Use technology to make things easier, not harder.

I very often come meet people and companies who use technology not because it makes their job easier, but because they think they have to use it.

EXAMPLE 1: Virtual assistant from India (or other 3rd world country) is still more effective than a bot/script/software in many cases.

You can hire a virtual assistant for as little as 2$ per hour, while will mean 48$ per day or 1440$ per month. And yes, that’s working 24/7. And I bet if you look harder you can find someone even for 1$ per hour, it’s just that most freelancer websites set minimum hourly salary to 2$.

A bot can do the same, but you will most likely end up spending 1 months salary fro developing that bot, which means that if your job lasts only couple weeks there is no point to develop a bot.

But that’s not all. In most cases I use the virtual assistant to access 3rd party websites that are protected but captcha or bot-detecting software. Making a bot that will bypass those protections is either impossible or very difficult, and in both way a waste of resources.

And guess what? If the virtual assistant start performing poorly you can always fire him and find new one. But if the bot stops working, you have to spend more money fixing it.

EXAMPLE 2: Don’t force to use API when it’s not needed.

I provide service of adding people to client’s Telegram group. Today one client asked me very seriously, how I will track that and if I’m gonna use API for that.

Why the hell do we need complicated API for that, when this can be easily tracked, just by looking at numbers?

E.g. you have 2000 members in your Telegram group and you order 5000 more. The order is completed when the amount is 7000.

Why make it so complicated?

There are many examples like this, but the bottom line is: Use technology only when it’s needed, not when you think it’s mandatory.