Technical Skills For Your Online Business
31 Jul
Okay so you’re ready to hit the ground running and start your online business but you don’t know where to start. If you want to achieve any level of success you’re going to want to cultivate some technical skills. Some of these skills will be familiar while others might be in another language literally (I’m looking at you CSS and PHP). Don’t be too concerned as it won’t be necessary to learn all of these skills but you should take the time to at least familiarize yourself with some of their basics. You should also know upfront that all of these skills can be outsourced; however, if you plan on outsourcing you should know that some of these skills will cost an obscene amount of money while others will be dirt cheap. Also if you’re just starting your online business you will definitely want to do as much of the work yourself as possible that way you pick up some of these skills. You should know that this list isn’t entirely exhaustive and by no means provides a complete explanation.
Writing is perhaps one of the most common skills that you will learn. You would be mistaken to think that the type of writing you will be doing is the same as what you did in high school. So what kind of writing are we talking about? The most common is perhaps content writing. People will need content to read when they arrive at your site. Content makes up the meat and bones of your site. Features and great web design are fine but without the content to back it up people will leave your site without a second thought. Article writing is another way in which you will need to utilize your writing skills, for some beginners article marketing has its appeal because it doesn’t cost anything. You will post the articles you write to a directory in an attempt to drive traffic to your website. Another way in which you will use writing is through email. If you are building a list of subscribers (and you should be) you will need to contact them through email. Writing an effective email is an art that will pay for itself many times over. And finally the last and definitely the most worthwhile form of writing is copywriting. Copywriting is a very specific type of writing that has only one purpose: persuasion. Copywriting is how you will get people from point A to point B. If you want to sell someone something, effective copywriting is what will get them to buy from you. Need to grow your list of subscribers; copywriting can convince them to join. Whatever action you want people to take, copywriting will make them do just that. Sounds great right? …. Well not really. What makes copywriting a challenge is that no product/market/person is identical. What works for you might not work for the next guy and vice-versa. This is why copywriting is such a desired skill not just anyone can read a book and all of a sudden become a guru. For copywriting to be effective you have to know which buttons to press and when, if you don’t then you’re dead in the water. Also, among all the writing skills, copywriting by far is the most expensive/profitable. If you plan on having someone produce some quality ad copy for you, expect to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
Research is a skill that goes hand in hand with writing. One of your initial tasks starting out will be to conduct research. And what will you research? How about everything under the sun? Okay, not really but definitely an extensive amount of information so much that you will feel like an expert by the time you are done. For starters you will research PROFITABLE keywords. If you don’t research keywords that are profitable your business will be finished even before it starts. Keywords in essence represent the people you are trying to profit from. Every time a person uses a search engine like Google they will type in what they are searching for. This is where you come in; you want your website to be the one that they see when they search for those keywords and if you’re lucky they will buy your product. Speaking of products, you may have already guessed but you will have to research that as well. It isn’t very often that you will only have a choice of only one product to sell; it will be more likely that you will have to choose which product is “better.” Which product is better is seldom a clean cut answer. Usually there are a number of factors to consider when choosing a product to sell: how much will you profit, the quality of the product, the number of other websites selling this product or very similar products, return rate, the age of the product, is it a seasonal product, and much more. Finally, you will also have to research information/solutions that will help expand your business and skills. You should always be on the lookout for new information that can give you a leg up on the competition. Some of the most profitable online businesses are the ones that think outside the box.
