How to Save Yourself a Few Hours Every Week with IFTTT
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 8:12 am
Marketing automation
Do you know what your time is worth? If you don’t, finding out is one of the most profitable exercises you can do. It’s not hard to do, either. Just tally up what you earn every month, then divide by how many hours it took you to earn it.
Once you know what your time is worth, outsourcing and email list automation gets a lot easier. You know which tasks are worth your time, and which aren’t.
To give you some idea of how your hourly value compares to your peers, consider the chart below. It’s from a survey of online business owners done by Google.
Most of the small business owners in this group value their time to be worth at least $100 an hour. With a figure like that to work with, outsourcing some work – even up to $75 an hour – starts to look like a good deal.
Picture1
It also starts to make automation look extremely attractive. According to that chart, saving even 2 hours a week nets out to thousands of dollars a year.
Value of an Hour Value of 2 hrs a week saved over the course of a year
That’s the perspective I’d like you to hold while you read the rest of this post. Learning new automation tools is not everybody’s idea of a good time. But if you can shave even an hour or two of time off your to-do list every week, there are real benefits to be had. Like an additional employee. Or a new car.
If you’re already using If This Then That (IFTTT), keep reading anyway. You might pick up a few tricks. But if you’re not, it’s time to at least try. So I’ve laid out detailed instructions on how to do a few basic tasks. And no excuses about how you can’t afford it. IFTTT is free.
So what is it? It’s an app that lets you get other apps, websites, devices and services to talk to each other. The kind of stuff that most of us think we need an expensive developer to set up. Except we don’t.
IFTTT’s uses go way beyond just business applications. It can help with everything from parenting to home security, fitness to financial management. It can talk to refrigerators, lamps, garage door openers, your email, your music or your car. For this post, we’re just focused on basic digital marketing tasks.
One word of warning about IFTTT. Many of the recipes I read about I couldn’t actually get to work. Many of them do work, of course. But after testing over 20 different recipes, I’ve come to be cautiously optimistic when I come across a new recipe. All the recipes listed here do work – I have personally tested them.
There is a bit of setup to do but before we jump in. It’ll take less than 15 minutes. Here’s what you need to do:
Create an IFTTT account.
Download the IFTTT app for your phone. This will let you manage your account on the go. It will also streamline the process for notifications and a few other features. Get the app for iPhone here and the one for Android here. There are tablet apps, too.
To speed up the process of running “recipes” (that’s what IFTTT calls the automated actions it takes) connect a couple of services (called “channels”) you use often. These are a good start:
Gmail
Facebook
Twitter
Buffer
Google Drive
SMS
To connect a channel, go to the “Channels” link in the top navigation. Then search for the site, device or service you want to connect.
Do you know what your time is worth? If you don’t, finding out is one of the most profitable exercises you can do. It’s not hard to do, either. Just tally up what you earn every month, then divide by how many hours it took you to earn it.
Once you know what your time is worth, outsourcing and email list automation gets a lot easier. You know which tasks are worth your time, and which aren’t.
To give you some idea of how your hourly value compares to your peers, consider the chart below. It’s from a survey of online business owners done by Google.
Most of the small business owners in this group value their time to be worth at least $100 an hour. With a figure like that to work with, outsourcing some work – even up to $75 an hour – starts to look like a good deal.
Picture1
It also starts to make automation look extremely attractive. According to that chart, saving even 2 hours a week nets out to thousands of dollars a year.
Value of an Hour Value of 2 hrs a week saved over the course of a year
That’s the perspective I’d like you to hold while you read the rest of this post. Learning new automation tools is not everybody’s idea of a good time. But if you can shave even an hour or two of time off your to-do list every week, there are real benefits to be had. Like an additional employee. Or a new car.
If you’re already using If This Then That (IFTTT), keep reading anyway. You might pick up a few tricks. But if you’re not, it’s time to at least try. So I’ve laid out detailed instructions on how to do a few basic tasks. And no excuses about how you can’t afford it. IFTTT is free.
So what is it? It’s an app that lets you get other apps, websites, devices and services to talk to each other. The kind of stuff that most of us think we need an expensive developer to set up. Except we don’t.
IFTTT’s uses go way beyond just business applications. It can help with everything from parenting to home security, fitness to financial management. It can talk to refrigerators, lamps, garage door openers, your email, your music or your car. For this post, we’re just focused on basic digital marketing tasks.
One word of warning about IFTTT. Many of the recipes I read about I couldn’t actually get to work. Many of them do work, of course. But after testing over 20 different recipes, I’ve come to be cautiously optimistic when I come across a new recipe. All the recipes listed here do work – I have personally tested them.
There is a bit of setup to do but before we jump in. It’ll take less than 15 minutes. Here’s what you need to do:
Create an IFTTT account.
Download the IFTTT app for your phone. This will let you manage your account on the go. It will also streamline the process for notifications and a few other features. Get the app for iPhone here and the one for Android here. There are tablet apps, too.
To speed up the process of running “recipes” (that’s what IFTTT calls the automated actions it takes) connect a couple of services (called “channels”) you use often. These are a good start:
Gmail
Buffer
Google Drive
SMS
To connect a channel, go to the “Channels” link in the top navigation. Then search for the site, device or service you want to connect.