How to Automate 80% of Your Business with Make.com

Most solopreneurs waste 15-20 hours per week on tasks a robot could do. Make.com (formerly Integromat) is the tool that fixes that — and it's cheaper than you think.

This isn't a theoretical guide. These are the exact 7 automations we use to run multiple businesses with minimal manual work.

Why Make.com Over Zapier?

Quick comparison:

Bottom line: Make.com gives you 10x the power at half the price.

Automation 1: Lead Capture → CRM → Email Sequence

Problem: Someone fills out your contact form. You manually add them to your CRM, then remember to start an email sequence.

Automation:

• Trigger: New form submission (Typeform, Tally, or website)
• Action 1: Create contact in CRM (Notion, HubSpot, or Airtable)
• Action 2: Add to email sequence (Buttondown, ConvertKit, or Beehiiv)
• Action 3: Send Slack notification to yourself

Time saved: 5-10 minutes per lead × 20+ leads/month = 2-3 hours/month

Automation 2: Social Media Content Recycling

Problem: You write a great blog post but only share it once on social media.

Automation:

• Trigger: New blog post published (RSS or webhook)
• Action 1: Generate 5 social media variations using AI (Claude/OpenAI module)
• Action 2: Schedule posts across platforms (Buffer, Twitter, LinkedIn)
• Action 3: Re-share top performers after 30 days

Time saved: 2-3 hours per blog post on social distribution

Automation 3: Invoice → Payment Tracking → Follow-up

Problem: You send invoices manually, then forget to follow up on unpaid ones.

Automation:

• Trigger: Invoice created in Stripe/LemonSqueezy
• Action 1: Log in Google Sheets or Notion
• Action 2: If unpaid after 7 days → send reminder email
• Action 3: If unpaid after 14 days → send final notice
• Action 4: Update status when paid

Time saved: 3-4 hours/month on invoice management

Automation 4: Customer Onboarding

Problem: New customer signs up, and you manually send welcome emails, create accounts, and set up their workspace.

Automation:

• Trigger: New purchase (LemonSqueezy webhook)
• Action 1: Send welcome email with access details
• Action 2: Create customer folder in Google Drive
• Action 3: Add to customer Slack/Discord channel
• Action 4: Schedule check-in email for Day 7

Time saved: 15-20 minutes per new customer

Automation 5: Content Research Pipeline

Problem: You spend hours searching for trending topics and content ideas.

Automation:

• Trigger: Daily schedule (8 AM)
• Action 1: Fetch trending topics from Twitter API
• Action 2: Fetch top posts from Reddit (your niche subreddits)
• Action 3: Fetch Google Trends data
• Action 4: Send compiled brief to your email/Notion

Time saved: 1-2 hours/day on research

Automation 6: Weekly Business Report

Problem: You manually check analytics, revenue, and email stats across 5 different dashboards.

Automation:

• Trigger: Every Monday at 9 AM
• Action 1: Pull website analytics (Fathom/GA4)
• Action 2: Pull email stats (open rates, new subscribers)
• Action 3: Pull revenue data (Stripe/LemonSqueezy)
• Action 4: Compile into formatted report
• Action 5: Send to your email or post in Notion

Time saved: 1-2 hours/week on reporting

Automation 7: Error Monitoring & Alerts

Problem: Your website goes down or an API breaks, and you don't know for hours.

Automation:

• Trigger: Webhook from monitoring service (UptimeRobot, Better Stack)
• Action 1: Send immediate push notification
• Action 2: Create incident in Notion/Linear
• Action 3: If downtime > 5 min → send customer apology email
• Action 4: Log incident for post-mortem

Time saved: Prevents revenue loss from undetected outages

Getting Started

• Sign up at make.com (free tier is generous)
• Start with Automation #1 (lead capture) — it has immediate ROI
• Add one new automation per week
• After 7 weeks, you'll have saved 15+ hours/week

The goal isn't to automate everything. It's to automate the boring stuff so you can focus on the work that actually grows your business.

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