I'm not sure there really are any totally "essential" skills...since most of these have work-arounds or people you can hire to do them for you, or both. And by tech skills I mean things that can be learned and aren't talents.

The skills below are the ones I think are the most useful BASIC skills for marketing online...and  I'm probably forgetting a few.

• FTP - Not your hosting file manager.
  
  
• How domain names and URLs work - basics.
  
  
• Basic HTML - how to create a link using html and some other basic formatting of things.
  
  
• How to install and access a php script (or Python, etc)
  
  
• Basic Web Graphics - gif, jpeg, png, dpi, when to use each.
  
  
• Also consider Office 365 skills, which include Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
  

YMYL stands for "Your Money or Your Life" and is a term used to describe web pages that are designed to offer advice on health, finances, and other topics that could have major implications for how people live their lives.

Think of the types of searches that can have significant implications on the searcher's life.

If you are creating content about these topics, your site will need good authority and respect on the topic from Google.

Related is EAT. EAT is a Google's acronym that stands for "Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness".

EAT is likely more important to Google for topics it considers as YMYL. Content giving advice on a topic like “severe chest pains” will probably be treated differently than a page about “Dad phart jokes”.

1. Expertise: Is your content written by someone who know about the topic?

2. Authoritativeness: Is your content written by someone with an authority on the topic?

3. Trustworthiness: Does the content have information about where it is coming from and does it have a disclaimer?

We'll start with Amazon Nodes. You can also find a link to it from the Content Silo page see the link in the head of every forum page.
http://www.browsenodes.com/

Browse through the nodes, which are really product categories, and pretty much each node is a "niche".

Forget about the advice of "solving a problem". Not that it's a bad strategy, it that it's very limited. Once you fix someone's hemorrhoids issue, what's next?

Instead, look for niches that people keep buying things. Like photography, travel, fishing, camping...and many of the niches listed as nodes. Also look in the industrial nodes for products that businesses may buy in quantities. For example, Mom may want a set of 6 matching drinking glasses in a single order. A bar may want 600 drinking glasses in a single purchase.

Collect the all the products and categories listed for related nodes that you can. Use these lists of names as keywords in your keyword research and domain name tools to find the best available opportunities.

Create content around your research, knowing that you have built-in revenue streams. AI writers are really good at this kind of thing.

Here's an article I wrote using my favorite AI writer. AI writers are better described as AI "writing assistants" and while they won't create full articles with a single click, they greatly help content creation. This article is about 1375 words, passed a plagiarism check at 100% unique and took me about 20 minutes to create.

I discuss which AI writing app I use and some tips for using it in the private Pheeds Leads Xtreme forum.
Your Invitation to Join the Pheeds Leads Xtreme.

• When accused by a friend for being in love with their wife, John replies: "I need some new clothes."
  
• "Can you tell me why you were at work at 9 pm last night?" "I was doing laundry."
  

Transcription, either by speaking into a microphone or uploading an audio file, is available for users of Office 365 through Word online. A personal account is about $7 a month or $70 a year. 

Microphone transcription is unlimited but transcriptions from an audio file are limited to 5 hours a month.

After doing a lot of testing with this, it works pretty well. You wind up with two pieces of content, written and audio, for different needs of your audience.  

The "free" part comes into play when you compare the service to a human transcription service which may charge $1 or more per minute. Human type is higher quality, but the automated type + a little editing is a good way to get started.

Here's one for your bookmarks...EveryPixel searches the major image sites all at once. You can select free or paid images (or both) and it has a few other cool features too.
https://www.everypixel.com/

I recently moved to a new PC and reinstalled my favorite video making software and left the other stuff I don't use on the old PC. One thing you'll notice is, none of them, other than VideoMakerFX, are promoted in the typical "WSO IM circles". And there's a couple you may not have heard of.

Also, I got some timely deals on a couple of them (Camtasia and Pinnacle). And the only one I consider expensive is CrazyTalk Animator, which I have a couple of versions of.

Audacity - Sound editor - free
Camtasia 9 - Got it on HumbleBundle for $20
CrazyTalk Animator PRO - Animates cartoon characters - $hundreds
DP Animation Maker - Animates still images. $40 + I bought an extra extension pack for $10 more.
Easy GIF Animator - Edits GIFs - $35?
Google Earth Pro - Images and videos of pretty much everywhere on Earth and beyond.
Pinnacle Studio 24 - Potent video editor with some unique features - Got it on HumbleBundle for a few $.
PowerPoint - Love it. $9.95/month for multi device license. Only $6.95 for a single.
VideoMakerFX - I use it for kinetic text. $29 + some extra slides.
Youtube Movie Maker - Has some unique features, especially for use with lyrics, which can be used in a lot of cool ways. $30 for gold edition.

What's missing? What are your favorites?

Here's a few list sites that have tons of things like "top 10 _____". These are great for researching ideas and content and for your own enjoyment.
https://listverse.com/
https://listafterlist.com/
https://www.listphobia.com/
https://www.thetoptens.com/
https://www.ranker.com/

Here's 5 "interesting facts" sites:
https://www.thefactsite.com/
http://www.todayifoundout.com/
https://wtffunfact.com/
http://www.factretriever.com/
https://facts.net/

This site lists the "best" products using their own algorithm to measure Amazon reviews and comments.
https://www.findthisbest.com/

14 Places You Can Find Statistics for Copy and Infographics
https://www.copypress.com/blog/14-places...ographics/

I use CrazyTalk Animator Pro a lot and was looking through their market place from some cartoon backgounds. No doubt, they have some good ones. However, most of their backgrounds are in the $10-12 range each.

So I went to checkout Freepik.com. With the Pro membership, which is $15 for one month or $119 for a year ($10) a month. With a pro account you get up to 100 downloads a DAY.

If you sign up for a free account first, they will probably send you a discount coupon for Pro in a couple of days. There are also discount coupons you can find online so Freepik is even cheaper:
https://www.google.com/search?q=freepik+coupon



Freepik also offers a lot of free graphics and photos, but you have to give attribution. I find it much better just to pay the small price, not have to give attribution, and have a much larger selection of graphics.

Freepik also has a very liberal usage license, especially if you're into Print on Demand products like tee shirts and mugs, etc. They do require that Freepik graphics used on printed product graphics be less than 50% of the total design. This is easily done using text that takes up at least 50% of your design. I personally like this rule because it keeps POD designs "unique" and everyone isn't just recycling the same images.

I'm not an affiliate for FreePik, I'm just a happy customer and suggest checking it out if you're into graphics for web sites, POD, videos, etc.
https://www.freepik.com

I just got a new PC. The old one was the same one I've used for almost 12 years old and I never updated to WIN 10 so I couldn't run the Create GIF feature in Powerpoint, which requires WIN 10  for that feature.

I absolutely love PPT for making animated GIFs! You can import multiple GIFs to export as a single one or convert videos and PPT animations. You can even import 3D objects, animate them and export as GIFs and there are a lot of 3D models available in the Public Domain.

Here's an example GIF made with PPT. This scene would usually be better as an MP4 video file as the GIF version at this smaller size is 35 megs, but it gives a good idea of the possibilities.

I used a cartoon school hallway background from Freepik (which increased the file size) along with a couple of stock 3D models of the dog and the plant that are included in the PPT 3D search. PPT also offers "scenes" for them, which are animations for the 3D objects. With literally just a couple of clicks, this is the results you can get.