HN user

jwho82

14 karma

Bootstrapper and founder of Log My Hours

https://logmyhours.com

Posts1
Comments32
View on HN

Thanks.

I originally created the site back in 2011 mostly just freshen up my PHP skills, and I needed a way to keep track of my work hours. It was just a basic free to use timesheet tool for for around 4 years. It was super ugly but it was still getting people signing up but only a handful would stick around.

I decided rebuild it all and launch it was a proper SaaS in 2015.

If I had to start over today, I'm not sure what I would do. I just like to build things I would use. I'd try to find an existing tool and see if I it's something I feel I could do better.

I use my own time tracking tool (https://logmyhours.com) along with rescuetime.com to make sure I'm keeping focused. I can actually tie my timesheets right into rescue time to see how productive I was during the time period.

Ive been using clubhouse.io recently to help me keep my many todos a bit more organized.

I want to try to plan out my day the night before, but that almost never happens.

I love my little Surface Go, using it to write this reply now! I hope they release a new one this year with a better CPU, and with WSL2 right around the corner, it'll be the perfect tool for coding on the go.

There was only 2 affiliate links, the other was for rescue time, but I have removed them both.

Blog planner is just a small tool I made on the side. But yeah, I should point that out. Thanks for the feedback!

logmyhours.com - I'm happy with it so far though, it's something I've built for myself (I log all my hours working on it) and 100% on my own and has been a great learning experience. But it is getting harder and harder to work after work.

I love that I get to chat with customers and see what really are their pain points (something devs rarely ever get to do).

If I can double the MRR and relocate outside of Vancouver, I can most likely go full-time.

I've been working on my own Time Tracking tool since 2015 as a side project. I've managed to break 1k MMR. The competition is just insane. Every day I discover a couple new time tracking tools, and every one of them looks better than the last one. I've actually started exploring other SaaS ideas on the side (nothing too serious yet though).

Ads really suck at our pricing point. Google & Bing are $5+ CPC for most of the main time tracking keywords. Facebook ads were horrible from my experience (and none of the other major time tracking tools are running them).

I don't really have any advice, but do want to wish you the best of luck!

I built my own time tracking tool (https://logmyhours.com) for tracking my time and creating invoices for any side freelancing I was doing. I'm actually hoping to go full time on this in the next 6-12 months.

I use a bit of Trello and Freedcamp for my todos and planning.

I also use RescueTime to make sure I'm keeping productive. I'm actually exploring adding integrations with RescueTime with LogMyHours, to see how productive you were for each timesheet, and reporting period.

Cheaper than most of the competition, easy to use, and epic customer service (Doesn't everyone say this though?).

Basically I reach out to every new user to see if LMH is working out for them, and if there's anything missing or any challenges they might have encountered. I had one user with a few employees that was looking to switch over from one of our big competitors, and he really needed timesheet tags and timesheet approval & locking. I managed to build most of the timesheet tagging while in China on holidays :) and had the locking/approval system in later that week.

I have a few more exciting things I want to do once most of the main features have been built and I'm working full time on this. Currently doing around 20 hours a week.

Bit slow at first, but doing pretty good now. Been maintaining around 10% growth MoM since Jan 2015. This month has been awesome though, almost doubled last month's revenue!