What specific skills do you need to be successful in IM?

Like EBR says: salesmanship and managerial skills.

think about it:

a lot of people who are attracted to IM have NO prior sales-experience, and often enough no serious managerial experience, ideally business-building/entrepreneurial oriented.

End-result: they're totally overwhelmed because nothing seems to really work.

Usually "it" doesn't work because of a complete lack of understanding of how to sell (which is NOT the use of sales-psychology or power-words, or any of that nonsense, but starts with a crystal clear understanding of what exactly your target audience wants more than anything else).

And then "it" doesn't work because most people overlook that they have to build a business around this whole IM thing, otherwise they're just jumping from promotion to promotion (think: launch), rather than build a sales-funnel where they have *predictable* flow of leads, turnover and profit.

Veit

Determinations
Focus
Dedication
Patience
Persistant
Willing to learn
Time managment skills
Passionate

Thats the list I can come up with right now

If you put the question that way, my answer would be delegation skills. Everything, including copywriting, can be outsourced, but you must first have a grasp on how to get somebody else to do your work. Delegation.

I would say the most important skills to master are traffic and conversions

This. Exactly.

I think the single most important skill to develop is the ability and judgment to differentiate between information and misinformation.

To be realistic, people acquire that at quite widely varying rates. But without "just happening to be monumentally lucky" (which can happen, though very rarely indeed), the odds of earning a secure living in IM are slim indeed without learning by whom to be advised.

(I'm in a minority here, believing this next point, but in my opinion that's one of the many reasons why I think as much formal scholastic/college education as possible is highly useful, overall, in IM, because what's referred to above is actually one of the exact skills that "education", in its broadest sense, facilitates and enables. The real value of education is the discernment and other related skills acquired, long after "the stuff you learned" has all been forgotten.)

There's really a lot of skills you need to learn in order to be successful in IM.

Included are:
1. Copywriting - you have to know how to craft a sales letter that converts. If you don't you won't be able to sell anything.

2. Driving Traffic - After creating a good sales page, you need to learn how to drive traffic to it. You might have the best product and sales page in the whole world... but if you don't advertise it, all your efforts would be wasted.

3. Technical Skills - The IM business is based on the Internet! That's why you really need to learn about technical stuff. You don't have to be an 'expert' but you do need to have the basic technical skills. Installing Wordpress, Accessing cPanel, building websites and the likes would require some basic knowledge.

4. Writing - This skill would be particularly helpful in writing articles for your blog or if you are planning to make your own ebook.

5. List building - THE MONEY IS IN THE LIST! 'nuff said.

I cannot pinpoint what is the most important because all of them are of equal importance... It will take a lot of time to learn all these, but there's one thing you should remember... NEVER GIVE UP!