A couple of weeks ago some friends of ours stopped by for lunch on their way home. I took them to one of my favorite sushi spots in town and we were discussing some projects we were working on. My friend is learning Photoshop for a new job she’s starting. She’s wasn’t taking a course at college, she was using a site called Lynda.com for her training. That caught my attention and I wanted to learn more.
Discovering Lynda.com
As you know, our goal is to have a location independent source of income that will allow us to pay our expenses and hopefully pay our mortgage down earlier. I thought this site might be helpful for me in speeding up my learning for Illustrator and Flash. Due to my schedule, I’ve been using books as a means of instructing myself. I’ve learned the basics, but I felt I needed to see the techniques visually so I could pick them up easier.
I went online and found some videos here and there, but nothing that worked well for me. When my friend mentioned Lynda.com, I decided to sign up and try it out. The price seemed extremely reasonable and it had all the lessons I was looking for. It seemed like a win-win for me.
Since I’ve been using it I thought I should do a brief review. There are CD/DVS for the courses you can take, but I’m just reviewing the online training courses today.
Who is Lynda.com For?
It’s a very competitive job market now, so staying on top of your industry’s software is essential. If you’re a small business or freelancer, it’s even more so. Your competition may be dropping prices to get more business, but if you can add substantial value to your work you can charge accordingly instead lowering your fees.
Here’s the company’s description from Indeed:
Since 1997, lynda.com has provided education and technical training solutions for designers, computer graphics specialists, digital media users, and computer owners. lynda.com products include web-based training, instructional books, CD- and DVD-based video training, self-paced online learning, and events for creative designers, instructors, students, and hobbyists. lynda.com specializes in teaching fundamental design and graphics principles along with the latest computer software, digital media technologies, and techniques.
While they seek to offer lessons to benefit anyone with a computer, I think the site especially excels in creative software instruction. The videos are broken down by topic, so it can help both beginners or professionals.
Membership Costs for Lynda.com
Lynda.com offers different online subscriptions, either a manageable monthly payment or a discounted annual payment. The online subscription gives you access to 700 training courses with approximately 44,000 instructional video lessons. According to the site, they add new courses on a weekly basis. I’ll include the costs and the benefits of each membership level.
- Monthly Subscription – $25.00/month
- Monthly Premium Subscription – $37.50/month
- Annual Subscription – $250.00/year
- Annual Premium Subscription – $375.00/year
Membership Subscription
This basic membership comes with access to all the programs online and support
Monthly Premium Subscription
It includes everything that the regular membership has, but you’ll all get all the exercise files that the instructors use in the lessons.
Annual Subscription
It includes everything that the regular membership has, but you save $50/year, which comes out to 2 free months.
Annual Premium Subscription
It’s the same as the monthly premium subscription, but you save $75/year, which comes out to 2 months free.
Courses Offered on Lynda.com
It would take up too much space to list all of the courses on Lynda.com, but I do want to highlight some major ones.
- Acrobat 10
- CSS
- Photoshop
- Dreamweaver
- Flash
- Joomla
- PHP
- Adobe CS5
- Illustrator
- ColdFusion 9
For those looking at improving their productivity at the office, there are also courses on Microsoft Office.
Good Investment for Creative Professionals
Some people are looking for something cheaper and they’re only brushing up on a very particular topic. I would recommend searching online and seeing if there are any videos on it. You may find some free help there. You should also go ahead to Lynda.com and check out the free access on some of the tutorials to see which works better for you.
I would definitely recommend the program to many in the creative field as its a comprehensive resource that they can access easily for a reasonable price. If you’re serious about improving your education on creative and office software, but don’t have the time and money to attend a course on campus, this is a really good deal for you.
Depending on how much time you can devote to a topic, you can pick up a new skill or master a program in a relatively short time. Check with your employer to see if they would reimburse you for the membership. It doesn’t hurt to ask. If they won’t then you may want to consider if you’ll increase your potential earnings enough with Lynda.com.
Thoughts on Lynda.com
How many of you are Lynda.com members? How many of you work part-time or full time in the creative industry? I’d also want to hear your stories on being a successful freelancer. What have you’ve found extremely helpful to growing your business?
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