With adsense as the constraint on income producing, time is spent in viewing logs for what works, then writing more content for more of the same. How many pages per day? How fast can one type (or cut and paste)? Illustrated or not? If illustrated by hand or camera, or stock? How mature a site? Younger sites get more love---older, less so because of all that accumulated "wealth" of content.

Reserve time to take a nap. :)

UNLESS one is doing direct ads servicing (NOT ADSENSE), in which case one works 27 hours every 24... and If working for a company: one earns the wage by meeting management expectations.

Then there's the vanity/hobby side ... in that case: when the mood strikes.

Tough question to answer, @ember ... :)

I spend about two to three hours a day

:)

Mine is full time job, I spend like 8 hours a day, working on the different aspect of my site. It can be a lot of more during crunch, when I am about to release a new version of my site, or adding brand new feature/sections. It can be less too when I am just "thinking" or what I am going to do next and how (thinking is also working in a way).

I don't have a set time each day, but i will set aside specific times for specific research and actions.
Investing time in the research usually pays dividends as it avoids chasing goals that less likely to bring in results.

People always talk about how much traffic they have but not about how much time they spend working on their sites.

From what I can tell there are different types of content creators posting throughout this forum.

Are you specifically curious about single person operations with a primary focus on creating legitimate articles based on experience and knowledge in a specific field? If so, I echo Dimitri's response.

I’m a solo operation, except for one writer, so I suppose, yes , that’s what I’m most curious about.

It didn’t use to be just 2 to 3 hours a day for me. Back when I started it was 12 hours a day, plus some blood, sweat and tears. The sites are now built, though, so it’s just about adding content. Unless Google insists on some site-wide changes, like https, reducing ads, etc.

I am solo operation as well. I create my own content. Some purely creative, and some derivative of other people's work. ie. game guides. But i usually end up with a big back log of content that I have ideas but no time to work on. So I usually end with what I feel most passionate about at the time. A few projects I did were horrible failures :). But I had fun doing them.

On site content specifically, 4~5 hours a day. On business tangents, 5~6 hours a day, this includes hosting, business misc, learning, financial planning, and strategizing for future. I think this is how life should be.

I try not to spend too much time on social media as that is not my core strategy, But perhaps I am taking a huge risk by depending on search traffic. But this is something that I will have to live with as a solo guy. At least I do not have pressure to pay employee or contractor salaries.

as this is posted in adsense ... i'll reply regarding sites that use adsense.

i have several sites that i haven't touched for years, with all of these the earnings curve is downwards and has been for many years, but in my view they are 'complete' sites, informational and definitive! i can't imagine that extra work on them would be worth the time in terms of increased earnings. they are still up and down, and i suspect sometimes an algo tweak bumps them up or down and i see a spike or a trough in both traffic and earnings.(all these sites existed before adsense ...it was just a nice bonus)

additionally i have one site that i believe is also pretty much definitive for the subject it is about ... i update the site as required (deleting out of date info and adding new upto date info) as well as the occasional new article, this is probably around 2 hours a week. related to this site i also spend around an hour a day on social media, mostly twitter and instagram but also some time on facebook groups ... commenting, posting photos, chatting etc. (IMHO, this time on social media is invaluable, it is well spent, it helps develop my brand and 'myself' as the foremost expert (in this TINY niche)). For context, this one site is an important part of my monthy income (earnings exceed all the other sites i have with adsense combined).

For me?

In aggregate it probably works out to around 15 minutes a month.

And yes, excepting for a new article this year, and another one several years back I haven't done a damn thing to my sites since about the year 2001.

Doesn't stop the traffic, nor my forums. Nor Amazon, nor AdSense both of which still pay the hosting and other costs.

YMMV

That sounds pretty good IanCP!

My time depends. If im changing a site or starting a new one it goes up big time. Some weeks I do nothing, some weeks I do 80 hours a week :)

I realise that this has been posted in the AdSense forum but the question is working on your sites not working on AdSense so I've split my answer in two:

AdSense:
After initial setup including various analytics (took maybe - it was a long time ago - 40 hours including programming) I used to schedule a half hour per week plus another hour a month to 'manage' AdSense. As I closed my AdSense accounts completely a few months ago now I spend absolutely no time!

Sites:
Time, never enough time! :)
For context...
1999-2007: worked 14-16 hours a day every day.
2008-2012: worked 10-12 hours a day every day.
2013-2017: worked 8-10 hours a day every day.
2018-now: work 6-8 hours a day every day.

Time spent on content creation has dropped immensely, however there have been site design adaptations every few years, content translation management has been pretty much ongoing for a decade, increased efforts in analytics and contextual delivery especially last 5-years, direct ad and affiliate sales and marketing efforts is a constant, et al ad nauseum.

I contract out a lot, i.e. server management, image/video production, but when one isn't satisfied with defaults and wants to be ahead of the curve (and competition) there is no one available but one's self. It's a good thing I still think it's fun.

Do something you like to do ... and you will never "work" a day in your life. :)

The only other gig I have done (and still do) is music.

And since I still do both I have to find time to do both!

2 hours a day
Mainly dedicated to content and technical corrections for a large number of sites in four languages :j

Never used any social media.