Upskilling online

Upskilling Online – Our Favourite Picks

While some freelancers are in a fortunate position that they have been able to maintain their workload and client base during the Covid-19 era, many have seen a reduction in projects and for some, work has dried up entirely. If you’ve found yourself with some extra time on your hands then there is no better opportunity to improve, adapt and change your skill set. With that in mind we take a look at some of our favourite online courses and websites for freelancers, what’s better, they’re all free.

• Skill Share – Skill Share is a fantastic tool that has countless online courses from graphic design to web development and even into marketing and leadership management. The courses are all split into different sections so you can do it all, or only the sections that you feel are relevant to you. The courses are not live so the videos and interactive resources can be accessed whenever and wherever you like.

Our Favourite: Introduction to SEO: Tactics and Strategy for Entrepreneurs

• Lynda.com from LinkedIn – Lynda is one of LinkedIn’s learning platforms, it provides all sorts of online courses and resources in many key areas such as design, business, web development and many more. While it is a subscription service, they do offer a 30-day free trial which you can cancel at any time. So, before you sign up browse the courses and create a plan of what you will do and when to make sure you really maximise those free 30 days!

Our Favourite: Design Thinking: Understanding the Process

• Fiverr – Many freelancers use fiverr as a place to find work and it has to be said that a lot of their online courses and content are geared towards you signing up with them for other services which you may or may not want to do. However, we have found that ignoring the sales pitch there is some really useful information as well. Our favourite is a perfect example of this, while it is clearly designed to get you on to their platform and maximise your use of it, a lot of the content can be applied to any online marketing that you do. If Fiverr is no interest to you then we would suggest starting from Chapter 3.

Our Favourite: Online Freelancing Essentials: Be A Successful Fiverr Seller

• Udemy – Udemy is one of the larger online marketplaces for teaching and learning. They claim to have over 35m learners and 130K courses. Many of which you have to pay for. However, they also publish quite a lot of free content also. We have found a lot of the free content tends to focus around more basic practices, so unless you are happy to look at paid courses as well, this one is probably more for the newer freelancer.

Our Favourite: Freelancing for Beginners: Get Paid What You’re Worth

• YouTube – YouTube may not be the most obvious place to look for meaningful content, but actually if you are prepared to search around then there is some really great stuff on there. If you are starting out with a new skill or if you want to see whether you would be interested in taking something further, then YouTube is as good a place as any to start.

Our Favourite: How to Learn Web Design Fast in 2020

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