the goose

Who is not in favour of automated income. Much like motherhood and apple pie – it has an universal charm. Automating your income however is not nearly as straightforward as you may think. There are three headings you have to consider. One tricky, one easy and one which is damn difficult. The first is:

Automating value delivery: This might sound intimidating. It is really just code for ‘giving your customers what they want’. An ebook author is delivering information. A web-app developer is providing a service. Websites and information products are a great way of delivering value in this way.

Automating administration: Another code. This time around I mean – collecting the money and doing your taxes. Much as I’ve considered various approaches to justifying not handing over VAT reciepts – there is no way around it. If you are going to be the governments tax collector – it is your job to have it done as efficiently as possible. This means that your payment system should be able to pull out reports for your accountant in a format they can deal with. Another clump of effort needs to go into providing good financial ‘real time’ information. Dependant on what type of service you provide – the ability to demonstrate how well the business is doing in real time will really help when its time to sell up shop. Believe me – you will want to sell up shop – so start with the end in mind on this front.

Automating sales: This is the kicker. Achieving step one and two is easy peasy compared to finding an automated sales channel. There are of course plenty out there. “Google advertising” is the popular refrain of teams of eager young (and old) entrepreneurs. You need customers to find you in a predictable manner without you haveing to turn into a used car salesman. Selling an online service can me far, far and I mean far more time consuming that putting it together in the first place. Each hour you spend selling gets divided into your total returns. It is very easy to end up working for less that you’d get at your local Supermacs in no time flat.