Want to Save Money? Learn These 3 Digital How-Tos
— "By investing a bit of effort to set up these digital shortcuts, you’ll reap continuous time savings – which ultimately means cost savings and possibly even increased revenue."
Mastering software solutions is a great way to finish projects on time (or even ahead of schedule) and to streamline workflows. However, it’s a mistake to overlook the importance of saving money, whether you’re conducting market research for a major company, running your own business, or managing a team of creatives. In this article, we’ll discuss three practical how-tos to protect your budget first, and then explore how to harness all the other benefits.
How to Use Proxy Servers for Cheaper Deals and Efficient Workflows
Companies often practice regional price discrimination: the same product or flight might cost $800 for someone browsing in one country but $500 for someone in another. This is more common than you’d think – airlines, e-commerce sites, hotels, and digital services may all adjust prices based on your location. By learning how to use proxies, you can mask your real location and access the lower local prices that others see. In other words, by appearing to browse from a region with cheaper rates, you level the playing field and avoid overpaying.
Many web services limit access or block users who send too many requests from one IP (for instance, when scraping prices or market data). Proxies solve this by automatically rotating IP addresses and providing anonymity, so your data-gathering tools don’t get blocked. This means you can collect comprehensive information in one go instead of being stopped midway – saving time and money by avoiding failed runs or costly data vendor fees.
Teams that do SEO research, market analysis, or social media management often use proxies to manage multiple accounts or regional checks without hiring extra help. It’s no surprise that proxy usage is surging; the global proxy server market was about $3.4 billion in 2023 and is projected to more than double to $7.2 billion by 2031. Key drivers include the demand to access geo-restricted content and anonymity online – essentially, more people and companies are realizing that a small investment in proxy know-how can lead to big savings in both product costs and productivity.
How to Use Open-Source Software to Cut Licensing Costs
Another digital skill that saves serious money is knowing how to find and use open-source software instead of expensive proprietary programs. Whether it’s using LibreOffice or Google Docs instead of paid office suites, GIMP instead of Photoshop, or Linux instead of a proprietary operating system – can eliminate hefty licensing and subscription fees. The impact of open-source on cost savings is enormous: 96% of commercial applications contain open-source code, and companies would pay an estimated 3.5 times more (about $8.8 trillion extra) to build the same software from scratch if open-source options didn’t exist.
Open-source “how-tos” are generally straightforward: you find a reputable free tool that meets your needs, install it, and often you’ll find plenty of online guides or community support to help you get the most out of it. Besides zero purchase cost, open-source tools have other money-saving benefits. They’re often lighter on system requirements (prolonging the life of your hardware), and they free you from vendor lock-in or surprise price hikes. Even governments recognize the value – there have been initiatives in the EU and US to have agencies use more open-source as a cost saver for taxpayers.
How to Automate Tasks to Save Time (and Money)
Routine tasks that once ate up paid hours (data entry, file sorting, sending reminder emails, etc.) can be done automatically at near-zero marginal cost. In fact, over half of organizations in one survey said automation was saving them significant sums – 52% of financial service firms reported automation saved them at least $100,000 annually. That’s because software “bots” are handling tasks that employees used to spend hours on, reducing labor costs and errors.
Even as a freelancer or small business owner, automating parts of your workflow can translate to personal savings. For instance, if you spend two hours a day on manual work that could be automated, that’s time you could spend on earning new income or that’s two hours less you’d need to pay an assistant. At scale, the numbers are eye-opening: one logistics company deployed about 200 software bots to handle various repetitive processes and saved 78,000 employee work-hours (nearly 40 work-years!) and over €6 million in one year. While your own automation projects may be smaller, the idea scales down – even saving a few hours a week through automation can save thousands of dollars worth of your time over a year.
In a recent poll, 88% of small business owners said automation enables them to compete with larger companies by boosting efficiency and customer service quality. The how-to here involves identifying a repetitive digital task and using readily available tools or scripts to handle it. Thanks to many user-friendly automation tools today, you don’t need to be a programmer to automate basic workflows. By investing a bit of effort to set up these digital shortcuts, you’ll reap continuous time savings – which ultimately means cost savings and possibly even increased revenue.
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