What skills does an internet marketer need ?

I have read, I have analysed, I have tried, I have learned and what I’ve learned, I’ve put into action. I have made lots of (expensive) mistakes.

You can forget about working only one hour a day to earn millions. That is living in a dream world. If you are prepared to spend a lot of time on the computer and if you are prepared to work hard and learn from your mistakes, you have a good chance of making it. However, you will have to learn a lot of skills in a short time in a very competitive business.

In order to succeed on the internet you need to have some knowledge in a large variety of fields. There is no need to be an expert from the start in all the different fields as you will learn as you go along. Any business owner will tell you that it is hard work running a company. The same applies for an IM business. If you are planning to do all the work yourself, without outsourcing any of it, you will need some skills from all the professions listed below. To succeed, you will need a mixture of these 25 skills :

 

 - Website builder. You will need these skills as that is the aim of the game: build websites with money-making links. In order to build good websites, you will also need lots of the skills listed below.

 - Graphic artist. You will have to be creative in how you arrange the layout of your website. You must think about where to put images and text. You have to know what colours match and what colours clash when seen together. You have to know what typeface to use and what size the typeface should be. 

- Computer expert. You don’t really need to be an expert but you certainly need to have some computer knowledge. You will have to be able to work with different software programmes (such as graphic layout programmes and graphic design programmes) as you will need to resize pictures or reduce their resolution. Knowledge of some basic HTML, a web coding language, is an advantage but not a necessity.

- Marketing expert. You need to have some marketing knowledge. It will be a huge advantage if you know what 4P’s, AIDA, Maslow triangle and market segmentations are. When your website is designed, you need to know what your target market is, who your target customers are, who your competition is. Not only do you need to know about it, but you also have to be able to analyse the information to your advantage.

- Sales person. You need to know how to sell, what price to sell for and who to sell to. One big advantage: you do not need to wear a smart suit, shiny shoes, red socks or a polka-dot tie

- Accountant. You need to work out your profits as an affiliate, and you need to know how to calculate 65% profit on a product. You need to know how much profit is left for you if you give away 70% commission to your affiliate.

- Mathematician. You need to work out conversion rates and use spread sheets to work out a total of your profits.

- Writer. You need to write articles and write content for your site.

- Photographer. You need to work with photographs, so you will need some basic photo editing skills to know what resolution means, what pixels are, how to save a photograph as a JPEG and so on.

- Logo designer. You will need to design a header for your site. You can also outsource this.

- Psychologist. You need to know about your customers’ behaviour. Analyse in what style to write and to sell for your target customers. You need to realise that selling to teenagers and silver surfers is different and you must adjust your style of writing accordingly.

- Behaviour analyst. You need to know where on your screen to put a “buy it now” button. You need to know which part of your screen your visitors look at first, according to studies.

- Video Expert. You are likely to work with videos, so you need to know the best format to save a video for the quickest download. You need to know what MPEG and WAV mean.

- Typist. You need to be able to type more than five words per minute. If you are a very slow typer, you are losing valuable time. You can always get a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking, available on Amazon, which is speech recognition software: you speak and the computer types it in MsWord. It is amazing software.

- Logical thinker. You need to think about the logic of the page order on your site. Also, think about if your text flows logically.

- Business person. You need the business instinct to spot money-making opportunities and exploit markets. You will need to make business decisions and foresee any changes needed, and be able to adapt to those changes.

- Analyst. You need to analyse information from several sources, put it all together and make decisions based on your analysis. Ask yourself: what market are you selling to? Who are you are selling to? What are they buying? Are they spending money? You need the skills to conclude that if somebody has been advertising something on the web for the last two years, he must be making money, so you could try the same thing. You need to know what to pay attention to, and what to ignore.

- Organiser. You will, without a doubt, need some organisational skills. You need to organise the files on your computer in folders. You will need a system to instantly find a password when it’s required.

- Risk taker. You need to be able to make calculated risks decisions in case you are going to spend money on paid traffic methods.

- Copywriter. You need to be able to write in a style that makes people order from you. The ability to write interesting sales copy is very important.

- Researcher. You will need to research your niche and be able to conclude what is important information for your potential customers.

- Planner. You need to be able to plan when you will design your site, when you will drive traffic to it, when you will try paid traffic.

- SEO expert. The most important for your website is to rank in Google, therefore SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) knowledge is essential.

- Webmaster. You will need to be able to publish your site to the search engines. You need to know what an IP address is and what hosting means.

- Judge. You need sound judgment and the ability to recognise a lie. There are lots of scam artists on the web who are often very convincing. 

So there you have it! That is 25 skills that you will need to become a successful internet marketer. And I am not joking. To become successful, you need a blend of these skills, abilities and talents. Most of all you need entrepreneurial flair and business instinct. Maybe now you understand why most online businesses fail and why a lot of people give up.

But there is hope: you do not need all these skills from the start. But you will need them all in order to become a successful internet marketer. Fortunately you can learn a lot of these skills by reading about them. No-one was born wise; it comes from making more good choices than bad ones and learning from the bad ones. In the beginning you will probably, just like me, feel like you’re not getting anywhere, but be positive and stay focused and keep your spirits high.