What skill gave you the biggest jump in online business results?

[Leaf1209]

I'm still relatively early in my online business journey and have been trying to figure out where to focus my time.
There are so many things people recommend learning:

• SEO
• Copywriting
• Sales
• Email marketing
• Programming
• Paid ads
• Content creation
• Automation/AI workflows

It seems like everyone has a different answer depending on their background and business model.
For those who are already making money online, what was the one skill that produced the biggest change in your results?
Not necessarily the easiest skill to learn, but the one that had the highest ROI for your time.
Also curious whether you'd recommend mastering one skill first or becoming decent at several skills before specializing.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Specialists make the money but if you're going it on you're own you need a bit of everything you listed.

Traditionally I've been an SEO, which earned me a lot of money while the getting was good. Now it's something you need to know how to do and should always be done, but not the main thing.

In terms of what's something that produces the highest ROI, I'd say that's Copywriting and Sales. Because whatever you're doing, you can boost your conversion rate with these and demand higher prices, etc.

Programming is one of those things where, if you're building your own sites you can get by without it (especially with AI now) but will you ever get it exactly how you want it or get it done efficiently with good optimization? How much does all that matter to you and are you willing to overcome those issues with strengths elsewhere? For instance, how much money are you leaving on the table when your site takes 5 seconds to load.

Email marketing has some technical stuff like qualifying leads, warming leads, funnels, list segmentation, all that. But in general it's all sales and copywriting again.

Content creation, if you're not a complete dunce (which it seems a lot of people are sadly) is a no-brainer. All we do is consume content and know what it should look, read, and sound like. Another way to look at this is it's vastly important because everything starts here, even if you have a product or service, you'll be creating content for marketing. So yes it's important but no it's not hard if you have a grasp on not being a tard.

I'd add to Automation and AI workflows the ideas of outsourcing, operating procedures, etc. It's all important if you want a greased up set of cog wheels that keep moving without you going insane. But this should come later, after you've proven success and before you attempt to scale.

Paid ads is printing money if you can optimize campaigns and have the funding to pay for data. This is an art and a science and it's funds funds funds with net-90 payments and spending caps and all that. Something I never really got way into.

All of these topics are discussed in the free Digital Strategy Crash Course here.

You'll be wearing many hats, all labeled with each of the items you listed. One will be and should be your primary driver, but you'll need them all, so roll up your sleeves. A piece of advice I like to give out is to first maybe read the crash course to get a lay of the land. You need to know what the map looks like first. Then get to work and only learn what you need to learn as you encounter problems as you're working. That way you're not wasting your time and forgetting crap you didn't need while acting like a student instead of an entrepreneur.