Five skills needed to be successful online
Hello WA members,
Its my second round on WA and I feel awesome returning back to this friendly space after three short years. Actually time just flies.
Its been a long journey for me and a lot of things I have learnt being off from the online entrepreneur mode, than i was on it last time.
What did I do in last three years? Well, I explored myself. You have to do it at some moment of your life right? so did I!
During this exploration, I have been through a lot of stuff which is related to entrepreneurship online and offline. Its all about creating value. I found out that you need five basic skills (not expertise but just a basic knowledge), if you want to be a real success in any business online
- Reading and research
Why is it even counted as a skill? Have you read a book of 2-300 pages in two days (max)? It is a skill which comes with time. It comes with habit. and it is doable. Interestingly, if I want, I can read 2-300 pages book in a day.
Why is it important? Well, you have to read a lot of stuff so that you can write your own stuff out of the knowledge you have gained through your research. If you are a slow reader, it will obviously take a long time to finish your thoroughly researched article.
If you do not do research behind the stuff you are publishing on your website, then it is just an average stuff. Make it extra-ordinary and you will attract a large number of people to your posts.
And in the online world, number of visitors is what matters the most. I guess, you got my point. So make a habit of researching the material before even picking up a pen and paper to write something for your website.
- Know a bit of coding languages.
Why? Lets say you paid a programmer to fix your wordpress website. and now you are looking for some more improvements in the code. Would you not like to know what he did? instead of paying the programmer again and again, it can be a huge saver to know some of it yourself.
And it does not take long to learn the stuff. HTML is easiest of them all. PHP basics are quite easy and CSS is simple as well.
So many books are available for you to study. But you don't have to study them all. Just download the cheats heats for all these three and you would start understanding the code in a better way in a short period of time.
Know these and you save a lot of time and money.
- Graphic design
What happens if you are just starting up online without interesting graphics on your website? You guessed it! The website becomes boring and dull, unless your writing is engaging.
Learn these two softwares, by trial and error and with time you will master them. Just 30 minutes to each of these and you will be good in ten days, better in 20 and will know much more than a guy who has just started in 30 days or less. More effort you put in, faster your results will be.
Rather than paying a lot of money to a decent graphic designer, who can easily cost between $40-1000, learn the stuff yourself and do it for good.
The two softwares I am taking about here are adobe photoshop and adobe illustrator. Both are great softwares. If you don't have the money to pay for these two, GIMP is another option. It is free to use and has many photoshop like features.
- Know how to write an interesting copy
This is huge, but just start off by learning how to write an engaging copy. How do you provide value to people by your stuff?
If you write something which is boring and does not lead the reader towards your goal. it has wasted a lot of things. First, it spoilt all your hard work. Second, it wasted the reader's time.
Even if your product has so much of the value to the end user who is reading your copy, he will not be buying from your because you will not be reading it all. No tricks here, learn this art and no one will be able to beat you in your field, guaranteed.
Don't go for shortcuts in this arena of skill learning. let it take a minimum of 90 days and you will realize that it has been the best skill set you have ever developed in your lifetime.
The best books in this field are "Breakthrough advertising" by Eugene Schwartz and "The letter book" by Robert Collier and "Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins.
All these books are on writing a sales letter. Same principles apply when you write an article online or offline.
- Market research
If you do not know your market and what exactly they are looking for, you are just hitting a blind shot. Do a proper market research. Know who you are talking to and then know what are their pains and what are the solutions.
Its not a rocket science. It can be done. With time and persistence everything has a possibility of becoming a reality.
Again, there are many books and materials available online to help you in doing a proper market research. I will not tell where to look, because I guess you have to figure this out for yourself.
Looks like a lot? Because it is a whole lot new thing to do. Make a habit and devote at least three to four hours in developing these skillets and within 30 days you will know the results.
I know these skillsets may seem to be a small number. If you have any additions to these skills and feel like sharing them up here, please do so in the comments section below.
Wish you a good luck
Dr. Rupesh Gupta
Recent Comments
1
This sounds like good advice to me - trying to educate yourself can only be good in my book. Thanks.