Being a successful entrepreneur
means you have to wear a lot of hats, especially when your company is just
starting out and you don't have enough employees to cover all the areas you
need.
Learning the new skills necessary to
start a new business can be expensive, but fortunately the initiative for free,
high-quality, educational resources online has only continued to grow in the
past few years.
Below are some of the resources
available to learn more about marketing, entrepreneurship, business
management and more.
1. CodeAcademy
This great resource offers free interactive programming
sessions to help you learn programming languages such as HTML, CSS, Javascript,
and PHP. You can save your progress as you go with a free account. Learning to
code can help entrepreneurs fix bugs if they don't have a developer, or even go
down the road of building their own website or products (such as apps).
2. HubSpot
Academy
The free certification program offers courses on
inbound marketing, including website optimization, landing pages and lead
nurturing. These skills are a must for business owners as they try to grow
their business and online presence.
3. Moz
If you want to learn search-engine
optimization to make sure your website is as visible as possible, check out
this treasure trove of resources from SEO leader, Moz. Besides having the free Moz Academy, there
are also webinars (live and recorded), and beginner's guides to SEO, social
media and link building.
4. LearnVest
The most successful entrepreneurs
know how to manage their money both on a business and personal side. In
addition to having extremely affordable finance classes, LearnVest also offers some of
its classes for free, such as "Building Better Money Habits" and
"How to Budget."
5. Niche
consultant courses
The Internet has made for a coaching
boom, which is extremely helpful to entrepreneurs who want to learn how to
start or better a business in a specific niche. Some great coaches and
organizations that routinely have free courses and ebooks on building a
business include Natalie MacNeil and MyOwnBusiness.
Try searching "niche keyword" + "business course" to find
one most applicable to you.
6. edX
This free site currently has over 300 courses on a variety of
topics, including "Financial Analysis and Decision Making" and
"Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer?" These courses not only
cover business in general, but can also you help learn more skills that are
applicable to your industry, such as big data or environmental conservation.
7. Khan
Academy
This free learning resource was created to give everyone
access to education in math, science, art, technology and more. There are
over 100,000 interactive exercises to put your education to practical use. Even
though many of the courses are geared toward high school students, there are
several courses that would be good for anyone to have a refresher on, such
as taxes and accounting.
8. MIT
Open Courseware
These are actual courses taught at
MIT and offered for free on the site for
viewing and reading at your discretion. The school put together an entrepreneurship page that lists available
courses that are beneficial to new business owners. Courses include "Early
State Capital" and "The Software Business."
9. Kutztown
University of Pennsylvania
This university has almost 100 free on-demand college courses that are
extremely applicable to entrepreneurs, including ones that cover business
planning, operations and management and small-business tax.
10. Coursera
Much like MIT's Open Courseware,
this site has 114 educational partners that provide free courses to almost 10
million users. One benefit to Coursera is that there
are very specific courses that fit perfectly into particular niches, such as
"Data Management for Clinical Research" from Vanderbilt University
and "Innovation for Entrepreneurs: From Idea to Marketplace" from the
University of Maryland. Its wide network of partners allows for a greater
selection.
11. OpenCulture
This site isn't an educational
platform on its own, but rather collects and shares free resources from around
the web. Its list of 150 free online business
courses is a great resource because it offers classes from
iTunes U and other lessons on video and audio. The site also has lists of free
audiobooks, certificate courses and other online courses.
12. YouTube
It's probably unsurprising to most
users that YouTube is one of
the world's largest search engines, as there are literally videos on just about
anything you can imagine. From TED talks to recorded presentations on building
a business, it's a great free resource on just about any topic.
13. Alison
This platform offers free online courses from some of the most
well-known names on the internet today, including Google, Microsoft, and
Macmillan. With over 4 million users and over 600 courses already, it covers
topics such as economic literacy, personal development, and business/enterprise
skills.
14. Saylor
The Saylor
Foundation offers tuition-free courses and also works with
accredited colleges and universities to offer affordable credentials. Its
course offerings are similar to what you'd see when working toward a bachelor's
degree.
15.
Podcasts
Even though it's not an official
course, podcasts are an amazing (and easily digestible) way to become a better
entrepreneur. Podcasts can be listened to via streaming on your computer (if
that certain podcast offers it) or via iTunes for iOS and apps such as Podcast
Republic for Android. Podcasts such as Entrepreneur
of Fire already garner thousands of listeners every episode and
are a great way to learn the most up-to-date information and strategies
possible. Another good list of entrepreneur podcasts include Think Entrepreneurship's.
Whether you learn best by audio,
video or text, this list of 15 learning resources for entrepreneurs can
help you learn more about building a business, accounting and getting
customers.
Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/
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