One of the most asked questions I get from new entrepreneurs that are starting to run an online business is “should I learn html to run an online business?”.
The quick answer is yes, you should learn some basic html tags – you’re going to seriously limit yourself if you don’t. The good news is you should learn a few basic tags and how they work. Its easy and shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes or so if you practice them a little bit.
Learn some basic HTML in 10 minutes!
The more complex answer depends on several things – how much do you want to do yourself, how much do you want to balance and what is it you want to do. Everyone needs to learn basic html tags – sorry. Its 2013 and its not hard. And you’ll use it a lot. Its like learning basic math. If you want to make mistakes because you don’t know basic syntax that is certainly your problem.
On the other hand – I’d say if you’re interested and serious, dig as deep as you’re interested in going. What you need to do is learn how to balance getting things done versus wasting lots of time because you’re too involved.
Making websites is a simple thing, but we tend to over think things like design and features. This is human nature. At some point you need to get something up so its working for you and you can massage it later. If you don’t know html, php etc and its not your thing, you’ll need to hire someone you trust to help you. The key word here is trust – there are good coders and bad coders. If you’re going to do it yourself that’s fine too just remember you’re working on a deadline and you need to launch a product. I see lots of people spending months on CSS and HTML and they don’t have a product.
This is important and you need to be wise about this just like you’d be about any of your time. Remember – you need to know the basics. Beyond that you need to balance what you’re willing to do.