JANUARY PROMOTION: Only $17 get Bonsai WordPress theme
LEARN MOREJust like I’ve promised in the last post “Make Money with WordPress: A Guide for WordPress business”, I’m writing this thread for the sake of those who want to make the best out of their WordPress-based business website. I bet you have read somewhere that patience and willingness plays a very big role in one’s success? Well, the truth is, to become an accomplished entrepreneur, only determination and will won’t take you anywhere.
Be realistic! What you really needs when climbing the stairs of success is a set of skills, which will play as the climbing tools. Determination will help a lot, yes, but it’s far from a tool! I’ve seen many successful businessmen on WordPress, and what I’ve learned from such people is that their set of skills is much heavier than their so-called “determination”.
If that’s what you’re looking for, I’m glad to have you here with me. Together we will go through 10 necessary skills that any entrepreneur must possess if success is what they’re aiming to. These skills are:
In order to understand deeply what these mean and their roles, we shall examine each point carefully, shall we?
Does this seem familiar? I bet it does, since I have talked about it in my latest post, if you have read. To my view, this is one of the most important skills you has to have. Why? Because any business needs strategies and beforehand planning.
Regarding planning, there are certain points you should remember. The more detailed your plans can be, the more fruitful your business’s results can be. Without planning or goals-setting, it would be hard to stay on the path and move forwards. In fact, you wouldn’t even know if you’re making any moves or not. However, setting goals needs strategies, too. You should set small goals first, and then draw a map of what-to-do for your team, making sure everyone has the same picture in their head and is on the same page. After completing the plan, the final step is to compare and see how many percentages of your plan you have achieved, and what can be improved.
How about strategies? When you have goals, you should have strategies to reach those goals. For example, your aim is to increase traffic to your WordPress website by 50% for the next two months. Then how can you make it happen? This is when your team sit together to come up with ideas, or we should call, strategies. Do some research. Think out of the box. Connect everyone’s ideas and find out the best combination possible.
Imagine this: You come up with new ideas for a new product, feeling confident about it and are totally sure that it would be a bomb! But when it is out on the market, not many people seem to be interested. Why is that?
Because they forgot market researching! Bruh!
It’s safe to say that market researching plays a very big role in the success of any product, not just WordPress-related products only. But how? It’s quite difficult to conduct a market research on a large scale, but you can always gather the necessary number of people in order to find out the demand for your future products. Simply make a Google Form with varying types of close and open questions, etc. Then convert the collected data in to graphs and charts, something from which you can easily have an insight into what people want.
You can also launch a minimum viable product (MVP) to check the performance of the competitors. You may be happy for low competition at first, but don’t forget it can also mean a lack of demand. Moreover, don’t rush to make the products if people only say they like the ideas but not bother spending money on an MVP. In this case, words aren’t worth.
Don’t think that it’s a waste of time! It’s very important and can be done easily with the help of the Internet!
Let’s say you have set your goals and start carrying out everything, now what you need is to manage time and productivity effectively. If you’re working for your own, it’s alright to cross out tasks you do not enjoy in order to focus on what you want to do. But if you’re working for a company, for example, you need to find joy in doing the tasks, especially the vital ones.
The number one rule to time managing is to prioritize the most important tasks. The second one is to be realistic about how much work you can accomplish in a given time. What’s more you need to be good at is the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule). Basically, it is stated in the rule that 80% of a business’s profit is from 20% of the effort we put in. If you want to have a successful WordPress business, you need to identify the 20% of activities that may produce the most profit. Instead of putting equal efforts in the remaining 80% activities, you should place more emphasis on this 20%.
If you’re a web designer, TimeCamp, Clockodo or CloudTimr are all useful applications for you to track time.
Why exactly do you need this skill? Well, don’t think that you’re simply working on a computer and have little interaction with the world, hence you don’t this communication skill! That would be a big mistake!
Being a businessman on WordPress bears much resemblance to being a normal businessman. You will have to talk with clients, potential customers, trading partners, fellow companies, etc. Sometimes it will all get down to how effective your talks can be which decides the scale of your success.
There are certain important keys to improve communication skills. But generally, you need to practice it from time to time. Be attentive to others when they’re talking, try talking in a motivating way, create feelings of equity and develop a sense of humor, etc. All these can help pretty much with your communication skills.
There’s no doubt that finance skill is necessary for any soon-to-be successful businessman on WordPress. You may not be as smooth as an accountant, just basic understanding would help.
Fortunately, there are plenty of online apps and services that will help be in control of your finances. While it’s always advisable that you employ the help of a professional in this field, it’s a good thing you can do simple stuff on your own, for example, sending out invoices rom your WordPress website.
Social medias are thriving in the sphere of online business, especially with business that is merely conducted online like WordPress. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have long been a part of million people’s daily lives. Thus, it’s undoubtedly one of the best ways to promote products through a platform that is visited by millions of people a day, every day of a week, from all over the world.
According to a result, 93% of people asked believe that a company should have an online presence. As many more people are becoming loyal customers of social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, a cooperation with these companies will help you connect with your target audience, giving them information about your services and products. Mastering social media marketing will certainly give your WordPress-related products a leg up in competing with rival companies’ products.
Good news: SEO never gets old while Google still exists. Bad news: Yet it constantly gets outdated, which means you need efforts to to keep up with it.
WordPress is already a SEO friendly platform. But there are things you should do in order to get the best chances for your website in the search engine results pages (SERPS). The first step to take is to install a good SEO plugin for WordPress website and familiarize yourself with it.
Let’s put it this way, you cannot become an accomplished entrepreneur if you’re clueless about your strengths and weaknesses. Once you fully understand what you excel at and what you need to improve, you will be able to make wise business decisions, have suitable trading partners and employees as well.
In order to be a good entrepreneur who can take charge of the growing business on WordPress, you need to be decisive. Of course, being decisive doesn’t mean you can act on impulse and give out decisions whenever you want to. Only after thinking clearly and weighing the pros and cons should you make the final decisions, especially those that can have big impact on the whole WordPress-related business of yours.
This is not a skill actually, this is more like a reminder. I just want to say that, for a platform that continuously develops like WordPress, you cannot stay still and watch the world moving. If so, you will get kicked out. Therefore, you should blend it, be active all the time. Read the WordPress newspaper and you will see updates are introducted nearly every day. There are tons of new things that require learning, so you will never run out lessons.
Keep learning and never give up, this is one simple rule for all businessmen, not just those who’d like to make money with WordPress.