This week I shared my top 12 monthly tasks for keeping your business healthy and one of those ways was to simplify and/or automate my processes. All that admin-type stuff can take hours, so now I have more time for the important stuff like creating content and building blog themes!

Here’s how I do it . . .

Buffer

This was and still is my favorite discovery of the past year. I use Buffer for two things – to tweet my current posts and to share posts from other bloggers and websites. I use the Chrome extension and with one click it drops a tweet into my que. I’m also able to highlight any sentence on a page and turn it into a tweet too. I highly recommend adding a Buffer schedule, so you won’t even need to add a time manually.

Revive Old Posts

This is what I use to tweet posts from my archives. Yeah, I know you thought I was up at 4am tweeting, but I’m actually still snuggled in bed sleeping away while the plugin does the work for me.

Auto-pay bills

Every single one of my personal and business bills is now automated. I had a nasty habit of paying a day or two late even though everything was in my calendar. It takes too much time and brain space to manage bills due all month long. So now, every damn one of those nasty things is automated. I get a receipt and they get paid ON TIME :)

Typeform for design inquiries

Before a client email ever lands in my inbox I ask them a series of questions through a form on my website that gives me all the pertinent info, an idea of what they’re looking for, their design aesthetic, and what they’ll be like to work with. It cuts down on the back and forth emails and sends us straight into nailing down a schedule.

Etsy and Woo Commerce

When I first opened my Etsy shop I was emailing blog theme files every single time I received an order. I probably sent a good 200 emails before I reworked my themes to be digital downloads. That means ZERO effort on my part once the theme is coded and listed in my shop. I also do this with my ebook—delivered by Woo Commerce.

DPD + MailChimp to deliver e-course content

For my e-course, a user purchases their spot through DPD, are automatically added to the correct MailChimp email list from which the course is delivered…yep, you guessed it…automatically :)

PayPal for recurring payments

I use PayPal to run recurring payments for the e-course. This means a user purchases their package and are automatically billed three months in a row.

Create Space + Amazon to fulfill book orders

For my Badass Blog Planner, I decided to go the print route since it’s almost entirely worksheets and nobody wants to print that many pages no matter how awesome it is. (It’s pretty awesome :) I created my book in Mac Pages, uploaded it into Create Space, and now anytime a purchase is made on Amazon they print a copy and send it off for me. All my work was done in a couple of months and now that it’s complete, I’m off the hook!

HelloSign for client contracts

Every part of my business is run online, which means printing/scanning/snail mailing contracts was just not going to work. HelloSign is the perfect solution. I create a contract in Google Drive, open it in HelloSign, add a little box for the client’s signature and off it goes. They sign electronically and it’s usually back in my inbox in under a day.

ifttt aka if this then that

This is my newest discovery thanks to the Badass Babes hangout the other day. I haven’t completely explored this site, but one cool thing it does is post your Instagram photos (yes, the actual photo, not just a link) to Twitter. I was so bummed when Twitter decided to get all bratty and turn my pictures into links, so I’m super excited there is a sneaky way around it!

What cool sites do you use to simplify and automate your blog or business?