As a business owner, its up to you to formulate the schedule that will allow to accurately time your work week so you don't fall behind. In addition to new projects rolling in on a regular basis, a mounting need for maintenance work exists as well.
The more projects you've made, the more you're responsible for, right?
Running a web design studio is a lot of work. When you are your own boss, sometimes it can be tough to push yourself in the way that an employer would push you as their employee. Today's the perfect example of that challenge. I'm still dealing with one of those colds that make your every muscle ache. You know, the type of cold that causes empty and pointless coughing. I get the bonus of swallowing air every time I cough resulting in a strong wave of nausea. Good times. Its been this way all weekend. Monday arrives and the business world could care less. Clients are calling. People are submitting project requests through my site. Bills need to be paid - you get the idea.
I just finished up a couple projects (http://www.ellicottmack.com and http://www.allturf.net) and I have a mountain of maintenance work to catch up on since site launches take a bit of uninterrupted attention. Its so easy to get lost in the new projects and forget about the maintenance work. Sadly, that makes for unhappy clients and that is unacceptable since its my reputation at stake.
So here we are. Lets get the work week organized. We'll start with Monday. There needs to be at least one day a week that is solely devoted to maintenance work. Monday is a good enough day. We'll call it "Maintenance Monday". It has a nice ring to it. The other days of the week? At this point they'll be left open for new project work and meetings. I do have to sell my services you know. Another interesting note while I'm on this thought pattern is the time it takes for a site to be built. I had a real tough time coming up with a rough estimate out of the box.
My charming wife was clever enough to create a report of every site I've done (thanks honey!) and the actual time for each site from beginning to end. Based on the last 2.5 years' track record: Smaller Websites: 1 month +/- Larger Websites: 2 months +/- There were a few that weren't in line with that pattern buts thats to be expected. Knowing this I can finally pinpoint when I can start new projects, forecast when they'll be finished and more. This will create a better level of communication and expectation with clients moving forward which should result in happier clients, more referrals and a more profitable business.