5 Valuable Skillshare Classes to Increase Your Income
Check out these 5 Skillshare classes that could introduce you to exciting (and lucrative) career paths.
Table of Contents
These days, there are more career options than ever. Jobs like Data Visualization Analyst, Social Media Manager, and Machine Learning Engineer didn’t even exist 10 years ago—and what’s even cooler is that many of these career paths pay high salaries. But while many people might want to explore new careers, it can feel extremely hard to get started. What skills do you need for these jobs, and where do you even begin? Luckily, Skillshare offers classes in a huge variety of subjects—everything from iPhone app development to marketing strategy. And even though taking one of these classes won’t get you a six-figure job right away (many of these career paths take years of disciplined study and practice), they’ll help you build a solid foundation and can serve as a great first step to see if certain careers are right for you.
Who knows? You may discover your next calling.
5 Skillshare Classes That Will Help You Gain Value
1. Web Development Fundamentals: HTML and CSS
Career Path it Could Lead to: Front-End Engineer
This course is the perfect introduction for folks who want to become more familiar with web development. You’ll learn and practice the languages HTML and CSS, which work with each other to create the visual design of a website. The instructor, Christopher Dodd, is a self-taught web developer, so he makes concepts easy to grasp for even total beginners. If you’ve been interested to learn about web development, this class is the perfect way to dip your toes in the water without diving in completely.
What would you do as a front-end engineer?
What does the website that lets you order cookies at 3am have in common with the program that lets NASA engineers analyze the navigational vectors of rockets? They both have a complicated “back end” that sorts and manipulates data, and they both have a “front-end” layer that allows someone to actually use it.
The front-end engineer’s job, simply put, is to build the front end of the website! Buttons, scroll bars, popups, text boxes, color selections, pictures—if the user can click, read, drag, drop, or otherwise interact with it, it’s probably contained within the occupational wheelhouse of the front-end developer.
The tricky part is that the front-end engineer needs to write code that effectively communicates with the data-intensive processes happening on the back end. Think of a website as a car: the back end is like the engine, with the average user not really having much of an idea what the heck is going on. The front end is like the wheel, the dashboard, and the pedals—it’s the part of the car that lets the average person drive. Front-end developers build the part of the website that lets average people use the website.
How much money could you make?
The average salary for front-end engineers is $76,929 per year.
Learn Web Development Fundamentals
Everything You Didn't Realize You Wanted to Know.
2. Making Your Business Memorable: Real-Time Marketing Strategies
Career Path it Could Lead to: Marketing Director
If you’re looking to build a solid foundation in marketing, look no further than this course. Instructor Ekaterina Walker is a thought leader in marketing and innovation and the co-founder and CMO of marketing agency Branderati. In this extensive workshop, you’ll learn how to “do purposeful, effective, and smart real-time marketing, no matter the size and scope of your business.” With just over an hour of video content, plenty of case studies, and a project that’ll let you apply course concepts to a real-world business, this class is a must-watch for both aspiring CMOs as well as career-changers who want to see if marketing’s right for them.
What would you do as a Marketing Director?
The main questions of marketing are as old as humanity itself: how do we send a message that inspires people to take action? Whether you’re asking people to buy your Bluetooth nose hair trimmer, or you’re rallying villagers to war, marketing gets the job done. As a Director or VP of Marketing, you’d be leading an entire company’s marketing strategy: leading a team, determining which channels are most effective at acquiring users, and overseeing the budget for those channels. You’d also be managing digital ad campaigns, working on SEO strategies, email marketing campaigns, social media channels, and copywriting tactics, as well as steering the company’s general branding and positioning strategies. Perhaps most critically, a Director of Marketing needs to have a solid foundation in marketing tactics and an innate understanding of what methods a company’s users will respond to.
How much money could you make?
The average salary for a Director of Marketing is $107,332 per year.
Do Purposeful, Effective and Smart Real-Time Marketing
Get a Solid Foundation of Marketing
3. Mobile Development: The Complete iOS Developer Course
Career Paths it Could Lead to: Mobile Engineer
Any mobile-engineer-to-be will benefit from this soup-to-nuts overview of mobile development. At 21 hours, the course is long, but it will give you hands-on experience building real apps that highlight a variety of key mobile development concepts. App development veterans will also share how to monetize your apps and build a profitable business. It’s a real “learn by doing” experience, and at the end of it, you may even be able to land an entry-level or freelance mobile developer gig.
What would you do as a Mobile Engineer?
We all love our phones. And because of that simple fact, companies are hard at work coming up with new ways for us to consume mobile content—be it video, music, games, or articles. The heroes who create these bite-sized smartphone apps are mobile engineers.
Mobile engineers face a lot of the same problems that traditional software engineers grapple with, except they’re more concerned with how the mobile medium affects a user’s experience. And because mobile engagement is growing at an astounding rate, good mobile engineers are in crazy high demand. Whether it’s Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, or the millions of other programs that aren’t primarily concerned with exchanging selfies, mobile apps and the people who build them are key to our 21st-century economy and culture.
How much money could you make?
The average salary for a Mobile Engineer is $96,016 per year.
How to Become an Mobile App Developer
Sharpen Your Skills
4. Intro to UX: Fundamentals of Usability
Career Path it Could Lead to: UX Designer
If you’re looking to peek into the world of UX Design, look no further than Intro to UX: Fundamentals of Usability. Marieke McCloskey (the Director of Research at user experience research platform User Testing), provides a deep dive into usability, including “what it means, why it matters, and how you can optimize your product, service, or business.”
The class is only 90 minutes long, and by the end, you’ll have the frameworks, skills, and strategies to design an A+ user experience. A perfect starting point for any UX Designer in the making.
What would you do as a UX Designer?
If you’ve ever clicked “checkout” on a website—a website which then brings you to nine different pages before finally asking you to enter your credit card information, upon which a popup informs you that, actually, the product you wanted in the first place is out of stock—you can pretty confidently say you’ve had a negative user experience. User Experience (UX) Designers are concerned with the usability and accessibility of their digital product and the pleasure people get when interacting with it.
The reason for this? Engineers design software for efficiency, but oftentimes don’t fully grasp how the user will actually be interacting with the product. The UX Designer acts as the intermediary between the engineer and the user. They make it their job to understand what the product is meant to do and how that purpose reconciles with a user’s wants and needs.
A UX Designer’s bread and butter are wireframes (drawn diagrams and layouts for a possible website), user testing (when users interact with a website in a controlled environment), user personas (different demographics of users that would be most likely to use the product), and situational context (scenarios where you’d figure out when a user would be interacting with your product).
How much money could you make?
The average median salary for a UX Designer is $85,277 per year.
What Does UX Mean?
Find Out More About UX and How to Optimize Your Business
5. Art of the Start: Turning Ideas Into High-Growth Businesses
Career Path it Could Lead to: CEO
While you’re probably not going to go from zero to CEO hero in a snap, this course—led by serial entrepreneurs Guy Kawasaki and Bill Reichert—will teach you the most important practical advice required to start a business. They’ll go over concepts like forming a business model, launching an early prototype, pitching your company to investors, and building a following. If you’ve ever considered starting a business and want to learn from a true pro, this class is a must-watch.
What would you do as a CEO?
While the responsibilities of a CEO vary across industries and company stages, all businesses need someone steering the ship. As a CEO, you’d set the overall direction and strategy for your company, recruit and manage an all-star leadership team, guide the company’s culture, and figure out what initiatives are worth spending money on in order to create shareholder value. You’d be the Yoda to a company’s Jedi Council, the head honcho, the brains behind the operation. Like Atlas supporting the Earth, the company would sit upon your shoulders, and its success or failure would ultimately come down to your vision and execution. Put simply—you’re the boss.
How much money could you make?
The average salary for a CEO is $151,836 per year.
Learn Practical Advice From Guy Kawasaki and Bill Reichert
Start Your CEO Journey Here!
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