The number of blogs is constantly increasing, but if you want to be successful you need to work hard and you need to follow some simple and yet vital rules:

Blog, blog, blog
The most important thing is to write and create a routine. We all know that creating is one of the most challenging things, but once you get a rhythm and a schedule going, it will become natural.

You might find excuses, like there’s nothing to write about or that you simply can’t find inspiration. That might be actually true, but you need to write nonetheless. You can get some tips about setting up a routine from famous writters here.

Avoid social networks while blogging
You might be tempted to say that being a blogger is all about multitasking. In reality that’s not true – bloggers aren’t exempted from procrastination. There’s a huge difference between completing three things at once, and focusing on one thing at a time. Let’s take for example an ordinary day where you have to write an article, do some research and keep in touch with your community.

If you’re doing all three at the same time, it will take you on average about two times more to get the job done. That’s because although you research for a while, you will eventually get sucked by the urge to check your social networks. Getting back on track has proven to take at least 15 minutes.

Have schedules and deadlines
It’s very important to have time dedicated just for work. Bloggers usually don’t have a fixed schedule, but most of the successful bloggers say that you need to have a schedule and to set deadlines. This will help you focus on the tasks at hand and will also help your community to know when to expect new posts.

Plan ahead
It’s very important because you never know what tomorrow brings. For example let’s say that you won’t be able to write for a couple of days, you’re traveling, sick or you simply don’t have time.

This is when drafts kick in. It’s very important to have at least a couple of articles laying around, that you can use in case of emergency. You can write drafts when you’re fired up with new ideas or simply when you have some spare time.

Be accountable to someone
One of the best thing of being a blogger is that you don’t have a boss, you might have clients, but no actual boss. Sometimes this might do more harm than good, that’s why you need to be accountable to someone. Find someone you respect and ask him/her to check your work from time to time. This way you will get more insight into how you’re evolving as a writter and in theory it will make you more conscious.

Schedule posts and shares
Blog platforms like WordPress allow you to schedule posts ahead of time. This way if you’re away from a computer or don’t have an internet connection, your readers will still get to read your posts. The same goes for sharing links, using a tools like Hootsuite can help schedule your posts on Facebook, Twitter and more.

Structure your posts
A great post needs structure, if it’s not easy to follow, the great idea behind it will be wasted. Write your posts in way that the reader can walk away with at least 3 good ideas just by having a quick read.

Relax, research and network
These three activities can go hand in hand if you have a good time management system. There’s nothing better than relaxing with other bloggers and friends, while you learn new things about your niche. It’s very important to socialize with other bloggers, because it will make it easier to help each other when in need.

Last Week’s Downtime
Last week’s downtime was caused by a network outage at our data center (Peer1). Their investigation uncovered the fact that both their transport providers used a common third party, long-haul provider for their underlying fiber infrastructure. The underlying provider was performing a planned fiber maintenance in the Waco, Texas area on the morning of February 12th. During that maintenance, both backbone circuits that run between San Antonio and Dallas were taken offline. This resulted in several hours of downtime for all Paymo users. After seeing what happened we immediately switched to backup servers in order to restore the service – however, these servers failed rapidly due to an unexpected surge in traffic & server load. We finally managed to get the service up and running after our host Peer1 solved their network problems.

Yesterday’s Downtime
In the past few months we’ve seen accelerated growth in the Paymo user base that caught us a bit off-guard – it’s the first time since we created Paymo that we were not able to correctly anticipate the resources needed to run the service smoothly without interruption for everyone. Yesterday’s downtime was caused initially by a few SQL queries that help generate timesheet reports (sometimes with hundreds of thousands of entries). These queries were taking much more time to complete than they usually do, which in turn slowed down the rest of the queries and ultimately bogged down the whole system.

What we are doing to avoid service interruptions in the future:

Short term mitigation (yesterday):
After the 1st hour of downtime (in which we tried to see if some optimizations could restore normal operations) it was clear that the current server, although very powerful will not be able to handle the load so we decided to migrate to new hardware. We had a scenario for this situation ready and we decided to go ahead with it and migrated to an Amazon instance. We booted up the most powerful instance we could get (more RAM then the old hardware and SSD backed storage), migrated the data and changed the DNS to point to the new server. The process took about 20 minutes and after the DNS switch it took about 10 minutes for the server to handle the initial surge of traffic and stabilize.

Medium term mitigation (1-2 months):
We will be investigating if a custom built server backed by SSD storage or custom storage hardware like Fusion-io ioDrive will deliver more performance for the database server.

Long term mitigation:
We are almost in the alpha stage of the upcoming Paymo version. The new application was redesigned from the ground up with a new architecture that will support distributed servers which will allow us to handle scaling more easily.

Thanks for your understanding and patience. Please let us know if you have any questions, feedback or concerns.

Update 2: we’re really sorry to inform you that we’re still having some load issues after the morning data center problems. We’re working hard to get everything up and running again at full speed again.

Update: we’re up and running, the service has been restored to all users. If you have any issues please let us know!

At the moment Paymo services are offline (the offline time tracker will work). Our host Peer1 is having network issues in their San Antonio data centers (status here http://forums.serverbeach.com/showthread.php?8674-Network-Issue-San-Antonio-2013-02-12). We’re in touch with them and we hope to be operational as soon as possible.

This might be okay if you’re a recreational social media user who plays on Facebook or Twitter. But if social media and marketing is your job, you know you have to stay focused on your work. Your boss and your company are counting on you to be a professional and achieve your objectives. The key to being successful is to manage yourself and manage your time.

Here are five tips for being effective when working in social media.

Go in with a plan.
More than almost any other activity, working in social media requires a plan. To create your plan, think about what you want to achieve in your social media work. Let’s say one of your social media marketing objectives includes increasing the number of followers for your company’s Twitter account. First, set a visible, specific goal – let’s say a 50% increase in six months. Then,  start listing and scheduling the actions you’ll need to take in order to achieve that goal. Repeat this process until you have a workable plan.

A plan like this helps you discipline yourself. Whenever you notice you’re linkhopping from Pinterest to Facebook to YouTube, you can stop and consult your plan. It’ll be a huge help to your time management.

Prioritize your schedule.
The benefit of time management is in the measurement. You want to know how you’re using your time and whether it’s being used effectively. If you think about it time is a resource like money. Just like we budget our finances, we need to budget and prioritize our time. So ask yourself: How do you want to prioritize your time?

Begin by sketching out the big “must-do’s” every day. These must-do’s are actions that – in order to be effective – must happen today. Are there other looming deadlines in the next 5 to 7 days? Build those into your schedule and prioritize them appropriately. If you create a work plan built around priorities, then you’ll feel more free to create content and build relationships with your customers.

Get in. Get out.
Creating and curating great content is one of the chief tasks of being a social media marketer. It can also be one of the biggest challenges. That’s why services like Buffer are so useful. When you discover blogposts, webapps or other resources you think your followers will appreciate, you can schedule Tweets and Facebook posts into the future. Say you find ten informative websites. By using Buffer, you can schedule two Tweets per day and now you have content for a whole week.

And there are other services like Buffer. Hootsuite – a social media management app – also has the ability to automatically schedule tweets based on the optimal posting times for your favorite social networks.

Don’t surrender to perfect
One of the greatest enemies of time management is perfectionism. That’s when you spend far too much time getting a blogpost or a Facebook status absolutely right. I’m not suggesting you slack off from giving your best, but there’s a fine balance between perfection and excellence. If you’re spending four hours writing and editing a blogpost that should only take two hours, you’re giving up valuable time to other work. And you won’t know this if you don’t accurately track your time.

You’re in control.
Working in social media can be overwhelming at times. It all moves so fast. There is always new applications to learn, changes to familiar applications (think Facebook and Google making changes in what seems like every week), popular memes rapidly coming out of nowhere. It can sometimes feel like you’re inside a hurricane, holding on for your life, hoping it’ll calm down for a little while. But those are external forces at play. You can learn how to exercise some control over your social media work.

Being in control means seeing distractions and learning to cut them out of your time management plan. You have tools to help you. Just remember they are tools and you’re still the boss. Don’t let them run away with you.

If you find yourself getting more and more distracted by the constant pinging of the Tweetstream or any other notification, turn it off for a while. It’ll actually do you some good to take a short break. Then you can come back to your work feeling refreshed and ready to engage with your customers.

Here are some of the time management tips we’ve uncovered from our own experience, as well as through talking with Paymo customers. While they’re geared toward web developers, they easily apply to any freelancer or solo professional.

Plan Your Course
You likely know that old saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Pretty obvious, right? But as obvious and important as planning is to your freelance success, it’s easy to find reasons to not plan, particularly if the project is small. Do yourself a favor, though – make planning a habit, no matter the size of the project.

Here’s another quote, this time from American heavyweight boxer, Mike Tyson:

“Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.”

With all due respect to Mike (and I really do mean that), that’s precisely why a plan is important. When a project blows up, when a client freaks out, when something happens where you feel like you just got punched in the mouth, you need a reminder of the bigger picture to get back on track. So create plans for your business and your projects so you can keep moving yourself forward.

Cluster Your Time
When you’re a freelance web developer, there are times when multi-tasking is inevitable. We have tools here at Paymo  like Paymo Plus that can help. However, science is beginning to tell us that excessive multi-tasking isn’t as effective as we were once led to believe.

Consider the benefits of time clusters. Basically, time clusters are another form of time planning where you schedule two to three hour blocks of time to accomplish tasks. The purpose is to help focus your time so you can be more efficient and effective.

Cluster around your own natural cycles. If you tend to be more energetic between 9am-12pm, schedule client calls and business development during this cluster. Or if you tend to think better during this time, schedule project work in this cluster. This blogpost offers some additional ideas for creating time clusters.

Choose Your Shortcuts
Time management is also about finding ways to save time. As a web developer, you’re constantly looking for new ways to do more in less time. That’s why shortcuts and cheat sheets are fantastic tools.

If you don’t already have one, create your own shortcuts library. This is a place where you store resources for your most frequently used tools. To get you started, below are links to some excellent cheat sheets we found for design and web development.

Photoshop CS6 Cheat Sheets:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/photoshop-cs6-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/photoshop-cs6-featuretour/top-10-time-saving-enhancements-to-layers-in-photoshop-cs6/
http://www.designzzz.com/cheatsheets-boost-photoshop-experience/

Colors Cheat Sheets:
http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/colour-chart/
http://www.visibone.com/color/hexagon3x.html

HTML & CSS Cheat Sheets:
http://coolhomepages.com/HTML-5-Cheat-Sheets-For-All-Tags-and-Event-Handlers/blog-130.html
http://www.milkaddict.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/css-cheat-sheet-v2.png

Seek Your Happiness
Finally, make your time work for you. Going back to your time clusters, did you insert some time for you in there? Did you create openings to exercise or to read up on the latest web trends or to simply have lunch? If not, do it.

The key to managing your time and growing your business is being selective in what you choose to do. When you begin to feel overwhelmed by the pressure of multiple projects and client expectations, look at your plans. Are you moving in the right direction? If not, it’s never, ever too late to change course.

You might be asking yourself, what does this have to do with time tracking? Why do I share this with you? Because I hope it sheds some light on why all of us here are strongly against using any form of technology to track employees activities without their awareness and consent.

Since we founded our company in 2008 and built our first time tracking app, we’ve constantly had a lot of people ask us to build in functionality to capture the content of their employees’ screens. The root of the request is to ensure employees are being productive and not checking Facebook every hour. While that might sound reasonable at first, bear in mind our history of living under a repressive regime. My hope is it explains why we don’t ever plan on building any surveillance or monitoring tools into Paymo. It’s simply against our philosophy.

You may be wondering about PaymoPlus. Doesn’t that monitor an employee’s computer activity? The answer is, “No.” PaymoPlus does track the activity of a computer user, but the user has full control of what data actually is kept on the server. We do not allow the data to be used secretly and without the user’s permission.

There are times when I see us moving fast into a techno-Orwellian society where Big Brother really does exist. However, I believe it doesn’t have to be that way. Paymo is built around the concept of trust between employees and employer. We urge employees to work for companies that respect privacy and fight against employers who try to breach it.

Time and task tracking are wonderful tools that help us be more efficient and effective in our work. But, we know the risk involved in surveillance done by a country or a corporation and how it can be used against individuals. Let’s instead choose to build businesses based on trust. Those are the businesses that are best positioned for profits and prosperity and a bright future for all of us.

If you have any questions or comments please let us know.

• 3AM – 4AM CDT (US)
• 10AM-11AM CET (Europe)

The upgrades are necessary to allow us to make performance improvements and pave the way to for new features over the coming months. We’ve tried to chose a time when traffic is at its lowest. We will do all our best to keep the actual maintenance window to a minimum. We’re sorry for the inconvenience!

Clients appreciate quality work, but a project done on time, or better yet, ahead of schedule will earn you extra recognition and will be highly appreciated by your clients.

Time tracking is more popular than ever, but keeping an eye on your time tracking tool isn’t enough, you need to combine it with project and time management in order to maximize your workday.

Here are some tips that will help improve your workflow & time management as a freelancer:

• if possible share tasks – if you’re a freelancer it doesn’t mean that you have to do all the work yourself. You can have a team or a partner, delegate responsibilities, divide the workload or even subcontract tasks to other freelancers.
• don’t take on too much work – be realistic when taking on a project, discuss deadlines with your clients, set personal milestones.
• have buffer days - always have a few extra days to check that everything is in top shape before presenting your clients with the final product or just use the time to relax between projects.
• start right away - sometimes it’s hard to get started on a project, but it’s imperative to start as soon as possible without wasting time, the first few days are crucial in any project.
• have a schedule – some freelancers think that not having a 9-5 job means that they don’t need a schedule. A hectic working schedule can reflect badly on the final product. You need to find your rhythm and work when you’re the most creative and efficient.
• don’t take too many breaks – taking too many breaks can be counterproductive, it ruins your concentration and slows down your workflow.
• be professional – always be on time for meetings and dress properly, have a clear plan and do some background check on your clients. This will help you attract high end clients and will be a good sign of your work ethic.
• speak your mind – although it might seem clients know exactly what they want, suggestions are usually welcome, especially if you present them in the right way. Show them that you care about the product.
• track your time – you should use time tracking and project management tools to keep track of your work. It’s very important to keep track of your workflow, and crucial for invoicing. You can show your clients the amount of work necessary for specific tasks at any time.