Our Favorite Online Entrepreneur Classes and How to Pick One

Are you looking for online entrepreneur classes?

Well, come on in friends. Grab a cup of tea and sip while we talk about how to find the best online entrepreneur classes.

Education is one of the most important parts of being an online entrepreneur, and this is true whether you’re just getting started or seasoned in the business. And, education comes from a number of sources, all the way from friends, mentors, and online courses that teach you a specific skill set to FORMAL education from people who make a living actually teaching.

Fortunately, there are a ton of ways to find online entrepreneur classes that will help you with whatever specific skill you need to learn for your business.

Our favorite online entrepreneur classes for 2020

Facebook Side Hustle Course

Skill learned: Facebook ads – how to manage, create, improve, and make bank off them

Price: $497

This class is top on our list for obvious reasons… it’s our baby. But, it’s good for you because it teaches you profitable digital marketing skills that can be used to build a solo agency or drive traffic to your existing business.

One of the best parts of this class is that you get exclusive access to our private coaching community. It’s a nice little family where everyone chats and where there are live trainings on client acquisition, new updates to Facebook, and shoulders to cry on when things are not going all that well for you.

This class is updated when Facebook updates, and your one-time purchase entitles you to all of those updates.

Facebook Ads for Bloggers

Skill learned: Using Facebook ads to build a blog audience and drive traffic

Price: $397

Another one of our classes — because we know it works! This class teaches you the exact strategy that our very own Bobby Hoyt (aka Millennial Money Man) used to drive traffic to his site when it was a brand new baby blog. And it took him from 0 to 2,000,000+ unique visitors in just 36 months.

That means increased ad revenue, affiliate income, being able to demand more for sponsored posts, selling more digital products, your own courses, etc. This class can be used by newbie bloggers to more seasoned ones.

Launch That Blog

Skill learned: How to create a blog from the ground up

Price: ZERO! NADA! GRATIS!

Launch That Blog isn’t technically an online class, but it does teach you a ton of stuff about successfully setting up your own blog — so definitely worth a shout! PLUS there’s a bunch of cool things that happen when you sign up. Here’s a quick overview of the stuff you get:

Launch That Blog will handle the entire installation process of your self-hosted WordPress blog and deliver it to you within two business days so that you can get up and running quickly, with none of the tech headaches.
Launch That Blog will install our favorite customizable website theme and give you training materials to help you make it look professional from day one.
Launch That Blog will install the 10 essential plugins that every professional blog needs to have
Launch That Blog will also send you 4 training resources — both video and PDF guides — that will show you exactly how to get a strong start and make money from your blog.
And you’ll get a FREE domain (free for the first year) and exclusive monthly hosting rates through Bluehost

For more blogging courses, check out 17 Free Blogging Courses That Will Blow Up Your Blog.

Pinterest Virtual Assistant Course

Skill learned: How to manage Pinterest effectively for clients (not just for pretty stuff)

Price: $799 or 2 monthly payments of $479

Whether you’re looking to become a Pinterest VA or want to learn more for your own Pinterest strategy, this class is packed full of valuable information. When you sign up for this class with Gina and Kristin, you get a bunch of live training, a constantly updated course, client help, an exclusive group on Facebook, and a pretty great support network that will teach you all of the ins and outs of managing Pinterest (and managing clients and their expectations).

The best part is that you aren’t just learning a new skill and then being set free. The class creators help you through every step of the way, even after you’ve got clients and are totally rolling in the VA dough.

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

Skill learned: How to use affiliate marketing effectively

Price: $197

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of Making Sense of Cents created this class to teach bloggers how to start and increase a steady stream of affiliate income, from growing your blog to finding affiliates.

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing goes over all of the essentials and then some. You’ll learn about how to choose an affiliate partner, how to get the most bang for your partnership, how to increase your audience and your conversions, and way too many other things to list here.

As a side note, some people might think less of affiliate marketing because it has, in the past, been something that bloggers snuck into writing to make a few bucks. This course will teach you how not to do that and still make some cash.

You can read our full course review at Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review.

Making Sense of Sponsored Posts

Skill learned: How to use and write awesome sponsored content (that doesn’t jeopardize the quality of your blog)

Price: $159

This is another one of Michelle’s courses, and like Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, we love it because it teaches you how to not be a sellout. That’s because if you’re going to do sponsored content, it should truly be:

Relevant to your blog and its content
Useful to the audience you’ve cultivated
Worth the time it made you to make the sponsored post
Should provide some amount of recurring, “passive” income

And of course, this class is not going to skimp on any of that information at all. Part of posting good sponsored content is making sure it resonates with your audience because as soon as a cold or even lukewarm audience sees that you’re trying to sell them something, they’ll often fall off the map.

Michelle will teach you how to make sure that doesn’t happen. She actually teaches you how to use sponsored content to grow your audience. You’ll also be invited to her Mastermind group, get some templates for reaching out to companies, some advice on how to construct landing pages, and how to keep the money juices flowin’.

Learn more in our Making Sense of Sponsored Posts Course Review.

Where else you can go to learn more about being an online entrepreneur

Where can’t you learn about entrepreneurship? With such ample access to resources these days, you’re bound to stumble into it with a simple Google search. There are tons of options and tons of ways to get started. Here are a few, but by no means is this comprehensive.

Read our blog article on becoming an online entrepreneur
Take courses online from credible online institutions, like EDX and Alison
Talk to your successful online entrepreneur friends & family
Join a tribe of like-minded individuals through Facebook Groups
Get yourself a mentor (PS – a lot of folks will BE mentors for free, or at least offer good advice)
Read books and articles
Read about others’ success stories (everyone has one if they’re making cash online, we promise)
Leap into that unknown river and learn as you go like our well-loved but insane Bobby did

Beware of these things when looking into online entrepreneur classes

There is a lot of good and real information out there, but the truth is that if you throw a rock in the internet, you’ll probably hit someone claiming that they can teach you how to become an entrepreneur. But, not everyone is in it for you to win it, and it’s important to take a step back before investing time and money into business education. Even if it’s only ten bucks. Because that ten bucks can buy you your favorite drink at Starbucks.

Here’s how to pick an online entrepreneur class:

There should be success stories.

If the people taking the class aren’t using that information to take action and do something, that could be a significant red flag. While it’s not expected that some or even most takers actually take the leap, someone should. If you can’t find any testimonials or reviews from successful students, that’s probably a sign to look somewhere else.

Successful classes will happily display proof that their material works — it’s something to be proud of, after all.

Too much shiny, not enough content.

Sometimes a course looks really beautiful from head to toe. The camera work is great, the videos are great, the transitions are amazing, the slideshows are pretty. This isn’t ALWAYS an indicator that something isn’t worth doing, but it can be. Pouring a bunch of resources into making something glitter does not make it gold, so just double-check with a good twice-over.

Your expert teacher/instructor/sensei has been where you’ve been.

The best classes are designed by people that have been in your shoes. That entrepreneur class may be OWNED by a company or business, but the person PRESENTING in the videos needs to have seen what you’re facing. Not only does it make it more relatable — meaning you’ll listen better and learn more — but it means that they have some skin in the game.

You know what you’re gonna get.

“LOTS OF MONEY!” sounds tempting, but it doesn’t really explain what you’re going to get. “LEADS!” and “PRETTY WOMEN!” are similar in this regard. So I’m going to get lots of pretty girls by taking this course — got it. How? When? Do I have to do anything? Do I have to smell a certain way?

If the course description does not tell you what you expect to learn and what your takeaway should be, raise an eyebrow.

For example, check out this Udemy course on building passive income. Check out the second header that tells you what you’ll learn. There are even some bullet points telling you how many hours of content you’ll get for the low low price of zero dollars. That’s clear, that’s easy to understand, and that’s what you’re looking for: transparency.

One of our recommended courses, the Pinterest VA course, also does this incredibly well and includes a comprehensive, transparent FAQ section at the bottom.

Resources for even more online entrepreneur classes

We mentioned our favorite classes above, but for those of you who want to learn more, here are a couple of really quality websites. Note that a lot of entrepreneur classes don’t actually help you learn a particular skill, but rather how to act, feel, and “become” an online entrepreneur. Some people learn this naturally. If you aren’t one of those people, go listen to a few of these classes.

A word of wisdom…

These websites are wonderful if you’re a little shy about dipping your toe in the water — after all, the internet is a pretty gigantic ocean, so feeling some hesitation is totally okay.

But if you’re looking for SPECIFIC online entrepreneur classes, really explore the stuff we mentioned above.

Most importantly, don’t let what you consider a “lack of knowledge” stop you from succeeding. You may fail at first. It’s cool. Try again with the knowledge you learned. You don’t need to arm yourself with every piece of information you can find. Some of it you’ll learn a lot faster along the way.

EDX – EDX is a very popular platform for online classes. Their classes are a mixture of free, cheap, and questionably expensive. The reviews and video platform is fantastic.

RYOB – Most of RYOB’s classes cost money, but there is a mixture of classes, courses, and even certifications here.

Harvard – Yep, Harvard has their own set of free classes you can take. Most of the free classes are pre-recorded from Harvard professors, but they’re comprehensive with chat, homework, classwork, and more.

Coursera – This is one of the flagship online class platforms, and it’s still great to this day. Coursera does offer some paid courses, and some hybrid offline/online classes and their platform is fantastic and well-established. You can even earn your MBA online through Coursera for a fraction of the price that it would cost you to do it at a university.

Alison – Far from a new player but also not as old as some of the others, Alison focuses more in business and marketable skills and trades. They also offer courses in a number of different languages too.

Final thoughts on online entrepreneur classes

You win some, you lose some, you gain some free education, and you win some more. Any online entrepreneur class that’s credible is going to help you become a more successful entrepreneur — offline and online. So when you’re ready to learn more and level up your business, check out the classes in this list and go crush it.