4 Skills You Should Focus On to Succeed in Building Your Online Business

It’s common to see people posting questions on social media to boost engagement. One of the most common questions posed is, “What skills do you need to succeed online?”

Invariably, you’ll see people mention copywriting or paid ads or branding… and other such skills. While those are important skills, there are 4 underlying skills that you absolutely MUST have before the rest will work for you.

If you’re a beginner to online marketing, it’s even more important that you possess these skills. Below you’ll see 4 crucial skills you’ll need. It may seem obvious to you, but you’ll be amazed at how most people drop the ball here.

They get so busy focusing on marketing-related skills that the neglect the 4 basics below. Be aware of these skills and hone them to your advantage.

Skill #1 : Learning the Ropes

To be successful online, you MUST be a good student. This is the first skill you must develop.

Choose one business model and study it well. Go deep into it and discover the nuances and methods involved.

It’s good to have a broad idea of what’s required. For example, if you’ve decided to try ecommerce and you’re going with dropshipping, you’ll need to know how to: build a store, choose products that will sell well, source for suppliers, ensure product delivery with your branding, provide customer support, process refunds, etc.

You’ll need to know every part of the business model. This may seem intimidating, but you don’t need to learn it all at once. The best way to go about it will be to learn in stages.

Which brings us to the next point…

Skill #2 : Applying the Techniques Taught

When you learn how to build a store, go ahead and build it even if you have no products to sell. You must APPLY the knowledge you’ve learned… and you should do it as soon as possible.

Building an online business is about taking steps even when you can’t see the whole staircase. This will require faith and courage, but that’s just how it is.

Once you build your store out, you can start finding products to populate your store, and then it’s a matter of advertising and fulfilment and so on.

This principle applies to all online business models. Learn a bit and then do a bit… then learn a bit more and do a bit more. You’ll learn by doing.

If you try and complete all the theory before you start, you’ll be overwhelmed and may never start. Application of knowledge is the second skill

Skill #3 : Iterating Your Way to Success

Iteration is another word for repetition… but in this case, we repeating the process to get a series of outcomes. Here’s the hard truth – not every product you try to sell will succeed.

In fact, for 10 products you try, only 1 might be a winner. This is normal. As you get better, you’ll develop a nose to sniff out winning products, but even then, you will have duds.

The same applies to most other online businesses. This is a numbers game. Not every book you write will sell well. Not every domain you buy will be sold for thousands… and not every product you launch will be a winner.

That shouldn’t stop you from trying over and over. The more you create, the more winners you’ll have. Look at your failures and mistakes and analyze what went wrong. From there, it’s just a matter of making changes and tweaks to improve your performance.

Repetition is the mother of skill… and it’s the third one you must master.

Skill #4 : Scaling up

The last skill assumes that you’ve already built a successful online business that making decent profits. However, to go from 4 figures a month to 5 or 6 figures will require you to scale up.

This is a skill on its own. You’ll need to manage your budget, outsource several tasks, automate processes, and sell more products either by upselling or cross-selling.

You may need to increase your advertising budget or hire a team of writers, etc.

More profits requires more work. Since your time and energy is finite, you’ll need to learn how to scale up. Once you master this skill, the sky is the limit for your business.