I don’t get this exact question all the time, but I do get a variation of it. Nearly all my programmer friends wonder why I would give a damn about Internet marketing. I’d guess they think it is too touchy/feely, as opposed to the logical world of coding. I mean, in coding nearly everything you do is based on a true versus false comparison. Marketing is definitely not so cut and dry. I love the mixture of coding and marketing.

So my formal education is in economics. My best comparison of economics to this question is that economics is very much the attempt to put logical true versus false comparisons on a touchy/feely situation. The best (neh worst) of both worlds. And that is exactly why I went the econmics route in college. I very much like to see things in a true versus false world, but I have a strong yearning for touchy/feely.

Back to the original question though, the answer in my mind then is that I think it is best to be a combination of both marketer and programmer, if you already have the programming skills. If you are starting from the programming side and can bring yourself to open your mind, build up your marketing skills. However, if you are on the marketing side…. find a good programmer. The Internet is littered with people who tried to leap into programming from another side (ie, designer, marketer, even content writer). I read your code when I get contracted to either add features or fix bugs on the sites you’ve written. I see all of the security holes in your code (I would not exploit them except in a proof of concept manner, probably). When you are capturing user data, and as such are assumed to be protecting that data, you need to know what you are doing — leave that work to the professional coder.

Programmers — you need to read more, start to learn about Internet marketing, SEO, and monetizing websites.

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