Using Automation to Scale Your Business

USING AUTOMATION TO SCALE YOUR BUSINESS


You've probably learned from first hand experience just how much work goes into
running your online business. For a lot of folks, owning an online business has

become a little like a full time babysitting job. The point behind leaving your day

job to start your online business was so that you would have more time to spend with

family, friends, and maybe even do a few other things you like to do with your

time…right?

At least, that was the impression you got from talking with others who were doing

the online business thing. They always seemed to brag about how much free time they

had to do the things they wanted to do.

But, for some reason your online business has become a daily chore. You are probably

even wondering why it works for everyone else, but you are not able to unleash

yourself from the monster you’ve created. The reason is really pretty simple. If you

do not automate the key aspects of your online business, then you will become a

slave to it. But, before you can reach this point, you must realize that the point

of having a computer was to get the computer to do the bulk of the heavy lifting for

you.

When you can accept that idea and work towards that end, then you will finally make

some waves. If that sounds more like why you started your own online business, then

I want to share with you some key points that will help you to start putting the

bulk of your online business on autopilot sooner than later.

Automate Tasks

There’s no need to do the work that a robot or machine can do. After all, we are

smarter than robots and machines and we shouldn’t be expending brain energy on

tedious tasks if we can get a machine to do them for us. For example, there are

probably some tasks in your business that you may find yourself repeating over and

over again. Especially in the SEO business, if you have multiple tasks that need

carried out on a daily basis, say account creation, proxy gathering or scraping

there is software available such as Ubot (along with

various tutorials) that can help you build your own custom “bots” that will carry

out these tasks for you regularly. This will free up extra time to use your awesome

brain on more important issues. Another options is learning how to use macros to automate tasks.

Automate Leads

In the old days of offline marketing, you had to go pound the pavement to generate

your own leads. It was a lot of work for one person to have to do. It often did not

leave much time to do other aspects of your business, because you were always in

need of having to go out to grab new clients to ensure that you were maintaining a

consistent sales record from one week to the next. Today, with the advent of

computer software, website development, and the Internet itself, you can set one or

more websites up to grab leads for you.

In other words, this is a “set it and forget it” type of process. From getting names

on your mailing list to grabbing emails of people who want to hear more about your

product or service, all of these tasks are things you can and should be automating.

Want leads on a consistent basis? Try offering a free guide on your site in exchange

for an email address. This is a great way to build up your mailing list, which

you’ll need to explode your growth and revenue.

Product and Sales Automation

What makes a traditional brick and mortar retail

store different from an online store is that you do not need anyone to man the

register. With all of the various ecommerce platforms available that handle your

shopping cart, payment gateway, order status and product delivery, there is little

excuse to have it any other way.

The same thing exists for various methods of product delivery. There are software

options that auto generate shipping labels for your products, if for some reason you

are doing the shipping yourself. Better yet, you can more efficiently use services

that turn your product delivery responsibilities directly over to a drop shipper for

you, once again unleashing you from your desk.

Putting Traffic Generation on Autopilot

There are a number of ways a person can use a computer to generate traffic. One way

is to develop a huge content base over a large amount of time. The only problem with

this approach is that it is slow and very time consuming, but if you stick to it and

produce high quality content on a regular basis you will eventually develop a core

readership that will keep coming back to your site over and over again. Of course

this assumes they will know about your new content every time (through an email

newsletter or RSS feed).

Automating Relationship Building

With the use of auto

responder software, the whole process of regularly making contact with your

customers and subscribers can be done automatically. Anytime a new client signs up

for your email list, your auto responder is set up ahead of time to spit out emails

to these clients in regular intervals, based on how you set the auto responder

parameters. You can set up a whole month’s worth of emails in one sit down and then

not worry about it for the remainder of the month.

With automatic email sequences, your customers are remembering that you and your

business exists. All you have to do is set it up initially and let it go to work for

you. In this capacity your business is living to serve you, not the other way

around.

Putting Market Research On Autopilot

Every business has to do market research if it wants to survive. Fortunately, the

Internet makes doing market research so much easier than it used to be. Sure, you

can pay a company to send you regular reports on your particular market niche. But,

you could just as easily set up your autoresponder with targeted email surveys that

solicit responses from customers who have signed up to your list. Again, since this

is part of your autoresponder’s task, all this can be set up by you ahead of time.

You can ask your client to visit your website to try a new offer, fill out a survey,

or participate in some other process by which you obtain market analysis. The sky is

truly the limit.

Now that you have a better idea of how you can put your online business on

autopilot, the next step is to start implementing some of these ideas to free up

more of your time. With more time to do other things, you can begin thinking about

how to better monetize and expand your business, or perhaps even set up another

online business that practically runs itself for you. Real success in the business

world is learning to do something efficiently that makes money for you and then

repeating the process.

M.Bonds enjoys writing about small business topics for the startup entrepreneur and

is a fanatic of getting things done efficiently. He resides in NYC where he runs a

small consultancy firm for local businesses.

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