I’m not sure if others are like me but sometimes when I have a spare hour or two I like to learn new things, try tutorials on things I need help on. I take tutorials on things that I do for my business, css, photoshop, seo, flash etc.. Years ago a friend recommended I try Lynda.com for this type of thing.

Lynda.com is a pay for use site. Currently the monthly fee is 25.99 for the bare minimum courses, which are substantial and really well worth it. I was getting it for $19.99 when I signed up and they never raised it when prices increased. Lynda.com is a great site with excellent video tutorials. These tutorials are not just about website design type courses but also things like creativity, blogging, digital photography, print design, video and so much more. Videos are high quality and broken up in too shorter “chapter” so you don’t have to commit to watching a several hour long tutorial but instead can take them in parts, some are very substantial. The monthly service is the basic fee for the videos the only thing you won’t get is class files, such as if I took a graphics design class I wouldn’t get the class files like images to work along with on the tutorial, hardly a big deal.  Up until a couple weeks ago I had been a member for probably 2-3 years, I just recently cancelled my membership not because of anything they did or didn’t provide but because another option came up.

CreativeEdge.com-I saw a tweet talking about this site and decided to head over and check it out. Creative Edge is like lynda.com but has something else I was looking for and didn’t even know it. Creative Edge offers books online too so I get two options for learning. I would have to say Creative Edge is definitely more technical related, towards, web design, photography, etc.. but not to say that exclusively what they offer. I’ve seen books such as Wii Fit for Dummies, iPod Itunes pocket guide, etc.

I decided to give up my lynda.com membership and try out CreativeEdge.com. Their current monthly membership is $19.99. So far I’m enjoying it, the only draw back I’ve found so far is if you use a book for tutorial and the book in real life came with a cd you don’t get to see those items, which again if you’re doing a Photoshop tutorial you don’t get to work on the same thing as the tutorial. I’m still trying it out but the amount I will save on buying books should be worth it.

I would recommend both of these sites for excellent material and quality service.