With AI and new tech tools emerging, more businesses than ever are rushing to automate.
In my experience, about 70% of them waste time and money one way or another.
I’m a professional working in web automation and** business-flow automation** for over 10 years.
Here’s what I see:
Most automation projects don’t fail because of code.
They fail because of how the project is approached.
A lot of business owners don’t really know anything about automation. And that is a serious problem.
It’s like buying a car based only on what the salesperson tells you.
Understanding automation even at a basic level can save you massive amounts of money (whether you build it yourself or hire someone).
So I’m going to share how experienced automation teams approach this.
This always comes up: is automation illegal?
It depends on what your software is doing.
Scraping is often against a site’s terms. That does not mean illegal. Courts have ruled differently.
- Facebook vs. Power Ventures (2008–2016) → ruled unauthorized.
- hiQ vs. LinkedIn (2017–2022) → scraping was ruled allowed.
So it mostly comes down to how you access data and the scale of your operation.
That said, a lot of businesses get cold feet over legality, when in reality most blocking and enforcement is behavioral.
If you’re legitimate and not harming users, legality usually isn’t a major concern.
Use the Simplest Solution That Works
Complex systems look impressive during development, but they fail in production.
This is often an understanding gap between developers and business owners.
As a business owner, what you want is something that works and gets you results.
Sometimes developers are showing you how impressive the solution looks to them.
Many business problems already have solutions out there (unless you are a tech business).
Some automation projects are inherently challenging.
When choosing a proposed solution, go with the one most likely to work, and ignore how “new” or “trendy” it sounds.
🤖 Example: AI is a big trend right now. But just because a solution has “AI” in it doesn’t mean it’s better.
Always start with a minimum working process
Many patterns don’t appear in the first few runs.
This is why a lot of software fails with more traffic.
Start with something that works, even if it still has bugs and issues.
Once you have a working process, run a large number of tests.
When you run scripts many times, that’s when you discover popups, signup forms, captchas, and edge cases.
Instead of building a fully automated process from the start, use this loop:
- partly manual → automate a little → test → adjust → repeat
Continue until the process is fully automated.
Production adds many moving parts, making problems harder to debug. Catch issues early and only scale when stable.
The Importance of MVP
Automation systems can get expensive.
Too many business owners end up with nightmare experiences — spending thousands of dollars on automation projects that never deliver real returns.
To avoid this, start with an MVP(with as low as 10% of the full cost) — a minimum working system that lets you test real usage and demand before committing to a full build.
MVP gives you a much clearer sense of market demand.
P.S. This also gives developers real-time insight into where the real problems and bugs can be.
Browser-Based vs Requests-Based Automation(⚙️ Little technical here)
Automation is used for many tasks, but it generally comes down to two types: browser-based and requests-based.
- Browser-based automation = controlling a real browser (like Chrome or Firefox) to act like a human on a website.
Browsers automatically manage cookies, sessions, sequencing, and dynamic site values. In another word, it helps with bypass captcha or hidden keys.
- Requests-based automation = sending direct HTTP requests to a website without opening a In another word, faster, lower infrastructure, and hosting costs.
🤖 Use-case rule of thumb
- Large scale + clear request logic → use requests
- Smaller scale + complex site behavior → use browsers
How to Save Money
When automation fails, the reason is rarely clear.
Some basic things to check are IP behavior, cookies, timing, and session flow.
Making automation work comes with experience. When hiring a developer, I don’t recommend hiring the cheapest option.
The math usually looks like this:
- One inexperienced developer working 100 hours at $10/hour = $1,000
- One experienced developer working 10 hours at $150/hour = $1,500
But after those 100 hours, you might not have anything that works 😮. And then you’re back to starting from scratch with negative $1000.
If you want to save money, a💵 better approach is to hire an experienced person for a few hours to consult or guide the project, and let a more junior developer handle the simpler parts.
Have a plan for after solution is devlieer
Think about what happens after the solution is built:
- Who will handle updates?
- If your developer handles updates, are they consistent? (switching developers often adds cost)
- How often will updates be needed?
Finally,
When used right, automation can save a lot of time and money.
😊 I hope this was helpful. I also created a video that goes more in depth here:
https://youtu.be/pVbx1whCr_I?si=ZX8SVEbVsuxexrIm
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