Automate Your Business

Archive for June, 2007

Paul Forcey’s one to keep an eye on. Take a read of this post on automation vs outsourcing. Some good points here, particularly these two key points:

“I was recently reading a post on a forum by someone who said he had 12 pc’s on the go in his office and if he can’t automate a process he changes it till he can”

“Automate then outsource the running of that automation…”

Yesterday, I wrote about keeping a list of your assets, and I mentioned some ideas on what I meant by assets. I thought you might find it useful to get more detail on this, so here’s a breakdown of the type of items that are in my list.

Knowledge
– Knowledge of marketing techniques
– Non-marketing skills and knowledge
– Technical skills and knowledge (web design, graphic design, script installation, development)

Contacts
– personal
– mailing lists (leads)
– mailing lists (customers)
– affiliates / JV partners

Software
– desktop
– scripts running on your site(s)
– services you can access

Websites
– content sites
– squeeze page sites
– blogs
– directories

Other Purchases
– Tutorial-type reports, video, audio, etc.
– Resell-rights and private label rights material
– Content and information from membership sites

Data
– Keyword lists
– Statistics
– Databases

Intangibles
– Spare time
– Income from your own products/services/sites

By considering all these ideas, you might be able to find something to either enhance an existing site/product/service, or create a new one.

Can you think of any other asset types that could be added?

I’ve been on the mailing list of a guy by the name of Duncan Carver for a long time. He used to produce some excellent newsletters on marketing topics, but he kind of went quiet a year or two ago.

Then recently, he started walking his subscribers through the processes he’s using to build and promote a site on worm farming. That’s right, there’s money in them thar worms, apparently.

But there was a reason for this. One of the things he’s doing is using this walkthrough to pre-sell his subscribers on his new “powerblog“. This is a $97 a month subscription service where you get a blog hosted on a key authority site of his, and the spiders come a-running to spider your site.

Read this, sent in by one of his customers, and printed in the latest newsletter:

“…Google had not visited my sites for quite a while (they are
all still being developed), but then I signed up for your
PowerBlog and boom, Google started jumping on my sites. Alexa,
Inktomi Slurp, MSNBot, and a few others I had never even seen
before showed up too. I can’t wait until the next page rank
update!” ~ Kerry Emrich

Then take a look at the stats snapshots he shows on his powerblog page.

Now take a look at mine:

(Click the image to see the larger version)

OK, so the figures are smaller than Duncan’s sample site. But then I’ve got less pages on this site, and it’s probably less well structured internally, given that the WordPress blog is in a sub-folder, and the homepage is still waiting for me to do something useful and pretty with it.

But nevertheless, all the key spiders are visiting regularly.

Why?

Here’s what I think the answer is:

1. I post regularly
2. I post unique content
3. I ping via the standard WordPress ping functionality, and I don’t overping (by using the Smart Update Pinger plugin
4. Each post gets posted to some social bookmarking sites via Auto Social Poster
5. A few times a week (no more than 3 or 4 I guess) I comment on other blogs and link back to this site. Sometimes to the home page, but sometimes to deeper pages.

That’s it.

And except for the fee associated with Auto Social Poster, that’s all free. Not $97 a month.

So before you rush into something that ties you into yet another monthly subscription, think twice.

Here’s a question you should always be able to answer: What are your assets?

By which I mean:

• Skills
• Knowledge
• Contacts
• Software
• Data
• Websites
• Other Purchases Made

Take some time now, and make a list of your assets.

Then sit down over a coffee and see how you can use some of them to enhance the effectiveness of others.

Literally go through that list one by one. Start with the first item (#1). Then with every other item on the list (#2, #3, etc), ask yourself “How can #1 help me to use #2 more effectively?”, “How can #1 help me to use #3 more effectively?”, “How can #1 help me to use #4 more effectively?”

Once you’ve gone through the whole list, move onto the next item and repeat

“How can #2 help me to use #1 more effectively?”
“How can #2 help me to use #3 more effectively?”
“How can #2 help me to use #4 more effectively?”

And so on.

Let me give you an example:

One of my assets is the Auto Social Poster and my enhancement to it. I ran through my list of assets to see how Auto Social Poster can increase the effectivenes of other assets. Obviously, for some of these, it’s not possible: Auto Social Poster (a plugin for WordPress) can’t help me use my copy of XSitePro more effectively.

However, I then got to “How can Auto Social Poster help me use Best7DollarReports.com more effectively?”

And then it dawned on me. That website has an RSS feed of the latest $7 reports I’ve added to it. (NB: I’ve kind of let that site slide a bit, so nothing’s been added for quite a while). Wouldn’t it be great to take the output of that RSS feed, and have Auto Social Poster automatically post about the new items added, to the various bookmarking sites I’ve got set up in Auto Social Poster (ASP for short)?

But that’s not how ASP works. ASP only posts WordPress posts to those other sites. And the website is a directory, not a blog.

But my brain stopped me: What if I could take the RSS output from the directory software, have WordPress automatically read it and create posts from the RSS feeds, and then have ASP pick up those posts and publish them to the bookmarking sites?

A little while later, a search result turned up FeedWordPress, which does just that. It takes an RSS feed and copies the contents into posts in your copy of WordPress.

Job jobbed.

All I need to do now is carry on setting up that WordPress installation: picking a template (hopefully one that will match the directory itself, although I might need to do that manually); installing and configuring the other plugins; etc.

But the hard part is done.

I’ll make a habit of updating it regularly, and then I’ll share the traffic results, as I’m hoping the social bookmarking will have an impact….

So, take some time out this week to write down all your assets, and start thinking about ways they can be used together.

Right then, my son is feeling better and back to nursery. This site seems to be up and running OK after the move, so it’s back to business.

Expect to see more useful content from me on a regular basis.