In today’s digital age, entrepreneurs are unparalleled in their ability to access a wealth of information without having to attend classes at a traditional academic institution. Online training tools can be particularly valuable for businesses that want to avoid the cost of hiring a freelancer by training its employees with the hard skills required to accomplish tasks. Here are two services that provide online skills training courses for just that purpose.
Skillfeed
A subsidiary of Shutterstock, Skillfeed offers a practical solution for entrepreneurs who want to learn and share knowledge of creative and technical skills. Whether you’re interested in photo editing, video production, web development, or some other creative project, you can use Skillfeed to train yourself or your employees with courses taught by expert instructors. Courses are conveniently divided into chapters and even subdivided into small segments so that you can easily focus on a particular topic without delving into an entire course. Subscriptions come with a one-week free trial and offer unlimited access to courses for $19/month.
Lynda
The first service of its kind, Lynda was founded in 1995 and has since established itself as a premier learning platform that offers tutorials on a wide-range of skills and topics. Lynda makes it easy to jump around, as each course is divided into chapters and further subdivided. Lynda’s service is unique in that you can create playlists, similar to on iTunes, and make a list of videos that you’d like to watch or even share with friends. Individual basic plans cost $25/month or $250/year and premium plans are $37.50/month or $375/year. They also offer group subscription plans so that several members of your team can access a single account.
Comparison
While each service provides quality educational content at an affordable price, the principal differentiating factor between Lynda and Skillfeed is the range of courses offered. With over 2,000 courses to choose from, Lynda covers a wider array of subjects than Skillfeed, which is also a much newer service in comparison. Skillfeed, however, might be a practical option for businesses that only need to master a particular software or creative function and don’t require the extensive library of courses provided by Lynda.
You can safely expect this industry to continue to grow, with more and more content and more and more players getting into the game.
