Make Money Online “How to”

Really, do you have any idea? Most people don’t, and that is what gets them into trouble. More on that later but first let’s talk about how much do you get paid for your time.

Now that questions a little easier. For people who get paid an hourly wage this is a number that they can usually rattle off instantly. Salaried people have usually a much harder time answering this question. They can tell you how much they make a year, and usually tell you how much they make her paycheck. But if you ask any of them how much they make per hour they usually can’t tell you. So to be able to answer the question how much is your time worth, first you need to be able to answer how much are you currently get paid for your time. So take the time now sit down with a pay stub and figure out exactly what you’re hourly compensation is.

This is one of the major deciding factors when I went from working for someone else to working for myself, I sat down and figured out how much I made per hour. This included all the additional time staying late working round-the-clock. Since I was making a salary it didn’t take long for all those hours to dilute my hourly compensation. I was shocked, stunned, and disappointed. But that became a turning point for me, when I realized what that number was, I became determined to figure out how much my time was worth.

So just how much is your time worth? Now, to figure this number out, you need to make a couple decisions.

1. How much money do you want to take home after taxes per year?
2. How many hours a week do you want to work to make that money?
3. How many weeks of vacation will you be taking throughout the year?

To show you the how this works let’s start with a nice round number like $100,000 annual income. Next let’s assume that you are okay with working 30 hours a week to build your business and create this income. Finally let’s use three weeks for our amount of vacation time. Now keep in mind we’re only talking about income or not talking about gross revenue so on top of this final number you will have to factor in taxes and other deductibles as appropriate. So the math works something like this…

Determine the number working weeks per year by subtracting the number of weeks of vacation time that you will be taking from 52. In this case 52 -3 = 49

Next multiply the number working weeks by the number of hours per week to get your annual labor hours. For our example 49 * 30 = 1470

In the final step we divide our annual income by the annual labor hours. So we take $100,000 / 1470 = $68.02

Do keep in mind that number only represents your income. The gross income of your business will have to be adjusted higher for the cost of your products, taxes, and operating expenses. But what it does point out, is that everything you do you have to measure against the following question. Is what I’m doing right now, a task that is worth at a minimum my hourly compensation. If the answer is no, you are now doing things that will work against you in reaching your annual goal. So next time you’re taking out the trash just remember if your goal is to make annually $100,000 and it takes you 15 minutes to do that, then that garbage just cost you $17. That may not sound like a lot but if you do that twice a week that turns into a whopping $1666 a year just to take out the trash. That’s not counting the lost labor hours where you could be producing money making products.

When you look at business this way it becomes easier to see that there are certain tasks you should be doing, and those are ones that will generate enough income to offset the time you spent or more on that project. The remaining tasks should either be delegated to a staff member where the cost of that task is equal to or slightly greater than the cost of paying that employee or simply eliminated when possible.

So now I ask, how much is your time worth? I hope you have that answer readily available in your mind and your keeping focused on the tasks that are “worth your time”.

All the best,

Harry Fink