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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the new opportunities available to us when we link Lifelong Learning and Internet Marketing.
I was relating this to how everyone – from baby-boomers like me, to students just starting their working lives – needs to be prepared for life-long learning. These new opportunities can be needed at every stage of life:
- From extra cash as a student
- To cash-strapped families
- For people needing to supplement poor pension provisions
- Those who just want a new challenge starting a part-time online business in retirement
New Opportunities In Employment And Self-Employment Share on X
When I started work, none of the jobs below existed, or were even dreamed of. No doubt in 30 years time there will be a whole new batch of jobs that I can’t even imagine here.
For students at uni there’s a real danger that they are learning a skill that will become redundant within their working life.
Even IT Has Changed Massively
Some of the older generation may think of IT (Information Technology) as a very new industry. But even that has changed massively.
Originally I trained as a computer programmer when I left school. The languages I learned first off are largely unheard of now, outside of an IT museum.
And I wonder what happened to the punched card operators who transferred to punched cards the programs that I painstakingly wrote out, in pencil, onto “coding sheets”.
Those punched cards were then sent to an air-conditioned vault where a walk-in sized computer was tended alternately by day and night shift operators.
The stack of cards was “compiled” overnight, and a full day’s work could be wasted by one mis-punched hole.
Those of us who curried favor with the computer operators might be lucky enough to have our mistake repaired and manage a second compilation the same night. A beer down the “Gardeners Arms” on a Friday lunchtime was the usual recommendation.
At the time punched cards and overnight test runs seemed so normal.
We would never have imagined that within just a few years we would be typing our programs directly into a desk-top computer and having several “compilations” per hour – until we perfected the program, often the same day, instead of within a couple of weeks if we worked hard.
Although computer programmers existed 30 years ago – in a very different form – many jobs as we know of them today were never even dreamed of 30 years ago.
12 Jobs That Didn’t Exist 30 Years Ago
- Website Developer
- Social Media Manager
- Uber Driver
- Mobile App Developer
- SEO Analyst
- Zumba Instructor
- Virtual Assistant
- Blogger
- Drone Operator
- Genetic Counselor
- Offshore Wind Warm Engineer
- Those involving new medical techniques, such as MRI & CT scanning etc.
So we can almost certainly conclude that many of the jobs that exist today will become redundant sooner or later. For instance when did you last see an advert for a lamplighter?
Which means that over your lifetime you will almost certainly need to update your skillset completely – at least once if not more than once.
Updating Skills
So my own career in IT has been one of massive change over the years. And if I had tried to stay writing my programs onto paper coding sheets, I wouldn’t have the amount of work I still have today.
I had to learn new skills and adapt to the changing world. As have most people of my age. Consider the lost skills leading to the daily printed newspaper 20 or 30 years ago. You can probably think of many more skills that are now redundant – or rather, massively changed.
Some of the above salaries – per job – may make the average Internet Marketer drool. Yet as solopreneurs we must have at least a passing knowledge of many of them in our business (or be prepared to buy the skills in).
Skills An Internet Marketer Must Master
Let’s just pick a few of the above skills you will need to take your business online:
- SEO Specialist
- Web Analyst
- Blogger
- Social Media Manager
- Information Security Analyst
- User Experience Designer
If you add together the salaries indicated in the infographic, or think of hiring a freelance to do them, that’s a lot of money and a lot of skills! But that’s what the small-time Internet Marketer is up against.
The infographic doesn’t even mention jobs such as “Email List Manager” or “Copywriter” (the latter did of course exist 30 years ago, and is a very highly prized skill).
With costs like those, no wonder we tend to DIY (and often make a botch of it) instead of hiring experts.
Rather than DIY on product creation, I have chosen to go down the route of affiliate marketing, where most of the technical jobs have been done for me.
But there are still skills that anyone running a business needs, because without knowing how to get visitors to your website / market your product, you’re going nowhere.
You can learn these skills at Internet Marketing College (affiliate link).
Over To You
As always I’m interested to hear your thoughts about the new opportunities presented to us over the last 30 years – either in employment, or – more excitingly – to start your own online business. Please comment and share.
