Automate Your Business

A while ago – actually, now that I look at the dates – a long time ago, I said I’d had enough of GetResponse and would be moving away from them. I kind of forgot how painful that experience was, but it’s now time to get the ties.

I’ve started the set of AutoResponse Plus onto this domain, and will be migrating my mailing lists across over the next week or two.

As I move each list, I’ll mail you via GetResponse first, to let you know the move is about to occur, and then I’ll send a confirmation request via AutoResponse Plus for you to confirm that you want to be added to the new list. There will be a 1-to-1 mapping from GetResponse to AutoResponse Plus, so if you’re only on the list for PromotionBot via GetResponse, then you’ll also only be on the PromotionBot list via AutoResponse Plus.

It should go fairly smoothly, but I apologise in advance for any inconvenience caused.

When transitioning from full-time employed with a side-line in IM, to full-time IM or half-and-half, it’s important that you know where you stand financially before you make any major decisions. I’ve been doing this planning recently, so I thought I’d share my thoughts here.

I’ve done this in an excel spreadsheet for convenience (see the link below for a template – it doesn’t have some of the automated calculations that my one has, but my copy includes some info not available on this template).

The first column is “Expense Name”, and the second column is “Amount”. In column 1 I’ve listed all my regular monthly outgoings, just putting the name of the expense – everything from “mortgage” (the biggest bill) down to “(UK) TV license” (the lowest bill at £10 a month). Then in column 2 I’ve listed the actual amount I pay each month.

Next, in that same column I’ve added the items that are reasonably regular but do have a little bit of variability – for me, that’s the food and petrol (gasoline for those of you in the US), telephone, and on-demand TV costs, all of which hover around a certain figure each month, but obviously can be a bit higher one month and a bit lower the next. In each case, I’ve written the highest amount it normally is (looking at my account history, not by guesswork), so that I’m planning for the worst case.

Next, I’ve added rows for additional amounts I need to save each month, either towards the higher cost items that you pay on a regular but less-than-monthly basis (eg, once a year, once every 3 months, etc), which might include things like car insurance, annual or seasonal train tickets, season tickets to the home matches of your favourite team, Christmas costs, etc).

And then further rows for the “big occasional things” (holidays, an “emergency fund” etc).

And then any long-term investment that you’re doing.

If you’ve got debt, now’s the time to be honest with yourself and write down two numbers:

• If it’s a fixed repayment like a loan, write down how much you pay each month.
• If it’s a variable repayment like a credit card, write down how much you would have to pay into that debt to maintain it at it’s current level (ie, the total of how much extra you charge to it each month + the interest charged on it each month). Compare that to the current minimum payment, and make sure that you’ve got the higher of the two figures written down. (Remember, if you make no additional transactions against your card, but you only pay off the minimum, it’s still possible that your overall debt will increase if the interest charged is greater than the minimum payment).Secondly, add another row detailing the amount you’d like to be able to pay in excess of that each month in order to pay off your debt even faster. Obviously, write one line per source of credit.

Next, I’ve added a few rows detailing the budget I’ve allowed myself for everything else that varies wildly – socialising etc.

Then add the things that are currently covered by your employer, but which you’ll need to replace when you leave your day-job. This would include things like healthcare, pension/401K (is that the right word for the US?), child-care benefits, other perks, annual bonuses, overtime payments, etc.

And then add your taxes, if you need to pay them out of what you actually “take home” from your employer or on-line income.

Finally add all your on-line costs – hosting, autoresponders, memberships, software leasing.

So - now you have a list of all your expenses. Order them by size, with the largest bill at the top.

Next I added another two columns: “Covered by day-job” and “Covered by online work”

Starting with the largest, if the bill is covered by my regular employed income, I colour it green in the “status” column, and I kept going down the list till I’d “spent” all my day-job income. (You should not colour in green all the items that your employer currently pays, as when you transition away from your day-job, you’ll need to make those figures up, from your online income).

(At this point, if you’ve got anything left that’s not green, it means your current lifestyle is not covered by your day-job income. That might be good or bad, depending on your personal circumstances, but it does mean that if you suddenly lose your online income, you’ll be in trouble).

Then, again starting with the largest expense that isn’t green, I colour it green if it it’s covered by regular, repeatable, predictable, sustained IM income, until I’ve “spent” all my online income and don’t have enough to cover the next-lowest bill.

Everything else I colour in red. Anything red at this point is the difference between your current regular income and your current regular outgoing. Presumably this means you are either dipping into savings, increasing your debt, or just managing to say afloat via irregular peaks in your online income or day job. Again, this could be good or bad – just make sure you’re aware of the shortfall here.

I’ve then added up the “everything else in red”, and that gives a number I need to earn online in regular, repeatable, predictable, sustained IM income before I’m breaking even. Note that I said “breaking even”, not “being better off”.

And that’s the spreadsheet I’ll be updating every month.

The trick is the “regular, repeatable, predictable, sustained IM income” piece. You’ve got to be ruthless with yourself. Just because you made $500 last month, doesn’t mean you’ll make $500 this month, unless it’s in a recurring income model (eg, a monthly membership site – either your own or affiliate income from such a site). Even then, you’ll need to keep topping that up as people drop out of the membership site and your income slowly drops.

So this is a useful exercise. But all it does is crunch the numbers. It shows you your typical income and outgoings, but there’s no thought behind it. Believe it or not, I don’t believe that a dollar is a dollar is a dollar (or, as I’m British, a pound is a pound is a pound). I’ve got some more thoughts on how to analyse the numbers (and the data behind the numbers) to extract some deeper information , and I’ll share those in a later post.

Excel Template

I thought I was just getting old, and the spammers had cottoned onto the fact. (I turned 40 a couple of months ago).

But no, apparently Aweber was hacked, and email addresses were stolen.

Fortunately, I use a unique email for each list I’m on, so it’s easy to identify the list I should be on, re-subscribe using the new address, and consign the old address to the deletion queue.

But for a while there, I was being buried by an absolute avalanche of mail every time I checked my email on my mobile phone. It only summarises up to 99 mails unread, and every time I looked at it, I saw “99+”. I then logged in, deleted them all, and 30 minutes later there was another “99+” visible.

You can imagine my delight at this…

I just received this mail yesterday, from BulkRegister, who were bought out by Enom but who now seem to be the actual front-end for Enom customers:

Dear Andrew Peacock:

Remember, take no action and we will process the renewal order and attempt to extend the domains and services for you.

The following services in your account ‘XXXXX’ will automatically renew in two weeks:

Service               Expire Date   Description

————————————————————–

Bulk Membership       03-15-2010    Bulk Premium Membership

All dates are in MM-DD-YYYY format.

To renew these services do nothing. If you DO NOT want any of these services to auto-renew, please do the following:
1. Go to http://www.bulkregister.com.
2. Login to your account.
3. Go to the domains and services you DO NOT wish to renew.
4. Go to the auto-renew settings for these domains and services.
5. Select the appropriate option to have the domains and services NOT automatically renew.
6. Save your changes.

So, I’ve got no idea what the service is. I don’t know what benefits it provides. Nor do I know how much I’m going to be billed automatically.

It doesn’t appear in my renewal list. And I have no domains with Enom – sorry, BulkRegister – that are up for renewal till May.

And I can’t find any references to it either on their site or online, apart from another person who posted about receiving this mail.

And to top it off, I can’t log into their support center to submit a ticket.

Well done Enom, what a smooth, customer-friendly transition…

Anyone got any idea what this is about?

UPDATE, 10 MINUTES LATER:

It gets even better.

I got an automated response saying:

Hello,

Unfortunately, the update to your ticket has not been received as this mailbox is not monitored.

To update your ticket, you can click on the link in the email to immediately access your ticket and enter the updated comments.

So Enom… will I get a response or not?

I’m about to make some changes to the AYB Autoblogger, which means I’ll be raising the price from it’s current $30.

The first change is to rename this version as the “Standard version”, and add the ability to import feeds in a wider variety of formats than is currently supported. So at the moment, the software is tightly configured to support the feeds from Oddity Software. The upgrade will allow you to use feeds from places like Commission Junction and Linkshare, who offer affiliate feeds from many of their merchants.

I’ll also be releasing a “Pro” version, which will allow you to set up as many feeds as you want, posting to as many Wordpress blogs as you want.

Current customers will get the new Standard edition free of charge, and there will be a small fee ($10) to upgrade to the Pro version. The only exception to this will be people who purchased under the “fast movers” deal, who will get the Pro upgrade free of charge…

That’s one of the benefits of being a fast mover.

If you are not sure whether you are a fast mover or not, I’ve just sent a mail to the fast mover list, so that’ll confirm it for you. No mail = not a fast mover.

If you have NOT purchased AYB Autoblogger, now is the time – you’ll get the upgrade when it’s available (next week) for the current price of $30 instead of the increased price. Here’s the link to take advantage of the current price.