15 Free Online Learning Sites Every Entrepreneur Should Visit The best places you can go to learn more about marketing, entrepreneurship, business management and more.
By Sujan Patel Edited by Dan Bova
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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.
Related: 21 Resources to Make You a Better Entrepreneur
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.
Related: Listen and Learn From These 9 Emerging Entrepreneurial Podcasters
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.
Do you have a favorite resource not listed here? Let us know in the comments section below.
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