!! While you guys don’t blast a article out every 5 minutes like Engadget, you guys have extremely well written articles which set you apart from the other “guys”. Keep up the good work!
Glad you’re enjoying it, guys cos that sounds like a busy day. The site is great, I love it, especially the tips on new software and tricks on how to do things – something that you don’t get from other sites. Well done.
So, without disclosing the financials, I take it full-time blogging is viable to pay the bills and put food on the table?
The answer would be both yes and no. It’s enough to pay the bills living the way we do right now which is very, very simple. Currently we rent a little apartment in a college town because it’s much cheaper than renting or owning anywhere else. What we make blogging is less than what one of us could make finding employement elsewhere which means we probably won’t be doing CyberNet forever. At this point it’s just “experimental” I guess you could say. We’re learning a lot, and trying to make the most out of it while we can.
Your rate of posting articles is rather fast according to me.
Thanks for the article giving us a peek “behind the scenes”. Cybernetnews has been a regular read of mine for a while now and I’d definitely miss the site if it was gone.
Woa, 6am
Anyaway, good job you’re making with CN, i’m dependent.
Greets from Portugal.