What Skills Do I Need?
November 21, 2009 | Basic
What Skills Do I Need?
If you’re thinking about creating a website (especially if it’s for business/money making), you may be curious or even intimidated by what you have to learn. Here are some skills and attributes that will come in handy.
A Basic Understanding of Web Programming
As I will emphasize several times throughout this blog, you do not need to become an expert programmer to have a successful website, but you should learn the basics of HTML and CSS (more advice on that later.)
Creativity
People underestimate the importance of this attribute. Anyone can throw up content and call it a website or a blog, but when it comes to effective marketing and building traffic, you have to dig deep and get in touch with your creative side.
Some will argue creativeness cannot be learned because it is a talent. That’s true to an extent, but I believe you can improve your creativity, especially if you study other successful Webmasters and Bloggers.
Thinking outside the box will take you far, and is often the difference between success and failure. There is going to be competition no matter what topic you choose, so you have to fine tune your approach and develop a fresh perspective on your topic.
Dare to be different.
Good Writing Skills
This skill is especially important if you want to make money the way I do (affiliate marketing). My writing has improved tremendously over the years. Let’s take writing headlines, for example. Ten years ago I may have titled a blog post about Twitter mistakes something simple like, Top Twitter Mistakes.
Today, I would take more time with that title and maybe craft something more attentiongrabbing like, 12 Twitter Crimes Almost Every Newbie Commits.
See how the 2nd title is much more interesting and eye-catching? This is something I learned over time by studying other successful Webmasters whose writing I admired. One headline can be the difference between hundreds and thousands of visits.
Patience
I would love to be able to tell you exactly how long it will take to make X amount of dollars. But due to the many variables involved (your topic, your speed of learning, traffic, conversion rates, etc.), it’s absolutely impossible to estimate how long it will take to make a profit or how much money you will make.
You will need a great deal of patience and realistic expectations. Just like I could never estimate how long it would take a local music store owner to earn a profit from his offline store, I could never estimate such a thing for someone looking to make money online.
And if you are desperate to make money now, I have some very Monopoly-like advice for you.
This book is definitely not for you. If making a lot of money in a short time was realistic and common, you’d hear stories every night on the evening news and read countless articles in newspapers and magazines everyday. People would be leaving their 9 to 5 jobs left and right because they struck it rich online.
Of course you may read stories about online success every now and then. But I bet most of you don’t know anyone personally who is making a full-time living online. That’s largely because it’s hard work just like any offline business and it takes time. And unfortunately, a lot of people are impatient.
We live in a digital world where we are used to getting everything now. And because the Internet is so accessible, it often gives people false assurance that making money online is easy and fast.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s much more convenient to make money online than offline, but it is not easy for most people and it takes time.
I’ve even had friends and family tell me… “Lisa, I had no idea how much I had to learn about marketing and building my site. You make it look so easy.”
Sure, I may make it look easy because I love what I do and it’s never felt like a job. Nevertheless, I still didn’t become successful overnight. It’s unlikely that you will either.
So there you have it. If you are not willing to learn basic programming to manage/maintain your site, tap into your creative side, perfect your writing skills and have patience then you might as well close this blog now. Making money online is probably not for you.
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