Owning an eBusiness will make you aware of skills you never thought you had. You will also find that you may have to take on the task of learning new skills you weren’t aware of or didn’t think you needed in order to be a successful online seller. If you are just starting out selling online you will soon find out that the one person who continuously handles decisions or issues as they come up is YOU.

When the store needs to be redesigned, you will be editing the files. When it comes time to pay taxes, you will be the one learning Turbo Tax. When you need to get the word out about your products or business brand, you will be learning how to market yourself online. If you are already an established merchant seller, you may already have the skills it takes to launch an eBusiness, but it’s a good idea to explore other useful skills, like management, so you can help the business to grow steadily and begin to oversee employees. The best way to succeed in recognizing the skills you need to be a successful online merchant is to perform a personal evaluation of yourself. During the evaluation be sure to note all of your strengths and weaknesses. Improve upon your weaknesses by learning new skills and expanding your personal strengths.

Nurturing Skills:

The most successful eCommerce merchants have great nurturing skills. Many of them even treat their Online businesses as if it were their child or a favorite pet. You’ve heard people refer to their car as their “baby.” The same should hold true for an eBusiness, it’s also your “baby.” This attitude is possibly one of the most important skills needed to start, manage and grow an eBusiness. If you do not love what you do, protect your investment and help it evolve you will have a harder time seeing success in the beginning. No one, other than you, will be that guiding force into greatness.

It always reminds me of that saying “If you want it done right, do it yourself because no one else is going to do it for you.” Now I am not saying you shouldn’t hire others to help you eventually, it’s just better that you have the attitude that YOU will be the one handling everything. It’s important as it will help you not to feel overwhelmed during the set up and launch process. Your new business venture will need constant nurturing including attention and protection as it gets off the ground, your guidance as it starts to grow and your wisdom to help direct it towards your overall goals.

Business Skills:

Although having some understanding of business and certain business skills can help you get your eBusiness up and running quickly, it’s not absolutely necessary as many of the business skills you will need can be learned as you go or shortly before you begin. Rather than becoming a business guru, it’s more important to become a rational thinker when it comes to managing your eBusiness. Develop a working understanding of all the daily, weekly and monthly tasks or aspects of running the company. The most critical elements of your business will deserve the most attention. Elements including client and customer follow-ups, budgeting, decision making and eCommerce laws including shipping and Online payment.

Here’s a list of business skills you may need when running an eBusiness:

• Basic accounting and bookkeeping skills
• Business communication skills (emails, fax, invoices)
• Negotiation skills (product sourcing, pricing)
• Filing and other office keeping skills
• Multitasking and organizational skills
• Good record keeping and memorizing skills

It can be hard for every eBusiness owner or entrepreneur to take interest in all the details of the business, however you should realize that it is still important to address them whether it’s physically you who does it or someone you trust such as a business partner or associate. There are many other aspects to running the business such as site design, maintenance and marketing. It can be easy to forget about all the other aspects, so be sure you remember to give attention to all the nooks and crannies of your new eBusiness.

Management Skills:

Being a good manager requires the ability to make good sound decisions about your business. Managing is basically the ability to make reasonable decisions and to execute them in the most efficient way possible to achieve maximum results. Although you may be the only employee at times, as your eBusiness grows you will eventually need some assistance.

Some questions you may want to ask yourself about management potential:

• How good are you at making decisions?
• Can you manage a group of employees?
• Can you objectively handle each situation?
• Will your co-workers respect you as their manager?

It’s important to always act professional and maintain a certain level of credibility and dignity with employees. Not only current and future employees, but also those you encounter during the course of your business. Being a good manager means being a leader. If you have leadership skills you have management skills. At the same time, good management is good leadership and a good leader is a benevolent leader. Although it’s important to maintain a professional attitude and sometimes you may have to discipline, employees who are happy with their boss are typically more productive and loyal workers.

Organizational Skills:

From the day you decide to start your Online business you will find yourself caught in a whirlwind of tasks and events that may require your immediate attention and follow-up action. As things come up, you will want to organize and sort the different tasks and events in the right order so things don’t get lost or become messy. In order to properly organize and sort your tasks you will need to understand the priorities of your daily events. You can organize sequentially or according to importance. Use some kind of filing system that works for you, employees and the business.

In addition to prioritizing, organization of files and unexpected or last minute task planning you will want to develop good time planning skills. Time planning skills help when making appointments and when attempting to meet shipping or order fulfillment deadlines. Having good organizational and time planning skills will help you keep everything neatly in order and can help to prevent chaos in your daily schedule. You may consider using a to-do list.

Starting up and continuing to build your eBusiness will be very exciting. There will certainly be times when it seems like your to-do list is a mile long and that you may never get to complete everything on it. Without good organizational and time management skills you will certainly become overwhelmed quickly. To keep everything in order, simply categorize your daily tasks by priority and make sure you address each one on the list, completing it to satisfactory condition before starting another task.

Communication Skills:

Although online business keeps you from from having to do a lot of face-to-face communications it doesn’t mean that you won’t need to be an effective communicator. eRetail businesses are still in many ways like a traditional brick-and-mortar business. In brick-and-mortar business you typically show customers the products you want to sell. By creating attractive displays and effectively showing your goods to customers you are also making your merchandise appear more appealing. It’s usually the same when selling Online. Your eCommerce site also has to effectively communicate everything you have to offer and the messages you are trying to get across to your buyers. You must first appeal to your niche and always remember not to overwhelm your visitors with too much product information.

Effective communication can require the following:

• Knowing your target market, niche and audience
• Using lingo and copy your audience understands
• Displaying your merchandise in an attractive way
• Creating a user-friendly site that’s easy to read

Try to deliver a message that tells your customer that purchasing from you and your store is the only way to go. Consider conducting market research in order to better understand who you are trying to communicate with. Other good ways to communicate via your site is to use high-resolution product images, detailed product descriptions and possibly a written guarantee in order to establish trust with your customers and other site visitors.

Technical Skills:

This is by far one of the most intimidating skills on our list. Many beginner merchants are overwhelmed by new technology and don’t even know where to begin as far as which programs to buy, who to use as a host, what shopping cart to use and much much more. I have seen many eBusiness owners become successful with basic technical skill and/or limited computer ability. Typically, if you can turn on a computer, point and click your mouse and send emails you have enough basic knowledge to get started in the world of selling Online. Obviously, the more technical skills you posses to begin with the quicker you will be able to get your eBusiness up and running.

Many of the programs you need will come with detailed instruction on how to use them or they will have a support outlet you can take advantage of (sometimes free, sometimes for a fee). If you need further support, you may wish to consult with an expert or perform research online to find out more. It will help if you already know and can understand some basic eLingo and are able to research through search engines.

Other ways to build technical skills may include:

• Using Online training tutorials and help exercises
• Using trail and error by playing around with your program
• Purchase manuals, utilize program support or visit forums
• Enroll in college class or continuing education institute

Don’t let technology barriers keep you from following your dreams of becoming a successful Online business owner. Chances are you know more than you think and will be able to pick up everything else as you go.

This article is one of several within our Getting Started eCommerce Guides.