7 Free Online Courses BUT They're as Good as Paid Ones

Stop throwing away your money on overpriced courses, certificates, certifications, boot camps, and degrees. Today, I'm going to be showing you how to get better education for as little as $0. And all of these other players in the education industry want you to believe that expensive equals quality. And that is absolute nonsense. Now, this is coming from someone who went over 300,000 in student loan debt to get their doctorate. And I've spent hundreds of thousands of extra dollars on online education. And I've overseen thousands of people spending money on boot camps and all of these different types of education. And so I've tested both the free and the paid options. And I have a really good idea of what the best is. And the results will shock you. Some of the best courses cost nothing while expensive programs deliver trash. And many of these universities, boot camps, or course creators are getting rich, selling you information that you can get for free. But today, I'm going to be revealing seven completely free courses that destroy paid alternatives. And real companies use these for training. Real people get hired from these programs and you won't pay a single penny. And I'm also going to explain to you why this actually is because you might be thinking this is too good to be true. Well, the companies that release these free courses actually have a lot to gain by doing it. And I'll show you exactly what I mean. Now, by the way, quick obligatory disclaimer. The salary figures I mentioned come from sources like Glass Door. These are average estimates, not guarantees. And your actual salary can vary depending on your experience, location, or the company that you work for, as well as many other factors. So, use these numbers as a general guide, not a promise of what you'll earn. And as always, make sure you do your own research. But first, if you appreciate me making this type of content, let me know by gently tapping that like button. And I also want to tell you that certificates, certifications, and online courses are great. But if you want to have recruiters, hiring managers, and business owners reaching out to you to hire you, what you want to do is create content. You want to build your online presence and build a personal brand online. And up until recently, that has been very difficult to do. It would take tens of hours a week. So, it's almost like having a second job. And that's why for one time only, I will be inviting you to our live workshop. All right, quick break, guys. This week I'm going to be hosting a free live workshop that's going to be designed to help you grow and make money on YouTube. So click the link in the description below to check out when that will be happening. And at this workshop I'm going to be giving away my brand new tool, the Niche Validator Pro 2.0.5 completely free. This is a powerful GPT driven tool that I've been working on and it's been trained on thousands of hours of my teaching, my philosophy, and coaching sessions. And with it, you can uncover hidden profitable YouTube niches and generate viral content ideas with just one click. and I'm going to be giving it away for this one time only at the workshop. So, make sure you show up. Click the link in the description or the pin comment below. And when you're done registering, make sure to click on add this to your calendar. So, it'll show up in your Google or Outlook calendar so you won't miss a chance to grab this free AI tool. Now, you'll also be able to ask me questions live. So, I look forward to meeting you. See you this week on the live workshop. Click that link in the description in the pin comment below to sign up and make sure you put it in your calendar. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming. All right. Course number one is the free code camp responsive web design and really just anything from free code camp. Now free code camp is a phenomenal company. I think they've helped hundreds of thousands of people get jobs and like the name suggests they've done it for free. Now I picked this particular course, the responsive web design course, cuz I think it's one of the better ones when it comes to the reviews and I think it's also perfect for beginners who want to learn web development. Now here's what you get. Modern HTML 5 and CSS. You learn flexbox and grid, plus accessibility and responsive layouts. But here's the best part. It's 100% project-based. You don't just watch videos. You build five real projects, a survey form, and a tribute page. Real stuff for your portfolio. And you get to show these on code pen or GitHub. And the community is huge. There is a forum and a Discord for help. And it's completely self-paced. Now, why is this as good as paid courses? Three reasons. First, employers want portfolios. This forces you to build five real projects. Second, there's actual proof that this works. People get hired from this course. Like this guy for instance, he said, "I took the responsive web design path and landed my first developer job without even applying." And third, no payw wall means you can focus your money on hosting and domains instead. And front-end developers make between 76 to $136,000 a year. And that's according to Glass Door. So yeah, free Code Camp in general, I'm going to give them a 9 out of 10. They have gotten a ton of people jobs and they get a massive amount of money from donations every year and companies will actually hire people through free code camp because they'll basically tell companies which their best students are. So yeah, really good one. Course two, Google digital garage fundamentals of digital marketing. Now Google has a bunch of amazing free courses out there and one of their platforms that's really good is Google's Digital Garage and they have some really amazing marketing courses. And by the way, this isn't just Google Digital Garage. Google has a ton of free courses and even free certificates and certifications out there. And a lot of the time, companies will actually insist that you're Google certified if you're running Google Ads, for instance. Now, Google and many of the other companies on this list benefit from the fact that you're actually using their platform because you could be running ads on Facebook or Meta. You could be running ads on Instagram. You could be running ads on Google, Tik Tok, many other competitors. But they want you to be running ads on Google for obvious reasons cuz that's how they make money. And so they actually benefit tremendously for giving these courses away and these certificates and certifications away for completely free. And in this one, you get 26 modules covering everything SEO, SEM, analytics, content marketing, social media, and it takes about 40 hours total to go through. And there are videos, readings, and quizzes, plus a final assessment. And when you're done, you get an official Google certificate. And this is vendor official content. That means it maps directly to the tools that companies actually use. And the 40hour scope matches what you'd get in a paid intro course. And according to Glass Door, digital marketing specialists make between 56 and $96,000 a year. So yeah, I'm going to give this one a very solid 9.5 out of 10. It's Google authored and recognized. And unlike the free code camp, it actually gives you a certificate that many companies actually require to hire you. All right, course number three is HubSpot Academy content marketing certification or HubSpot courses in general because they have a lot of really good ones. So, this one focuses on content strategy and planning and you learn audience research, editorial planning, SEO basics, and how to measure your results. And you get video lessons, quizzes, and downloadable templates. Now, why is HubSpot giving away such an amazing course for free? Well, HubSpot is a CRM or a customer relationship management software and they want many people to be as familiar as possible with using HubSpot. So, their training is going to center around using HubSpot features. And many companies out there use HubSpot as a CRM, especially smaller startups. And so, it benefits them tremendously to put out these free courses for people because then people get familiar with HubSpot. They start using it more and more. And then companies get more familiar with it because the people are familiar with it. And it's just this virtual cycle of companies and workers being more and more familiar with HubSpot and therefore making it easier for them to use it and for them to recommend it to other people. And the certificate is verifiable and it comes with a badge. And hiring managers actually look for this one because there are many companies out there that use HubSpot. Now, why is this as good as a paid course? Well, it's a brand recognized credential. The content maps directly to real job tasks like creating personas and topic clusters and you get templates that mirror what paid courses give you. And this person wrote on the HubSpot blog that this landed me my dream job in a digital role. And according to Glass Door, content marketing specialists make between 66 and $112,000 a year. So yeah, I'm going to rate this one an 8.5 out of 10. I think it's really good. I like HubSpot as a company a lot. I think they put out a lot of amazing free content. For instance, I really love it when they put out their yearly marketing statistics blog, and I think it's really great for the right type of person. With that being said, if you want to learn a lot more about how to actually use content and combine it with AI in such a way where it doesn't become a full-time job for you, and this is going to be great for you, whether you want to get your dream job, build your personal brand online, start a side hustle, start a business, or even scale an existing business, get a lot more clients for your existing business, then definitely attend my live training down in the description and the pin comment below. I look forward to seeing you there. All right, course number four is the Odin Project. Now, this one is very similar to Free Code Camp. A lot of people prefer Odin Project over Free Code Camp, though. And a lot of people prefer Free Code Camp over Odin Project. It's one of those things where I would just honestly check them out. And it also probably depends on what type of career path you're trying to go down. Now, Odin Project and Free Code Camp are as good as some boot camps because they're very project heavy and you build a real portfolio. And the success wall shows actual hires. And again, front-end developers make about 69 to $17,000 a year. The downside of the Odin project is it's probably not very well respected when it comes to credentials, but from all accounts, the training is top tier and the community is really good as well. And I would probably just do a little bit of research between this one and free code camp depending on what type of coding you want to get into and basically just see what people are saying online about that type of coding and which class would be best for you to take. So, yeah, not going to go into this one too much, but I'm going to give it an 8 out of 10 opportunity score. All right, course number five is the Harvard CS50X Introduction to Computer Science. Now this is a world famous course. It's offered by Harvard of course and it has recently been updated as well. And in this course you learn C, Python, SQL and web development. And this is the same exact course that Harvard graduates, people who get computer science degrees at Harvard, they take the same course. And so you're getting a Harvard Ivy League education for completely free. And they give you the assignments too, right? You're able to take problem sets, for instance. And these problem sets are challenging and the production value is incredible. Now, it takes 10 to 12 weeks at 6 to 18 hours per week, and you can go through self-paced if you'd like, or you can accelerate and go faster. And this gives you elite university rigor for free. And additionally, you get strong fundamentals and algorithms and data structures. And most paid boot camps skip this stuff. And there's a huge community for support. And people on Reddit say CS50 got me a job by accident, and they started as a software developer well above their area's average salary. And according to Glass Door, software engineers make between 118 to $187,000 a year. And that's the highest on the list. And I rate this one a nine out of 10. I think it's phenomenal. And I do think it gives you sort of like a baseline for computer science knowledge that is going to be a little deeper than some of the surface level stuff that you're going to learn in some of these ones that are designed to get you a career. You kind of understand like the deeper level stuff, which is kind of what college is supposed to do for you. So yeah, solid 9 out of 10. Really like this one. The next one is the Microsoft learn Azour fundamentals. Now, Azour is a cloud platform that Microsoft put out and there are basically three big cloud platforms right now that are all vying for cloud dominance and that is Azour, AWS from Amazon, which is Amazon Web Services and Google. And whoever rules the cloud pretty much rules the world. No, seriously, the cloud is massive right now. And that's why companies like Amazon have basically pivoted to put their attention on it. And basically what the cloud allows you to do is store information without having a physical place to store it. It's all stored in the cloud. But with the cloud, if it's done correctly, you're also able to access that information very easily, even though it's still secure. Now, again, the reason that Microsoft is putting this out for free, even though it's very high quality, is because of market share, right? They want more people to be using Microsoft Azour. They want to make it as easy as possible for people to use it because that's going to help them take over the market, right? So, they benefit tremendously from putting out this super highquality free course. Now you get modular lessons with quizzes and sandbox demos and it's self-paced and it's built by Microsoft themselves and this is vendor official content right so it aligns directly with the real certification blueprint and many employers especially Microsoft partners actually required theseerts and someone on Reddit said once I got a few Azure certifications I started getting more job offers and I've tripled my income in 3 years and that's what getting really familiar with the cloud can do for you because cloud support engineers make between 110 to $164,00 000 a year according to Glass Door and some cloud jobs make a lot more than that. So overall, I'm going to give this one an 8.5 out of 10. I think it's really good. I do think it kind of pigeon holes you in one specific type of cloud platform, which is great if the company you're applying to uses Microsoft services or uses Azor, but it's not that good if they don't. All right, next course. Course number seven is the IBM cognitive class Python for data science. Now, this one is extremely niche, but I do think IBM puts out some really good free or very affordable courses online. And in this, you're going to learn Python syntax and data structures, plus basic analysis skills. And it's all through Jupiterbased labs. And it takes about 18 hours total, so it doesn't take that long to get through. And you get hands-on labs and final exercises, plus an IBM badge that you can add to LinkedIn. And over 414,000 people have enrolled with a 4.7 out of five star rating. And this is IBMbacked content, right? And Jupyter Lab mirrors tools that you would use in real data jobs. And it's short enough that beginners can finish fast. And it's always a good sign when you have a sharable badge because that's basically a way for recruiters, hiring managers, etc. to find you because believe it or not, they do actually search people up through LinkedIn with these. So yeah, this one I really like. Again, very specific. Obviously, most people watching this video probably don't want to learn how to use Python in conjunction with data science. But if you're in the right type of situation, this can be an invaluable skill set because data science is super valuable. And then if you learn how to automate things with Python, that's even more valuable. So, this one's really good, but it's also extremely specific, too. I'm going to give it an 8 out of 10, but you know, it's not going to be an 8 out of 10, and instead it's going to be a 10 out of 10. My free training, check it out in the description and the pin comment below. Look forward to seeing you there. And also check out this video right here where I go over a bunch of either free or very lowcost certificates and certifications. If none of these appeal to you and you want more options,