Is Lynda.com Worth The Money?

One of the many concerns for people who are interested in learning about online business and marketing is that they want to learn from the experts AND they don’t want to be scammed. So I went out to search for this type of training and found a decent one called Lynda.com. What can the tutors offer and is lynda.com actually worth the money? Let’s find out more in this review.

What’s Inside Lynda.com?

Lynda.com is an online learning platform that offers courses primarily in industries that use digital technology such as website design, business marketing, and software development. To get started, you just need to create an account, enter your payment information and you can access the training immediately. 

Each course is conducted by a professional belonging to that field and classes are delivered through video and text presentation. Here’s how the learning interface would look like.

On the left-hand column are the subtopics of the course and you can easily scroll down to have an overview of what you would be learning. Below the video, you’ll find the overview of the course, the transcript, the downloading feature and tutorial attachment (if available).  

When selecting a course, you could either use the library search and key in terms like ‘online marketing’ OR click on the subject tags that you think are most relevant to the course category.

How Much Does It Cost?

Lynda.com is a membership learning platform, but they do offer a free trial for 10 days for both the Standard and Premium package. Here are the differences between the pricing plans.  

What I Like About Lynda.com

Having taken a few courses with them, here are the features that I like about the site.

1. The library offers a lot of subjects in many areas of technology (not just online marketing). Therefore, it’s useful if you want to cross learn other topics using the same platform.
2. The user interface is easy to navigate and the course presentations are of good quality and filled with professionalism.
3. I personally like the download feature because it allows me to truly learn at my own pace without having to rely on a Wifi connection. This is helpful to fill up my time while commuting to work.
4. Lynda.com is purely an educational platform and you won’t find any up-selling or promotion being pushed to you.
5. Although there are no fixed modules, Lynda has designed a system called the ‘Learning Path’ that combines a series of courses to help you get started. In your case, these learning paths are probably the most relevant. Some of these examples are; 

• Become a Small Business Owner (14 hours of video tutorials)
• Become an SEO Expert (18 hours)
• Become a Content Marketer (9 hours)
• Become a Digital Marketer (23 hours)

What I Don’t Like About The Courses

1) As much as I like the quality of the course, Lynda is more of a one-way learning platform. Very lecture-oriented, if you will. There are no discussion boards between the tutors and the students. Most importantly, there are very minimal tasks for students to take action.

That means you can spend 18 hours learning about SEO and still have no idea how to apply in the real settings of online marketing. This is not to say that you don’t have the initiatives, but when you are subjected to action-based learning, you’ll be able to see results and progress faster than just listening to video tutorials.

2) Much to my disappointment, some of the training materials point me to other online resources that aren’t up-to-date. It makes me wonder if the tutors are making an effort to improve on their overall course content.

3) Some fundamental topics are really basic information that you can actually obtain for free on the internet. So it seems somewhat pointless to be paying $34.99/month for a premium membership to acquire this knowledge.   

So, Is Lynda.com Worth The Money?

Lynda is one of the legitimate learning platforms out there so if you are a beginner, entering the world of online business and marketing, it’s a pretty good (and safe) place to acquire all the fundamentals.

However, as mentioned earlier, you’ll only get theory for the price you pay for a yearly premium membership which is about $359. In that aspect, I don’t think Lynda.com is worth the money if you are thinking about long term benefits.

For the SAME amount, you can actually get better training at Wealthy Affiliate. They have been around for more than 10 years and actively churning out successful online entrepreneurs. Their robust platform contains a lot of action-based learning that will help you to achieve the following;

• Build your own WordPress website (plus hosting service)
• Find a profitable niche for your online business
• Master the art of keyword research and getting ranked online
• Grow targeted traffic for your business
• Earn your first dollar online 🙂

In a nutshell, it offers more tools, resources AND community support that Lynda lacks.

So, if you are someone who wants to learn and see yourself performing as a result, then I highly recommend that you check out their program by following the link above. I’ll also be in the training area if you need any help. Hope to talk to you soon.

Have any thoughts or questions? Feel free to leave them in the comment area and I’ll be happy to respond.

You might also want to read;

Is Affilorama Worthy of Your Time

Where To Buy Your First Domain Name

Places to Learn Affiliate Marketing Online