Since more and more people are looking into ways of making money these days, the competition has become rather steep. While it is true that there are many ways through which one can easily earn without having any special skills, such as filling online surveys, domain and website flipping, selling on auction websites, and so on, it is also true that knowledge is power. Those who equip themselves with it never go down. You can earn some money from the above mentioned methods, but you’ll earn a lot by empowering yourself with knowledge and skills. Here, we aren’t talking about things we learn in the classroom, because everyone else can learn the same thing. To set yourself apart, you must go out of your way to learn more skills.
Life is a constant learning process. No matter how old you are or what you do, you can always learn more. This is especially applicable to students, who can learn things besides their curriculum and start making money while studying. Here, we’ll talk about some best tutorial websites from where you can learn skills like web development, app development, Photoshop, video editing, SEO, 3D graphic animation, and a lot, lot more! I have used many of them, and found them worth sharing with you.
1. Lynda
Lynda.com is the largest online software training resource. And definitely one of the very best. You can learn programming languages, photo and video editing software, content management systems, Android and iOS application development, web design, and a lot more. No matter what you’re looking for, chances are that you’ll find it here. It isn’t free, however, although it does have a 7-day free trial. You can download any training in this time. Just sign up for a trial and you’ll see how awesome it is.
2. O’Reilly Media
O’Reilly books are very well known in the programming world. It is said that you can’t be a true programmer if you don’t have an O’Reilly book or eBook. It is the largest online resource for training books for a vast range of topics from web development to programming to design and much, much more. O’Reilly also has video tutorials, which are free if you watch them online. But downloads will come at a cost.
3. W3Schools
The World Wide Web (W3) Consortium is the web regulatory body of sorts. They standardize web technologies to be used around the world. W3School is an effort by them to educate people in web development. W3Schools is exclusive to web-development, and you’ll find tutorials for almost any web technology or language in existance today. So if it’s web-development you’re looking for, then look no further!
4. Udacity
Udacity is an online virtual university. It surfaced less than an year ago, but the quality is like no other. Udacity offers many courses related to computer science, and other humanities subjects such as maths etc. Their first ever course, “Building a Python based Search Engine” caught the world’s attention (and mine :P), and it has been working as hard ever since. Although the number of their courses might be limited, it is only because they only just started. That is not to say they are amateurs. Not at all! In fact, one of their students landed a job at Google after attending their Artificial Intelligence class!
Udacity has a very interactive interface. Their videos are interactable, and they often have quizzes at the end of their videos. These quizzes are marked. You’ll be also given assignments and projects, all of which will contribute towards your final grade (which, by the way, you can improve by retaking a course as many times as you want). You can follow the courses at your own leisure, since they are just videos you can watch anytime. And the best part it, even though the classes are taught by highly qualified professors with lots of experience under their belt, they won’t charge you a single penny!
5. Dummies
This is another great book resource for programming and other technologies, just like O’Reilly media. They cover a lot of subjects as well, but their books are much more easier for beginners, although they do have advanced stuff as well. I love their books, and even though I don’t have many, I use the ones I do have a lot. They have a habit of calling their books “xyz for dummies”, with xyz being a technology or a language, for example “PHP for Dummies”. Don’t judge them by their cheeky names though. These are some of the best books you can find on the internet.
6. VTC
VTC is the first tutorial website I ever used. And I loved it for its simple, yet detailed video tutorials. The Virtual Training Company happens to be one of the oldest such companies. Like the rest, it also has programming and other computer-technologies related video tutorials. And one of the best ones you can find today.
7. TotalTraining
TotalTraining is a large training website that offers tutorials on a lot of topics including Abode products, Microsoft and Apple products, graphic design, web development, 3D animation, and more. I must admit I haven’t used this one, but I know many people who can vouch for its quality and integrity.
8. Wrox
A website dedicated to programming! If it’s a programming book I need to find, I will always go to Wrox after O’Reilly. The reason it is number 8th, and not number 3rd in our list is, it has somewhat of a limited scope. All the other offer quality tutorials on many, many subjects including programming. But it is more or less exclusive to just programming.
9. Digital Tutors
One of the best websites you’ll ever find regarding computer graphics. You can find almost every sort of training here, from software like 3Ds Max and Maya to graphic design and more.
10. Video Co-pilot
If you need to learn video editing, then look no further. Video Co-pilot is the largest, and the best website when it comes to photo and video editing. I’ve found that their video tutorials are filmed in HD, which can be problematic to download. But the quality is second to none!
That was our top 10 tutorial websites. Some of them might not be free, but you’ll find that they things you learn are worth more than the money you spend. I have tried many of them, and I can assure you that not one of them would be a waste of money or your time. These are things you won’t normally learn in your college or university. So stop wasting time, and educate yourself in something useful to earn more money! Good luck and stay blessed 🙂
Hi Qasim,
I have already used Lynda and W3Schools in the past and I can’t tell you how much useful they were, or I could just say whatever today I know is because of them. But now I am done with web designing, and recently I was just thinking to master in video editing, so now I am getting started with Video co-pilot, hope this will be useful as other sites on list, and thanks for sharing such a wonderful list.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Yes, video co-pilot is great! You’ll love it 🙂
I loved the Dummies website very much. It provides very easy guide and contains alot of guides.
Thanks Qasim!
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