AFP 29: Vital Skills For Internet Entrepreneurs
August 23, 2012 It’s really tough to break down what makes a particular entrepreneur successful because there are so many different ways to succeed and not everyone follows the same path. You’ll hear competing (and often contradictory) statements about the reasons why someone has been successful. Even worse, the successful entrepreneurs themselves often struggle defining what made their business work.
Vital Entrepreneurial Skill Sets
We really enjoyed the debate/discussion format we used in Episode 28 and decided to roll with that again. You’ll find John moderating a discussion between Joe and me where we each break down our Top 3 traits of skill sets we’ve found in successful internet entrepreneurs.
Check out this week’s episode here:
Direct Download – Right Click And Save As
Topics Discussed This Week Include:
- An overview of our projects including the BuyOurSites page, IntelliTheme, and the looming Penguin update
- The value of consistency and being a good storyteller
- Value in carving out your niche Shippability: Can you deliver the goods?
Mentions:
- Our Sites For Sale – We have individual sites available for sale right now!
- Dan Andrews – It’s been great having Dan from the TropicalMBA hanging out with us for a few weeks in Davao.
- Penguin Update – More info regarding the announcement from Matt Cutts regarding future Penguin updates.
- Kickstarter – Test through the market on your creative project first before having to deliver!
- NoamDesign.com – A very well designed site we talked about in the podcast. It’s for sale on Flippa here.
Now…over to you! Any idea on how to make the packages more attractive? Any skillsets we didn’t mention that we should have included? Let us know in the comments below or feel free to say hi on Twitter! Or…you can use SpeakPipe to leave a message below and have a chance to be featured in the next podcast!
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Discussion
I stumbled on here googling and now i am addicted, great work !! I love Adsense Flippers!!
Thanks Ignacio, glad you liked it!
Another great show. I think the number 1 skill for internet marketers is the ability to sell. It doesn’t seem to be something that anyone ever talks about I guess a lot of IMers are selling the dream (those in company excluded of course) and people looking to get rich quick don’t want to hear that they have to be good at sales to sell anything (online or offline). But I think that’s the most important skill.
Agreed Dan, but not at the expense of operational skill, leadership, and management ability. Too often I see an entrepreneur oversell a product or service that just isn’t right. They should go back to the drawing board instead of trying to increase sales on an inferior product through the “hard sell”.
Revenue is the life blood of any company and sales it crucial to keep it coming in. That’s unavoidable. However, don’t overlook the fact that you can always pay someone to do sales. This allows you to focus on other areas which you skill set may be better suited for.
I’m not so sure sales is as easy to outsource as you make out. For a large company maybe but for a small company a full time sales person puts a huge amount of pressure on the bottom line. A hell of a lot of small companies wouldn’t be able to afford this overhead. I battled with this in my last business and a lot of counterparts in my space struggled with the same thing (it wasn’t an online business mind you).
Overselling is definitely not cool and it probably goes without saying that really you need all of these skills but if I had to pick 1 I’d pick confidence and ability to sell above all others. If you have this then you’ll be able to sell your vision to others who can cover all of the other skills you mentioned I think.
Hey Dan!
Yeah, I’m gonna have to break from Joe here and agree with you. I don’t think just paying someone for sales is very realistic. Joe and I have debated this at length…maybe we should devote a podcast episode to this subject? I know that Joe’s frustration with sales people stems from some bad experiences he’s had in the past. I think that Joe thinks spending money will solve this problem…pay for salespeople and the sales will roll in which, in my experience…it isn’t quite that simple.
Where Joe and I would agree, I think, is that finding a captured market or marketplace is a great strategy for those that are a bit weak in the sales department. For example, we knew we wouldn’t be great at cold calling people to buy websites. Instead, we focused on delivering quality niche sites with a low cost of production. We then went to Flippa, knowing they’ve already collected the buyers for us…
Yeah that’s true re your last point but I think you guys do have good sales skills and you probably take them for granted. You have confidence, you communicate well, you don’t have any issues talking about your products / services, don’t fear rejection etc. I think a lot of people that listen to the make money online stuff don’t have these basic skills and no amount of operational skills will help these people make it as internet entrepreneurs.
Definitely do a podcast on it, it’s a fascinating topic and a very difficult skill to quantify.
Great episode guys… I must say you guys have such exciting, high-energy lead-in sound effects. Any chance you can give the “news, updates, and information” section a sexier title to keep me tuned in?
LOL, Ryan, we’ll work on that.
+1 love the format guys!!! THIS PODCAST NEEDS MORE INTERN 😛
Anything to keep you happy! 😉
Thanks Dan! I really enjoy the podcasting; always fun.
love the format.
I need to get a kickstarter idea going some of the funding has been awesome. the digital watch was something else.
Glad you enjoyed it Steve. Let us know if you get something up on Kickstarter. I would love to document a success story.