To all web hosting company owners out there, I was just wondering:

a) How many hours you work on average each week?
b) How long your web hosting company has been in business?

I'm wondering if there is a correlation between work hours and time in business.... the older your business gets, does it become more work or less?

Well, the past three months or so has been planning, preparation and setting up. Just yesterday we took our site off demo mode and started accepting live transactions (though we have yet to have one =[). A lot of the programming and scripting I did myself, and I committed many many hours to that, as well as researching, browsing forums and taking up on people's experiences and then weighing them against my own better judgment and what's best for my company.

My day job consists of being a software engineer, and working with my brother and a friend of ours on consulting work takes up quite a bit of time in its own. The web hosting business is a whole new monster on its own, and I've dedicated most of my time to that.

I imagine that the sacrifices that I make now, in terms of time spent on this, will be worth it in the future. I suspect that, and I think others here may have as well, started off a little rough and then things eventually and hopefully smoothe on over if business turns up.

I usually wake up around 8 and my day is done around 4 or 5. When I get home, I'm back to work til about 2 or 3 in the morning every night for the past month or two. I just hope the end justifies the means.

As business turns up, and I hope it does, I hope to outsource tech support and live help with maybe touchsupport or visionexcomm but it just depends on what's in the cards for this web hosting business of mine and how well our ad campaigns do. At that point, I'll probably go back to regular sleeping hours.

About 100 hours per week
About 6 months.

I've been running for about a year and a half now, and I work on average about 10 hours a week. :D More if there's a problem, but usually there isn't. I spent probably 100 hours gettnig everything set up and working to begin with. Soon this will be my "full time" job...guess I'll have to start golfing or something...:stickout:

Does "too many" qualify as an answer?

Originally posted by dbodner
Does "too many" qualify as an answer?

I think it does, and I'm going to have to say the same. :)

I think that often as with any start up the owner will put in numerous hours, as zmoz has put it "too many" hours...

and then as time goes by and the business makes more money, idealy you are able to afford employees who take some of the work...

but I am not sure if that means less time spent makeing sure your business is running smoothly as much as different responsibilities...


hey aixagent... keep the faith & lots of luck to you :)

You can make money and hire people and still work alot of hours if you are hands on and want to put in those extra hours to try and build a great company. I am not saying you can't build a great company without putting in endless hours but it usually doesn't hurt. ;)

I've seen this quote from someone else on here, it is probably well known..

The nice thing about starting your own business is that you really only have to work half days. And you can even decide for yourself which 12 hours of the day those will be.

When we started it would have been easier to ask how many hours we slept;) Now 60 hrs average. In business since spring 1991

I work upwards of 80hrs per week....

I probably could get away with working 10 hours per week, but as most people would agree, you have to make a choice very early on whether they want this to be a hobby or a successful business.

And the fact is, it takes a very lucky businessman to make a successful business without putting the time and effort required to do so.


One day I'll relax :yawn:

I work about 120 hours a week. Lesser than when I first started, no that business demands are lesser, just that I am getting old. Cannot take the hectic schedule.

24/7/365 :)
I'll rest when I'm dead

Varys for me from 1hr (thats rare :()a week to 70hrs depending on problems etc

Just over 1 1/2 years :D

Usually around 60-70 hours during summer time and 70-90 during the rest of the year. Some of our clients dont want to be billed automatically so the manual processing at the end of every month takes a toll :D and some of them want to pay by cheque only, a real headache, anyways :D

Originally posted by dbodner
Does "too many" qualify as an answer?

Many of us feel your pain.

Originally posted by dbodner
Does "too many" qualify as an answer?

And sometimes even "too many" is "not enough"!

Gah!

The only thing that I do want to add is that while working a good 60-70 hours per week, unlike most of the people here, I actually make sure that I sleep for at least 8 hours a day.

I don't know - I just find that the time is better spend when I'm rested and have the energy.

It's ironic, though - that now when you work 40 hours per week, you can be considered as a slacker :).

I actually read an article a while back that mentioned that workaholics actually get less work done and are much less efficient than you might think, as they work in a very inefficient manner. Might have a point.

Boris

Good point about resting.

Did you hear about the Provigil pill?(http://www.provigil.com/) which can make you last very long even after not sleeping for a day or two..or thats what it claims, it has really been successfull in the US with 1st year sales of 250$ Million, going to be launched in UK soon :D

So now we can work 24-7-365

Originally posted by Yaser
Good point about resting.

Did you hear about the Provigil pill?(http://www.provigil.com/) which can make you last very long even after not sleeping for a day or two..or thats what it claims, it has really been successfull in the US with 1st year sales of 250$ Million, going to be launched in UK soon :D

So now we can work 24-7-365


I worry about these sort of drugs. Having a pharmaceutical background myself(in the distant past), I worry about taking drugs that effect natural sleep patterns for prolonged periods of time. Sure, they're great when you're burning the 'midnight oil', but long term....:scatter:

Sorry to get off topic.

The number of hours I work varies greatly from week to week, day to day even. I certain days I will find that I'm not in a very productive mood and I get bored easily - on these days, I will putter around for a while on the computer, and then eventually give up trying to work. TV, XBox, house chores or actual fun and socializing quickly seem more appealing. Some days I work and work and work - not because I have to but because I want to. Other days I end up working a lot, but only because everything is FUBAR'd. On average, I'd have to guess that I work 50-60 hours a week. Some weeks it's probably 10, other weeks it's probably eighty. When I vacation, it's generally less than 30 minutes a day, average. The longest I have gone with no work at all is 7 days.

Regardless, I always make sure I get enough sleep. My general rule of thumb is that I can only handle one day with less than 6 hours of sleep a week. All other days I need to get between 8 and 12. Right now it's 3:25AM ... so if I head to bed shortly, I probably will not wake up until 11:30AM or so. I did the whole 4-5 hours a sleep per night, maybe only 20 hours of sleep for an entire week and let me tell you, my body is just not capable of handling such extremes. I function much better and I am much happier when I have plenty of sleep.

Greetings:

"a) How many hours you work on average each week?"

68 to 90 hours per week unless a holiday or vacation is involved.


"b) How long your web hosting company has been in business?"

June 1995 hosting since November 1996.

In the early years, it was 84 to 98 hours per week.

Thank you.

Originally posted by dbodner
Does "too many" qualify as an answer?

Haha, my thoughts exactly. Your work hours get better though as your company develops and your 24/7 presence can be somewhat replaced by others.

I work on average of 16 hours every day

Who cares what the exact number is. The main thing here is that most business owners enjoy what they do for a living. 16 hours/day working for yourself does not equal 16 hours/day working for somebody else.

I was working 18 hours a day in the beginning... barely had time for wife and childrens. Now we have hired some people that helps give the slack.

A burnout has past, then things seems to be rolling again.

Ok,

Let me think. Start at 8am. Work on solidly (eat lunch while working) until 18.30pm. Stop for an hour. Work from 19.30pm until 20.00pm minimum. 90% of the time I'll work on until the early hours of the morning.


So thats....*figures*.....13.5 hours minimum each day...usually more.


*sigh*

Between doing house calls for computer repair, supporting web hosting computers. I'd estimate I put in about 50-60 hours each week, nothing to crazy.

If we going normal then 70 hours per week ;) otherwise it will be more. no different day or night :D

services since 2002-June

We have been running about 2 months and we are available 24/7 so it can be anywhre from nothing to as much , for me at least, 8-10 hours a day.

It has alot to do with us being only run by 3 people because were too small to expand our staff but we keep our clients happy.

1. During the setup period of my business I worked about 85 hours a week researching software/scripts, web design, databasing, configuring software, and with customers. Now I work between 30-60 hours a week depending on customer load/mood. ;)

2. Been around since April 2003... Dont know what else to say about that!

How many hours are there in a day? Think I work most of em anyway.. ;)

42 last time I checked :D

Is all the time except for a few hours of sleep an option ;)


Best guess: 100 hours per week. (7 days of course;))

I work pretty much all the time I'm awake, I absolutely love what I am doing and it just doesn't seem like work the majority of the time...

If i include my fulltime job, roughly 90-110 a week.

About a 80 hours a week. But so much of my work is custom software development instead of hosting that I have a new deadline everytime I turn around and I'm back logged for a few months so it won't be changing anytime soon. Any out of work C# programmers reading this thread? :D

For me breaks down like this:

15 hours a day on Monday, Thursday, Friday.
10 hours on Wednesday.
6 hours a day on Tuesday and Saturday.
As little as possible on Sunday. :)

Probably evens out at around 70 hours a week. Cosidering most office workers do 40, I think that's more than enough. Been at it 3 years and for the first year and a half I can't actually remember sleeping. :D

But as you grow, you have to take on staff to help. Not just because you have more customers but you have to avoid burning out. If I was still doing 100+ hours a week, I'd probably be very bitter - and divorced. ;)

Marry your servers :D

40 hour full-time job as employee + 25 to 35 hours for my own business.

Thanks for the insight...
I was thinking about getting into hosting...
But I can't invest the time nor the money...
For me at this point in my life it is just a hobby. :D

GOOD LUCK to you all that have discovered hosting is your business. :gthumb:

Monday - 16/17 hours
Tuesday - 16/17 hours
Wednesday - 16/17 hours
Thrusday - 16/17 hours
Friday - 16/17 hours
Saturday - 12/14 hours
Sunday - 8 hours

Total: 100/hrs a week (7 days)

Yep, you're probably 3 months in plus 3 months before in the planning stage. You've got another year at that schedule, I'm afraid. ;)

Substract 5 hours of sleep from a day and multiply it by 7 = # of hours of work each week

:D

We're been in business for 3 years. We're spent a ton of time automating everything that we do so that we can now support 5,000 clients in about 60 hours per week (between the three principals).

Hours Per Week about 100
Time as a Host We just had our first Anniversary

Time in the hosting industry , support tech for various company's since 2000...now I punch my own clock :D

Good topic :).

I sure as hell hope there is no correlation as when we started I'd say 80 hours / week was "normal", but anymore I'm averaging 100 -> 115 / week and we've been in business 3.5 years. hometownhosting had it right, you can hire more people but it never seems to give you back (even a small portion) of the 40+ hours they work each week. The proverbial rat race continues relentlessly.

We need to change our tag line to "Awake and Working!" :(

Chris

Those of you putting in more than 40 hours per week should consider hiring more staff, or a manager. I can run my business better with putting in 40 hours when I use that time effective than trying to save a few dollars and work 80-100 hours per week. Maybe some people like that though :)

Derrick

Derrick, hiring more != working less. If anyone else out there is like me there are stacks of good ideas waiting for attention and hiring more people will get you more net work done, but for me at least wouldn't change the number of hours I put in. When working is fun and rewarding, putting in 100+ hours a week isn't "bad" and as you said: "Maybe some people like that", I know I do.

Now I need to get back to work on my WHT post count. I could swear mine is missing a 0.

Chris

I think that the only way a business can grow is if the owner works on the business, not in the business.

In other words, you should automate as much as possible, hire people for sales, hire people for support, and just manage everything, find new places to market your company, create new ideas for improvements, etc.

It's mighty hard to be creative when you spend 80 hours a week answering support tickets.

Boris

When we first started off I must have put around 100 hours in a week.

18 months later, it's about 40.

I agree wholeheartedly with Boris' comments - working on the business is now my key role.

Kevin

I worked 2 hours today because I have a nasty hangover. :stickout:

can i ask this:

what is the majority of your time spent on? Tech support? or business planning? or other?

I'm curious cus i have been researching to start a webhost, but I work 50+ hrs a week already. My wife does not work so she could handle the tech support, and advertising. I was just wondering What other things besides that took up you time.

Just curious :)

Originally posted by hvoice-boris
I think that the only way a business can grow is if the owner works on the business, not in the business.

In other words, you should automate as much as possible, hire people for sales, hire people for support, and just manage everything, find new places to market your company, create new ideas for improvements, etc.

It's mighty hard to be creative when you spend 80 hours a week answering support tickets.

Boris Or charge higher prices for hosting, so that a smaller client base can bring you in more income, which equates to less support requests, which allows the owner(s) to work on and in the business effectively.

I figure 40 hours a week in the office, monitor email and support requests another 30 hours or so from home, plus watch email over the weekend, roughly 80-90 hours per week total, but not all of it is "working" full time. Been doing it since 1996.

I agree if you are always busy doing work for the business, that overall the company will suffer. But, if you have a business partner to share the load, or talented employees to lessen the work load, it should free you up enough to grow your business at the same time.

I enjoy working with clients, handling sales calls, etc... If all my time was sepnt growing the business and managing employees, I bet I would not like my job as much as I do right now. A good balance of the above works best for myself. Granted this system does not scale well if we become the next Rackspace, but then again, I do not want to be the next Rackspace, so it works for me! :)

- John C.

We do Mostly Collocation and dedicated servers.. So that cuts it down. But we have a few boxes for shared hosting. So......

Like 50Hrs/week.
Been in business for 6 years.

Originally posted by hvoice-boris
I think that the only way a business can grow is if the owner works on the business, not in the business.

In other words, you should automate as much as possible, hire people for sales, hire people for support, and just manage everything, find new places to market your company, create new ideas for improvements, etc.

It's mighty hard to be creative when you spend 80 hours a week answering support tickets.

Boris

If you have a working business model and steady growth there is not always a reason to change it. Also - if an owner likes to do the actual hands-on work, there is not much reason to change it.

It really depends on where to go with your business. I remember Aussie Bob shutting down his sign-up page and considering just leaving things as they were back then. I assume he had a steady income on an acceptable level and everything was under control. Well, he turned the page back on and continued to grow ... certainly needing more help to handle the growth but .....

No situation is unique and no business owner is the same.

This is so scary!

I was thinking about quiting my job and starting a web hosting business. But, if this is the time required (50-90hrs/week) then my 60k/year, full benefits and 40 hrs/week is better than any web hosting business.

Thanks for this topic. Life is good while working 40 hrs/week!

Life is also good not being a drone. ;)

Agree completely with NextDog.

For the last three years, I've worked twice the hours I did when I was in employment. It wouldn't have mattered what the money way, I like being my own boss, and I only like it that way.

As a youngster all the workplace showed me was a hiarachy whereby the less qualified and worse people skills you had, the more likely you'd be bossing someone around who had twice the personality of you and twice the qualifications.

I'll stick to my long hours, stress-a-plenty existance.

Not for me thanks ;)

I usually work over 100 hours a week usually.

Around 85 hours and im only just starting!

Anjam :pimp:

a) How many hours you work on average each week?
I'm working 100% of the time when my girl friend is away ;)

b) How long your web hosting company has been in business?
1 year!

The hardest job is to keep your girlfriend not your business!

I second that! Keeping the girl friend is th hardest.

around 10 hours, nice work

10 hours a day
2 years

I think the more time you put in your business, the better the results. I work about 10 hours a day most days and usually work 7 days a week.

120 per week, 100 per week for Hosting company?

Guys, if it is so than you are not very well organized or you are greedy.

I have the best ppl in administration, programming and support (if needed), everybody do theirs job and every1 is happy.

Also, reading Slashdot or WHT or surfing the web are NOT part of working hours.

We've been in business since 1998 and there are still weeks that some of us will put in 80+ hour weeks.

But the thing to keep in mind is that while this kind of workload was necessary in the earlier years, it has become more of a voluntary "labor of love" in subsequent years.

For instance - I know that if I wanted to... I could probably coast through a given week at a 40 hour pace or even less. And leave more things to our very dedicated and talented staff and let the business just cruise along.

And if my wife & I want to do something or take some time off or go on a vacation, we can certainly do that and know that our business is in very good hands and that our merchants & resellers are being taken care of.

But all that being said... I've always been a hands-on person and more the company grows, the more exciting and interesting it is.

There are always new areas to build and enhance, always new services to offer. So from that standpoint, while I continue to put a lot of time into it - I don't think of most of it as "work" and I truly enjoy a lot of aspects of it.

But one word of advice - it is good to sometimes sit back and "smell the roses" and to definitely take time for friends & family, once your company reaches the point that you can do that.

It is very difficult to manage and balance this when you are just starting up a new business and getting things rolling but it is nice once you get past that point and can finally be able to balance life & business.

I spend about 20 hours per month on our hosting business, whereas I spend the bulk of my time working on our custom software development business, which is 75% of our revenue and 100% of our profits. We've been in hosting (almost entirely colo and dedicated) for almost 4 years, now.

I will be looking at around 70-75 hour weeks (also have 2 other people working with me). Ive been hosting unoffically for 2 years (just for friends etc). Im not renting an office and going "prime time" Hopfully i will be a "prime" host :P

- Eddy

humm... hard question...
Does staring into space thinking of a new business veture and project count as work?

If yes... then its 24hours / day.... yeeks!!!

And just to keep me going, I try to dream of me successing and earning what I want from it when I go to bed every night :) Motivation process since I am out on this alone with no partners ;)

I would say for a business owner its always 24/7/365 because we can't possibily take our minds off it :P

Better question is, how many hours don't I work :-)

Pretty much every waking hour I'm on hand to take care of business. I may not always be doing something active for the business, but I'm always available to answer the phone, respond to emails, etc. I'd say it's about 60 hours of actual work a week, it's been reduced greatly since I started hiring more staffers.

We've been doing web hosting for almost 6 years now.