Digital Marketing Courses

My view on education has changed over the years. Maybe 30 years ago simply having a degree from a top university put you to the top of a queue when going for a job. Nowadays people are becoming more over-educated and over-qualified.

Then the cliche becomes true of people that have many qualifications but are useless in the work environment, or certainly are once they start.

So taking all this on board I started to educate myself simply for the sake of learning and being able to do something practcial at the end of the learning. I also looked at the Digital Marketing Instittute. Thousands and thousands of euro per course.

When the idea of digital amrketing first popped into my head I discovered the website blackhatworld.com which has its roots in the shady side of Internet Marketing, IM. However coming in as a beginner I found one course on udemy that was produced my a member on there on building an Amazon Affiliate site. 18.5 hours of lectures and I got it for $20. It is currently available for €12.

https://www.udemy.com/seo-complete-guide-to-building-amazon-affiliate-sites/

This course was incredible and I have rewatched the videos on it many times. It is done by a guy from India who many members on blackhatworld vouched for.

Education, like many things, filmmaking for example, has been democratised. 50 or 100 years ago knowledge was an asset, it was almsot pricelss and it was stored in books, housed in libraries in elitest universities. Now thisinformation is available to anyone via the internet.

So on udemy you now have experts prducing courses for €10 to €20. Often they are not experts in an academic sense, we often do not know their qualifications, but they have become experts in their niche. They can show you how to do something.

Another example is photoshop, courses can be €200 a weekend, or €400-€500 a week, you can pick up 3 of those courses on udemy for maybe €60 and probably learn at least 90% of the other courses. Note I havent done photoshop courses.

Of course there are a lot of scammers on udemy selling junk, but the ratings syrem help and at €10 a course whats the worst that can happen.

So if you look at the detailed syllabus of a Digital Marketing Instuite course you can see the modules they cover.

Then simply go onto udemy and find the best course in that specific area. Dont buy general courses, for example I bought a general digital marketing one and it ony scracthed the surface.

I look at the the reviews, course breakdown, and length of time of videos.

So go for the 16 hour one solely on Facebook, if you are interested in that. I have this one and it seems great, Im not a Facebook expert.

https://www.udemy.com/facebook-advertising/

And a good tip is to speed up the video to 2X the speed and you will fly thrugh them

I storngly recommend the amazon affialiate one. Also read the stickies on blackhat. I can send some more information later on if you like.

This turned into a bit of a rant, but udemy/blackhat are incredible resources.

I am now spending my spare time working on my own websites as a long term plan, I hope within 2 years I could be living off them full time or at worst have learned enough to do SEO/IM for other companies.

CamillaRhodes wrote: »

Facebook has a free online training programme called Blueprint. (Taking the courses is totally free, but certification costs $$$) https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/courses

Pretty sure Google has one too.

IMO (I work in digital marketing for one of these big american tech firms), if you had fully completed the Facebook and Google programmes, and had experience running your own FB and Google ad campaigns (for a friend's small business, for example, doesn't have to be spending a huge amount of money - just enough to have 'hands on' experience) this would be just as impressive or more so than a digital marketing qualification from a private college.

https://www.wearesquared.com is a Google backed digital marketing course.

I had a similar experience and can second what lumysilver stayed in another post. Outside the outrageous cost of the course, they only give you 6 months to access the material. The idea of an online course sounds very appealing, however you’re better off to sign up for a similar night time course at a reputable institute with a normal passing mark of 40%. Only after I signed up I found out that the passing mark was 60%, which is completely unattainable. Don’t believe the reviews below from fake users that the DMI created trying to lure ppl in by saying the exam is a breeze. It’s not!!!! It’s well covered up money racket, complete waste of your time, resources and energy!! There are 184 questions in the multiple choice exam but you need to pick two correct answers out of four, if one is wrong then it’s counted as incorrect. Many questions are so ambiguous that any answer can be correct depending on how you look at it. Also, many questions are long-winded paragraphs of text, it’s ridiculous! Many questions consist of 4-5-6 questions, you need to answer ALL of them correctly or you get no credit for the question. So if you take this into account, there are around 250 questions in total. Examples in quizzes are straightforward and only a few of them will appear at the exam. Most questions are tricky and confusing, and I believe this is intentional so not to pass people. To resit the exam would cost you €60 each time, you can only resit twice. They failed me twice, first time and during the resit, the result was a couple of % below 60%, which would nearly give you Honours at any normal institute but not this one. Here they failed me.
The content is based on what you can easily find on Google and marketing blogs, don’t expect to learn much! So folks invest your money and resources wisely, and run from this institute!!

@tinpib 100% agree with you. I am a self-learned digital marketer, and I followed so many resources online and gained knowledge from them. I started in 2012, and am still learning new things everyday. I would suggest everyone to start following some great resources available online, and join facebook groups. It helps to gain knowledge as well as network with the community of other marketers. Most of the good digital marketers have a blog, or a youtube channel where they give out free information about online marketing! If you want more details on my personal favourites, you can ping on messaging.