14-Month Side Hustle: Monthly Hour Budget Tracker With Real Numbers

When 36-year-old electrical engineer Ufuk in Samsun decided to take his side hustle seriously, the first thing he did was not write code or chase clients — he opened Toggl Track and started measuring every minute. Fourteen months later he had a monthly hour budget, a seasonality chart, and a true hourly-earnings curve.

The 14-Month Numbers: Average, Peak, Trough

Ufuk's Toggl reports showed an average of 38 hours per month of side-hustle work — roughly 9 hours per week, organized as weekday evenings and weekend blocks. His busiest month, February 2027 (peak demand before Ramadan from local businesses), hit 52 hours. His lowest, July 2027 family holiday in Antalya, was 24 hours.

This variance wasn't accidental. In the first six months he ran 90-minute weekday evening blocks and a single three-hour Saturday afternoon deep-work session. From month seven, once his kids' school schedule stabilized, he locked the blocks into Mon-Wed-Thu nights at 21:30-23:00. Toggl's weekly heatmap revealed numerically which hour windows were his "productivity gold."

Hourly Earnings: £42 to £71

Month one his effective hourly was around £42 — small freelance gigs, low-tier packages, too many revisions. By month 14 it sat at £71. Three primary drivers explained the climb:

• Recurring package pricing (fixed scope, fixed turnaround)
• Templating — turning shared workflows into Notion runbooks
• The discipline of saying "no" — auto-rejecting anything below £30/hour

Toggl's tagged-hours feature was crucial: every hour was labelled billable, internal, learning, or admin. When he cut admin from 22% to 9% of his time, the billable ratio surged.

The MRR Build: 8,900TL Over 14 Months

Pivoting from one-off projects to recurring revenue was his most consequential decision. In month eight he designed a QR-menu setup + monthly maintenance bundle: install fee upfront, 350TL/month afterward. By month 14 he had 25 active clients and 8,900TL MRR.

The most instructive chart in his Toggl screenshots was the MRR-per-hour curve: the first six months sat at 0TL MRR/hour (one-off heavy), months 7-10 showed linear growth, and from month 11 the curve went exponential. Recurring work means every new hour compounds on prior hours — the clearest proof of why a side-hustle hour budget matters.

FAQ

Is Toggl free? The Free plan covers solo use — Ufuk paid nothing across 14 months.

Doesn't tagging hours take forever? Tagging is 8-10 seconds per entry; with Toggl's keyboard shortcuts the daily cost is under one minute.

Is the holiday-month dip normal? Yes — seasonality should be embraced. If your yearly average is 38 hours, one low month is not a problem.

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