Tiny, High Leverage use of New Tools and Services to Open up New Opportunities

I’m sorry if the click-bait title brought you here. It’s not what you think it is. This post is a simple note to remind us both not to ‘just start automating’. To first test the market, then do the heavy lifting with AI automations later, if the test works.

First AI Product: AI Directory Submissions

Why Add Submissions Now?

If you’ve followed along with my AI biz challenge you’ll know that I got a pretty decent AI Directory Maker working and can now build out web directories pretty sharpish.

… well, the few test directories started getting submissions this week! (I haven’t even done any marketing yet.)

It’d be rude not to allow these early pioneers to pay for a better service. So let’s use this as an example on how quickly we can accept payments in 2025.

Accepting Premium Submissions on my AI-Created Directories

A wonder in the modern day of web entrepreneurship is that we can accept cash for services in minutes of setup time. I’m old enough to remember integrating with different credit card companies and writing checkout software… it sucked.

But to add premium submissions to my AI Directory Maker, that I can wire into AI Automations, actually took less than 25 minutes, all in.

Creating the Sales Pages:

First up, these directories are hard-coded HTML files. This is a blessing and a curse, but in this case more of a blessing than a curse.

I quickly added a “Premium Submissions” section to the free-submissions page template:

… that points to another simple HTML page which promotes the benefits of purchasing premium listings:

With the glory of lovable, I quickly whacked out this sales page in minutes, (I’ll optimise it later).

Stripe Setup:

I use Stripe because I am very familiar with it. There are lots of other choices, (e.g. LemonSqueezy), but I find Stripe ‘just works’.

To add a new product is literally a link click and a few input fields, (if you’re familiar with the process, skip this).

2 minutes later I had the two products in my Stripe:

… a minute later I had two payment links created:

I added these URLS into my sales page HTML and now the directory is ready to accept payments!

Catching Purchase Flows:

Once we get purchases we need to intercept the submissions with AI and:

• Vet them (no bad sites listed!)
• Add the submission to the directory
• Email customer to say ‘all done’, (perhaps later, upselling them to other directories)

… for now we’re going to make a super complex simple automation to fire me an email. As I’m not yet marketing the directories, I doubt any of these AI-made directories will sell more than a few listings, so first I’ll just observe the process, (then automate later).

So into Make.com I go… there’s a very useful ‘Watch Events’ hook:

I used oAuth to connect it to my Stripe, set the Group of ‘Checkout’ and the action to ‘Checkout completed’… super easy.

Next I added an Email module:

… this literally emails me when I get a sale. Boop.

Seriously, though…

I felt like it was time to drop a short post to show you how quickly you can test new business ideas.

All in this took me 22 minutes, and that was me being thorough with the form submission logic and templates:

So no, this isn’t fully automated yet, no it’s not complex.

Your first step can be as small as this.

Just get something out there.

… then automate it later, once the work qualifies the automation.

What Low-Touch Business Tests can you Run Today?

This is your reminder that automating can be a hole we get stuck in. The man with a hammer looks for nails.

Don’t forget that sometimes, tiny, high leverage use of new tools and services can open up new opportunities.

So my challenge to you now:

What low-touch product offering or automation could you complete in the next half an hour?

Go do it and report back!