“Can You Really Automate Your Online Business”?
Is It Really Possible To Automate Your Online Business?
Is it really possible to Automate Your Online Business?, I ask the question because for most people online the gap between what they do and automation is huge.
The promise is many sales letters over the last 6 months has been all about how to Automate Your Online Business and by this I don’t just mean auto blogging of which there are many tools out there, I actually mean taking you out of whole processes in your business.
No by Automate Your Online Business I refer to you only doing once what you probably do all to often, everyday tasks, the kinds of things that suck you into time consuming activities over and over again.
So the first process that must be on the Automate Your Online Business list is to write or better still to outsource and have written a series of Auto responder messages, a thank you message for when people subscribe letting them know how to get their gifts or information.
Now you may be thinking that’s making work not reducing it but you do this once and then it’s off your list of things to do, in the end the more ways you can Automate Your Online Business the more time you will have to focus on what really matters.
Following on from this is having a FAQ’s or Frequently Asked Questions section on your site, this really helps to Automate Your Online Business as it helps your subscribers to instantly get the answers they want and stops you missing support answers that you need to answer, we all know that when people don’t promptly and helpfully answer our questions we seldom stay with that business.
What To Outsource To Automate Your Online Business?
So what should you Outsource to Automate Your Online Business? in truth everything that isn’t about building relationships, ask yourself an honest question, have you ever felt a sense of overwhelm in your online business? Now be honest here because it happens to everybody, at the start when the technical challenges simply frustrate you beyond belief and as you get established and you have many unfinished projects part finished.
So to Automate Your Online Business you need to be brutally honest here, which of these projects will either (A) make me money (B) satisfy a customer need or (C) do (A) for you and (B) for your customers because if it doesn’t do that it’s not a priority.
Next list out all the tasks that you could Outsource, this becomes a time verses money equation, many everyday tasks can be outsourced for between $5-$20 Dollars, you will spend a day writing a spec for all these tasks and you will get them back completed in 24-48 hours, suddenly 6 outstanding projects can be down to one or two, now you really are starting to Automate Your Online Business.
Now a classic mistake with this particularly when it’s a task you do over and over is to place the order with just one person, I would suggest you do this with 4 or 5 people let me explain why, 1 will make excuses and not do it, a couple will be okay, maybe a bit slow, 1 will be good but need too much follow up and the final one will be first class, they may even suggest ways of making it better than you thought possible.
You’ve spend $50-$100 Dollars instead of $10-$20 Dollars but in the process you’ve found the person your going to work with from now on, this will truly Automate Your Online Business, just think of the time and frustration you’ve just saved yourself going forward for less than the cost of a meal out with friends.
So Where Are The Tools To Automate Your Online Business?
We touched on auto responders earlier, personally I think Aweber are the best company in this market, their ability to deliver is the critical difference, along side that I would also say Get Response yes there are cheaper ways but if you don’t get your message opened then it doesn’t work.
My next suggestion to Automate Your Online Business is a little left field but bear with me, if you get 100 to 200 e mails a day as I do, most of them selling Clickbank products and not actually helping you grow your business then they are just slowing you down, a few minutes each day weeding them out to leave the 5-20 who actually combine valuable information with the odd sales message, we all need to eat sometimes will be much more valuable.
Now you can read those 5-20 e mails, take on board what they say and look at the recommendations they have, only buy a product if it offers a solution to a problem that is pressing in your business, if your not going to use it straight away it’s not going to Automate Your Online Business and could end up gathering dust on your hard drive.
Next up would be essentials PDF software, personally I think Primo PDF is really simple to use, just drag and drop the file onto it, FTP software for updating your squeeze pages etc Filezilla is really straightforward, if in doubt outsource this function and finally an HTML editor, I would recommend Kompozer again really simple, all of these really help to Automate Your Online Business and all from memory are free.
So with a little bit of lateral thinking most things can be automated, I would suggest that you keep relationship building in house, certainly to start with, later on you can hire an affiliate manager, now that really will Automate Your Online Business but we are getting a little ahead of ourselves here.
So in closing if it’s not getting done you automate, you outsource, that day spent planning your next months work will pay you back many times over, share your experiences with your subscribers, both good and bad, if a service or product sucks tell them, if it saved you time or money or both certainly tell them, so with that in mind I would like to hear your comments on today’s post and the ways in which you Automate Your Online Business.
Author Bio: http://www.tonyclingan.com/2010/12/can-you-really-automate-your-online-business/
Category: Internet
Keywords: Automate Your Online Business