Well unfortunately I don’t have much to blog about today, so I decided to blog about what I have been working on lately, which is better then nothing.
Mostly what I have been working on is getting all the orders caught up with developer-hut.com. Right now we are out about 20 days and I would like to get each order done in about 14 days max. Last year I was advertising to get it done in 7 days or less, but to get all orders done in 7 days I would be rushing to much and quality would go down, so now all orders are done within 14 days instead.
For me to get caught up I need to hire and train a few more people, which is a lot easier say than to do. I actually get about 5-10 people a day emailing me about a job. I send most people an email about our training course which takes a few days to complete. That helps me weed out the people who really don’t want the job. After that I usually work with each person one and one somehow explaining the process to them. Then finally if they do good they get the job.
As you can see that is a pretty big process, and it weeds out a lot of people, and also takes up some time. But I am not complaining, the writers I currently have are all great and I think the process works great because of that, but the only problem in the past was that the company was growing faster then I can create an efficient process to get orders done on time and with quality.
I solved that problem by creating a whole backend that manages everything for me, which I have been working on since last October. These last two months I have been tweaking the system to be as correct and automated as I can make it.
Over the weekend I built in a better tracking system to manage my writers payouts. I pay my writers on the 1st and 15th of every month, and I wanted my backend to create the mass payment text file automatically for me because I’m lazy. And to do that I needed to correctly track my writers work.
The first part to this is assigning orders to certain writers which was solved by a cron running every night that checks to see if the user currently has 5 orders assigned to them (each user gets up to 5 orders a day, most of the time they only complete 1 or 2), if the user got a order done and the order moved to the status “user review” then her or she will automatically get another order assigned to them. I finished that script a lot time ago, but lately I have been working on the script that displays the writers there stats and makes me the mass payment script.
Now to track my writers work I created 3 different process which are done, not done, and user review. They get paid when an order is marked done, and a order can only be marked done if the customer didnt make any support notes or I manually mark the order done. So from there I broke it down to 2 different earnings, the “available” earnings” is the amount that was maked “done” during the certain timeframe which would either be the 1st-15th or 16-30thish.
I created all that back in December, but I just barley got everything 100% this past weekend. This past weekend I made it so all my writers can easily track all of the orders they have worked on, and also check there earnings. I also completed the script that makes me the mass payment file. So slowly all of my processes and tools are coming together to make the business more automated. The more automation for this company means more spare time to work on other projects 
Other Work
Some of the other stuff I got done this weekend was:
1. fixed and made updates to new ticket system
2. I had a writer look over all of the automated emails because I suck at English, so I had to recode most of those emails.
3. I started working on a pretty complicated tracking system which will track monthly orders and check certain stats for certain users. That should be done later this week, and I am also hoping to get the new customer homepage re-designed.
This Weeks Work
This week should be pretty busy. My main focus will be to code the 2 merchant shopping carts. The shopping cart is already made I just need to code the part that sends the order to the merchant, which should only take a day each because I’m such a new coder.
I also paid a designer to make a nice looking homepage graphic for developer-hut.com which should be done this week. He is also re-designing the testimonial box aswell.
Besides those I also have to complete the coding for my lead generation network and manage all of my normal support emails. Lately my normal work weeks consist of about 35-40ish hours a week, and I usually work 4-5 hours a day, but I work all 7 days a week, not just 5 days.
Not to busy of a week, but I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Very good idea you must hire some new people for your work if you need my help so you can contact with me any time.
It seems that Developer-Hut is getting bigger and bigger every day. I remember when you first started this a while back. Now it is doing amazing.
Hiring people can be really hard stuff. Training is a must, and it’s a real pain when you loose time and don’t hire anyone. But at the end, when you get someone reliable then results are best. Maybe you could try to automate this also
When you first started working from home, how di you motivate yourself to finish tasks you’d set for yourself without really knowing if it was going to make money or not? Or were you already making some money whilst you were in your job – if thats the case, how did you motivate yourself to work on projects then?
You must listen to audios containing material of how to handle self projects, go to library or find any online resource from where you can get free access to personal development material.
Hi, Can anyone tell me where I will get these materials?. or any good online libraries?
If you are giving any link to any of these libraries it will be better for me. Thanks.
Hi Jon, I think now you are becoming a great PHP Coder, Anyway I also like to study PHP, now I know only HTML, I think it’s not enough for me. I was trying to study this for last oe month. But, I didn’t started it yet!, I don’t know where to start, Which is the best source to study?, Where to get the it (Books or tutorials etc.)? , It will be helpful if you are sharing your experience. Thanks.
Ashad, if you’re just beginning PHP a really simple and easy guide that I learned a lot from is PHP and MYSQL for Dummies.
w3schools.com/ is one of the best resource of learning PHP.
I admire the quality of work you offer at developer-hut and just placed my second order, sorry to add to your workload, but I am sure you don’t mind, your in business to make money afterall
Its a self-discipline with task management. I juggle a full-time job a wife, two kids, family and friends and run my online income streams, keep persistent in your goals and convictions, and you will get the success you desire.
You have another Twitter follower and subscriber.