Well friends, as many of you already know I live in Las Vegas play a lot of poker.  The other day at the card table I started talking to a nice older gentleman named Marvin about my online businesses. 

Being a life long businessman (he owns several furniture stores) he asked what I thought was the number one benefit to having a business online as opposed to an office business…

Although there are several answers to Marvin’s question, the first thing that came to my mind was that online business automation is possible!

Let’s take a look at a few of the tools you can use for your online business automation…

1. Autoresponders

For my money the absolute best way to automatic your online business is by using an email autoresponder. Your autoresponder can actually automate your online communications so that you can be totally removed from the process once you have it set up. I recommend Aweber.com, I use them and I love them!

There are two major ways that an autoresponder is normally used. One way is with pre-written follow-up messages that go out to every new subscriber at a pre-determined time that you select and set-up. This means, if somebody opts in to your list, they will receive the first message that you programmed to go out right when they sign up, then after whatever time frame you specify (maybe 1 day after they sign up) they will get message 2. This go on for as many messages as you want. One of my autoresponder series has 87 messages!  Talk about the ultimate online business automation!

Using the automated autoresponder series, you can pre-program follow-up messages once, and every subscriber you ever get will receive those messages at the designated time without you ever having to do anything again. If the emails you program are selling something (your product or an affiliate product), this will give your online business automation and profits even though you only did the work once.

The other way you can use your autoresponder is to send out broadcast messages, which means you send one email at the same time to every single person on your list. Broadcasts can also be written at anytime and you can schedule your message to go out either immediately, or at anytime you decide in the future.

The important thing to remember with autoresponders is that someone must opt in to your email list, or subscribe willingly to your newsletter. I even use a double opt-in meaning that the user has to sign up for the list, and also confirm their email address. Adding people to your autoresponder who have not requested your information would constitute spam. I’m sure you hate spam just like I do. DON’T DO IT!

One way to get people to opt-in to your form on your website, is offer them a free report, ebook discount or other gift in exchange for signing up.

2. Tracking Tools

Another way to streamline your online business automation is to use tracking tools, which tell you where your traffic is coming from and how it's converting. This is important information to know in order to tweak your website copy, headlines or traffic sources, which in turn allows you to run a more profitable business.

Autoresponders also come with tracking tools that allow you to see how many people clicked a link in your email, for instance, or how many people unsubscribed on a certain message. This knowledge allows you to change what you've done so you get better results from it.

Ad trackers are also valuable tools that allow you to split test two pages against one another, test your sales conversion ratios, and track where traffic is coming from so you know where to spend your ad dollars. One of the best script-based ad trackers that you install on your website is AdTrackz, and one that is subscription based is HyperTracker.

3. Databases

Databases allow you to automate your customer sales and relations, and run many scripts that you can install on your website, such as customer help desks, membership sites, forums and more for your online business automation.

MySQL databases are the most popular, and they work with many available web scripts. These databases are automatically updated when a customer purchases from you, joins your membership site, cancels their membership, or any other number of things that your script is helping you do.

The power of automating your website model is that you often don't have to do a thing. Traffic comes to your website (which could be driven by any number of hands-off automatic traffic methods), and the visitor sees your opt in form. Once they enter their name or email address, they are automatically placed in your sequence and receive the emails you set up for them.

When they purchase, or sign up for a membership, your databases take care of the details. The customer is sent through your payment processor, which is also automated, and if it's a digital product they are sent to download it immediately; if it's a physical product, their information is sent for fulfillment.

All the time your tracking tools are automatically gathering information about where the visitor came from, how many visitors became subscribers or customers, and which sales page is converting the best.

All these online business automation tools mean that you can run a whole profitable business, once it's set up, without doing any more work except perhaps to check what your tools are telling you, and tweak your processes accordingly. These factors make online businesses potentially much more flexible, desirable and cost-effective than typical offline businesses.

Oh… And by the way…

I'm happy to say that my new friend Marvin at 79 years old has decided to take the cyber plunge to help automate his furniture business.