I’ve been in Austin at a conference for the past couple of days.
You have NO idea how it’s been because I don’t have access to a computer… I haven’t been on one since last week!
I don’t own a laptop… I spend too much time in front of a computer as it is, why would I want to bring one with me? Plus, I travel light… just one bag to avoid baggage claim. And there is all that fuss with airport security where they have to inspect the laptop separately.
How the heck am I talking to you then? Automation. I wrote this blog entry before I even got on a plane. I scheduled it to post sometime during my trip.
I scheduled a timed mailing to my opt-in list. It said to check out this blog post, so it could get traffic, comments, and sales of some of my products.
When I get a product ready for launch, I’ll write the sales copy before it’s even finished so I can post a WSO and get it approved… then I’ll pay when it’s ready to launch.
I recently launched a video series called Head First PHP. I bought up rights to an existing product and made it my own by recording daily videos.
Instead of recording long 20 to 30 minute videos, I recorded them 5 minutes of video at a time. This allowed me to space these out into “daily” videos.
The secret is… I’m not actually recording just one of these a day. I recorded them all at once, uploaded them all at once, wrote some quick autoresponder follow-ups for each day saying, “Hey… check out today’s video” … with a link to the video.
I put in an afternoon of work… and the effect is that it APPEARS I’m diligently providing updates every single day. That’s pretty cool, right?
This and last month, I’ve been documenting my work using Camtasia videos and have been able to split up all my work into 10 minute tasks.
I’m ALMOST at the point where I can do all the work I need to do ONE day of the week (after I get home from my day job) and the everything is automated for the rest of the week.
When I first started out, I did a lot of freelance consulting and product launches. I focused very little on list building and automation. The result was that I would make $2000 one month and $200 the next. My income was very unreliable.
Now that I am writing follow-ups and blog posts weeks in advance… now that I’m following up with prospects and customers every single day automatically… I’ve noticed that I measure my income on a daily basis, not a monthly one. It’s reliable enough that I could quit my day job if I wanted to.
Comment below and tell me: Do you have automation in your business? Timed follow-ups? Scheduled mailings? Business systems?
