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I don’t know about you, but I miss taking classes. I miss taking notes, studying, and most of all, learning a ton of new skills.

That’s not to say I don’t learn a lot on the job here at HubSpot — because I absolutely do. But sometimes, there’s nothing quite like listening to a lecture, taking notes, and doing homework.

Given the frequency at which new technologies and software are developed, it can be overwhelming to try to keep up your knowledge by only reading blog posts and ebooks. That’s where self-paced online learning comes in.

I’ve taken a few awesome courses and certifications through HubSpot Academy, including an inbound marketing certification and a content marketing certification. These classes helped me be better at my job, so I started making a list of other classes I could take to learn more skills. When I finished the list, I realized that you, dear readers, might have similar skill gaps, so I wanted to share it in a blog post.

Below are 33 free online courses you can take to beef up your skill set. These offerings vary in time commitment, but many are self-paced so you can work on your own schedule. Below are the topics these courses cover:

1. Content Marketing
2. Social Media Marketing
3. SEO Marketing
4. Other Digital Marketing Courses

A brief explanation of each course creator accompanies their first mention on the list.

Content Marketing Courses

HubSpot Academy

HubSpot Academy offers certification and training courses to teach people how inbound marketing and HubSpot software work. Classes are often taught by marketers at HubSpot and are made up of video lessons, quizzes, and tests. Most HubSpot Academy classes are available free of charge, and if you pass the certifications, such as the two below, you get a nifty certificate and badge to share on your social media profiles. Check out mine on LinkedIn:

1. HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certification

2. HubSpot Content Marketing Certification

3. SEO Training Course

Copyblogger

Copyblogger is a content marketing company that creates content about content (so meta). Its blog provides a ton of great resources about digital marketing, and this class, “Internet Marketing for Smart People,” is made up of ebooks and emailed lessons and other course materials. Copyblogger espouses four pillars of content marketing success, which it delves into over the course of this class.

4. Internet Marketing for Smart People

Coursera

Coursera offers MOOCs (massive online open courses) created and taught online by universities such as Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California system. These courses start at various times throughout the year, so browse the catalog to see when one lines up with your schedule. Below are a couple courses that are perfect for content marketers — here’s what a module for #4 looks like:

5. Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content

6. The Strategy of Content Marketing

Udemy

Udemy is another online learning platform that focuses specifically on courses related to skill building for working professionals. One thing to note about Udemy: The classes we’ve highlighted are free, but it offers a myriad of other paid options for as little as $10, in some cases. If you have a good experience with a free course, it could be worth a small investment to deepen your skills, too.

Here are a few all content marketers will find useful:

7. Copywriting Blunders: Do You Make these 10 Common Mistakes?

8. Blogging: Generate 100s of Blog Topics and Headlines

9. Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises

QuickSprout

QuickSprout is Neil Patel’s content and business marketing blog, and QuickSprout University features a ton of helpful videos breaking down and explaining a myriad of concepts and best practices. Each video also includes a transcript in case reading is more your learning style than watching a video. Here’s what one course video looks like:

10. Content Marketing

Social Media Marketing Courses

QuickSprout

13. Social Media

14. Paid Advertising

Wordstream

Wordstream is a search engine and social media marketing software company that helps marketers drive the greatest ROI from their paid search and social media campaigns. These free guides and ebooks distill learnings and best practices for users with varying levels of expertise running pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Here are some of its topics and offerings:

15. Wordstream PPC University

edX

edX is another MOOC provider that features courses offered by top-tier universities, including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University. Like Coursera, classes are taught online and start at specific times throughout the year. Here’s a class we think you’ll find valuable:

16. Social Media Marketing

ALISON

ALISON offers free online classes in various professional skills users can take at their own pace. In the Diploma in Social Media Marketing course below, students can get into the nitty-gritty and big picture views of different skills of different topics — just check out one of the many modules:

17. Diploma in Social Media Marketing

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that offers free trainings (plus a paid certification course) to help marketers beef up their social media skill set. Hootsuite Academy offers courses at varying skill levels and features video lessons and step-by-step breakdowns of how to use different software.

18. Social Marketing Training

Facebook

At this point, you probably already know what Facebook is and what it does. What you might not know? It has a training and certification program. Facebook Blueprint offers self-paced and live e-learning courses for marketers seeking to grow their organizations using Facebook. Blueprint offers classes in different languages on how to use Facebook and Instagram — here’s a peek at the course catalog.

19. Facebook Blueprint

quintly

quintly is a social media analytics tool that offers courses through quintly Academy. The self-paced course provides an overview of social media analytics, benchmarking, and goaling using downloadable written materials and video lessons.

20. Social Media Analytics

Buffer

Buffer’s Social Media Week of Webinars isn’t exactly a course — it’s a series of live webinar recordings on YouTube — but the videos are chock-full of current and valuable information for social media marketers from the experts. Topics include Instagram and Facebook marketing and how to do public relations on social media.

21. Social Media Week of Webinars

SEO Marketing Courses

Google

Google is another company you’ve probably heard of before, and its digital marketing course offers a ton of valuable information if you plan to advertise and rank on the search engine. You can even take a Google AdWords certification at the end of the process that helps you beef up your resume (and your Google+ profile).

22. Google Digital Marketing Course

Udemy

23. SEO Training Course by Moz

24. Advanced SEO: Tactics and Strategy

QuickSprout

25. SEO

Other Online Digital Marketing Courses

HubSpot Academy

11. HubSpot Email Marketing Certification

26. HubSpot Growth-Driven Design Certification

QuickSprout

12. Email Marketing

Codeacademy

Codeacademy offers free, interactive coding classes that take you from lesson one to building a fully-functioning website. The courses we’ve highlighted below are just a few of the courses; Codeacademy offers many more, depending on your organization’s needs. Codeacademy classes feature lectures and a workspace in the same browser window so you can see the effect of your work live, as it’s created.

Check it out:

Source: The Next Web

27. Make a Website

28. Learn Javascript

29. Learn Ruby

30. Learn Python

31. Learn HTML & CSS

General Assembly

General Assembly offers live and online paid and free courses for a variety of technical skills and disciplines. General Assembly’s Dash offers a free online coding class that teaches the fundamentals of HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript — watch the course overview below:

32. Learn to Code Awesome Websites

Canva

Canva helps people easily make beautiful images for web design, and Canva Learn offers design courses that are valuable for any kind of storyteller. The Creativity course explores the challenges of constant creation and innovation and how to do it well — with visuals, of course.

33. Creativity

Here’s a basic math question for you: Sammie has 50 sprockets. She sells eight of them. How many sprockets does she have left?

Now, here’s another question: Sammie has 50 sprockets. She receives an order for eight sprockets and ships four of them out to customers. How many sprockets are in Sammie’s inventory?

These types of questions aren’t just relics of elementary school — they’re also challenges inherent to inventory management. And it’s the reason Sammie has 42 sprockets at the end of the first question but 46 sprockets at end of the second.

Inventory management goes beyond simple arithmetic. Sammie has 46 sprockets in her inventory because she only subtracts four of the eight sprocket orders until the other four are delivered to customers. It’s this kind of contingency that makes organization, automation, and technique crucial when you have so much product to keep track of.

To help you dive into inventory management, let’s explain what inventory management is in the ecommerce world, the software that supports this ongoing process, and some common techniques for managing inventory successfully.

Inventory Management Definition

Inventory management is the act of overseeing the volume, diversity, pricing, and location of a business’s available products. If a product is in stock, it’s counted as part of the business’s inventory and managed as it moves through the supply chain.

The product’s availability is then noted on the item’s purchase page online.

This is why, in our example of Sammie’s 50 sprockets, she still has 46 sprockets after selling eight. Knowing what’s currently in her inventory, how many units of her product have been ordered, and how many units her inventory is shipping and receiving is all part of basic inventory management.

Inventory management does not include company property, manufacturing equipment, and other forms of business capital. It can, however, include separate parts of a product that has not yet been assembled for a customer. How these parts are counted in relation to the finished product depends on the form in which the product is delivered to the customer.

Inventory Management Software

As your business grows, it will inevitably become harder to manage inventory manually — especially if you sell online, where your customers expect to see a product’s availability and status at every point in the buying process.

Luckily, there are numerous inventory management tools on the market today that integrate with an ecommerce website and help you monitor your supply chain. To make your software choices easier, we’ve listed seven of the best solutions for ecommerce businesses below.

Delivrd

Price: Free

Delivrd is a free cloud-based order-fulfillment solution for businesses of all sizes. The platform tracks your inventory, prints barcodes, analyzes each product’s profitability, and even bundles unfulfilled orders together to consolidate future shipments.

Notify Me

Price: Free

Notify Me is a free inventory manager for ecommerce businesses who use Shopify as their sales channel. In addition to watching over your store’s available products, Notify Me uniquely allows you to set automated alerts for when items go out of stock. Shopify users can download the web app here.

Oberlo

Price: Free up to 50 orders/month

Oberlo is one of the best inventory management services for dropshipping stores — or those ecommerce businesses that deliver products directly to the customer from a manufacturer, without storing any product on-site. You can create rules for when to reprice products, sort products by their delivery times, track shipments, change product suppliers, and more. Oberlo also has a web app for Shopify users.

Ordoro

Price: Starts at $25/month

Ordoro is a cloud-based shipping tool for managing inventory at every point in the sales process. The service automates shipping requests, dropshipping, barcode scanning, and supplier management — and can provide revenue data in real time. Ordoro integrates with more than two dozen sales channels and shipping carriers. It also has a web app for Shopify users.

inFlow

Price: Starts at $69/month

You get a lot for what you’re paying when you use inFlow. This cloud-based inventory manager organizes bills, barcodes, work orders, product serial numbers, product destinations, and more — whether the item is in your inventory or in transit. In addition to working offline, inFlow also offers robust Windows and Android apps to manage your inventory from your mobile device.

Skubana

Price: Request a Quote

Skubana connects your ecommerce business with retailers all over the world. The software helps you manage customer orders and your own restocking process, while integrating with the retail brands who might also want to sell your product. Skubana tracks order fulfillment from multiple warehouses and generates demand forecasts that help you grow your product line. It also has a web app for Shopify users.

Unleashed

Price: Starts at $85/month

Unleashed is a sleek, flexible inventory management solution that allows ecommerce customers to make big decisions about their product line based on real-time data. The software is perfect for manufacturers, according to Unleashed’s website, and offers the most important inventory information in a convenient sales app for your mobile device.

Inventory Management Techniques

Although a business’s available stock on any given day is just a snapshot of its inventory, managing inventory on an ongoing basis — and comparing multiple periods of inventory to one another — can help an ecommerce business make valuable long-term decisions about its supply chain.

Ecommerce companies can manage their inventory in several ways, but not every method of management will provide the insight you need to help your business grow. Here are a few different inventory management techniques you can try, and the advantages of using each one.

Just-In-Time

This inventory management technique stocks a product each time a customer orders it, so the volume of your inventory is more or less equal to the number of orders you’re filling.

The advantage to the Just-In-Time (JIT) technique is that you’re managing only the products you know you need to ship to customers. Sustaining JIT over the long term, however, requires you to keep a close watch on buying behavior so you can anticipate your inventory needs ahead of time.

First In, First Out

First In, First Out (FIFO) means the first products your inventory receives are the first to be shipped out to their respective customers.

This technique ensures products don’t sit in your inventory for too long before they’re delivered to a customer. FIFO is popular in the food industry, where businesses are up against the expiration dates of perishable items and need to ship food while it’s fresh.

Par Levels

Setting par levels gives businesses a safety net by ensuring their inventory always carries a minimum amount of each product at all times. So, even if a company uses the JIT method, where it only stocks what customers order, the company will always have the product available.

Ultimately, par levels aren’t for emergencies where you’d need a spare product. Rather, they establish a warning line for when it’s time to order more of something. Once your inventory dips below a certain number of a given product, you order more of it.

It’s important to set your par levels based on how long it takes to restock. The product that takes the longest time for a business to make, for example, might have a higher inventory par level than the business’s other products since there’s a greater chance of depleting your inventory in the time it takes to develop the new product.

ABC Analysis

ABC Analysis groups a business’s products into three categories based on a product’s importance. Here’s one common breakdown of these categories:

• Category A: products that are high in value but low in quantity
• Category B: products that are moderate in value and moderate in quantity
• Category C: products that are low in value but high in quantity

Also known as “selective inventory control,” this inventory management technique allows businesses with diverse product lines to easily prioritize the contents of their inventory. Similar to the JIT technique, succeeding under ABC analysis requires a close eye on buyers’ interest in each product, and not every product fits perfectly into each category. Snowboards, for example, might always have the high value of Category A, but inherit the high quantity of Category C during the winter.

Dropshipping

In a way, dropshipping is the anti-inventory. A specialty of Oberlo, an inventory management tool mentioned earlier in this article, dropshipping ships products from the manufacturer directly to the customer without the business ever storing the product itself.

Dropshipping can pose an advantage to businesses who don’t (yet) have their own storage space. But because you’re not managing your deliveries yourself, communication with the shipping party is critical to delivering products on time and keeping customers happy.

Demand Forecasting

Your inventory management software might help you do this, but it’s important to create long-term (or even year-long) forecasts for when sales of each product you sell will fluctuate.

One way to conduct a demand prediction? Look at last year’s sales as a whole and use them as a guideline for when to expect your inventory to change over the course of the current year. These changes might be influenced by market conditions or simply seasonality, but you should always factor them into your product strategy — especially if the software you use to automate your inventory operations doesn’t consider these variables.

Here’s one final inventory management tip to take with you: Nurture your relationships with everyone who touches your business’s product. Whether it’s the shipping merchant or a new employee, the state of your inventory depends on you to have open communication with your colleagues, and to support them as much as you support your customers when they browse your online store.

If you’ve had your computer for a while, it might be time you clear some space.

Your browser automatically stores past websites you’ve visited, images you’ve saved, your passwords, and a ton of other information.

While this information might be useful, over time, it takes up space on your hard drive, and could lead to issues like 404 errors (resulting from a corrupted cache).

Plus, do you really need to know which websites you visited in 2016?

It’s insanely easy to delete your cache, cookies, or browser history on any browser or device. In fact, it should take less than five minutes. So let’s get to it.

Desktop browsers

How to clear your cache in Chrome

1. Go to: chrome://settings/clearBrowserData

2. Click “Advanced”

3. Select “Browsing history”, “Download history”, “Cookies and other site data”, and “Cached images and files”.

4. If you want, you can select a time range, i.e. “Last hour”, or “Last 4 weeks”.

5. Click “Clear Data”

6. Exit all browser windows, and reopen

How to clear your cache in Safari

1. Go to the Safari menu, and select “Clear History”

2. Select a time range, then click “Clear History”

3. Exit all browser windows, and reopen

How to clear your cache in Firefox

1. From the “History” menu, select “Clear Recent History”

2. If you want, you can select a time range with the drop-down menu, or select “Everything” to clear all your history

3. Next to “Details”, click the down arrow to choose which items you wish to clear (or select all)

4. Click “Clear Now”

5. Exit all browser windows, and reopen

Mac or PC

How to clear your cache on a Mac

There are two ways to clear your cache on a Mac — via a cleaning utility system like CleanMyMac 3, or manually.

If you want to clear it in three steps with a cleaning utility system, try this:

1. Launch CleanMyMac 3
2. Select “System Junk”
3. Click “Scan” and then “Clean

However, if you want to clean it manually, here are four easy steps:

1. Open the Finder Window and Select “Go” on the navigation bar
2. Click “Go to Folder” in the Go menu
3. Type in: ~/Library/Caches and hit enter
4. Go into each folder, and delete everything

If you clean your cache manually, we suggest you remove the inside of your folders, but not the folders themselves — better yet, highlight all your folders and copy everything over, in case something goes wrong.

How to clear your cache on a PC

1. Go to your “Start” menu and search in the box, “Run”
2. In the Run box, type “Prefetch”
3. Select all folders in Prefetch and click “delete”

Mobile Devices

How to clear your cache on Android

While this may differ depending on your device, you can likely clear your data history from your application manager on your Android device.

1. Go to Settings and choose “Apps” or “Application Manager”

2. Swipe to the “All” tab

3. In the list of installed apps, find and select your web browser

4. Click “Clear Data” and then “Clear Cache”

5. Exit all browser windows, and reopen

How to clear your cache on Chrome for Android

1. Select “Chrome menu” and then “Settings”

2. Click “(Advanced) Privacy”

3. If you want, you can select a time range with the drop-down menu, or select “All time”

4. Check off “Cookies and Site data” and “Cached Images and Files”

5. Select “Clear data”

6. Exit all browser windows, and reopen

How to clear your cache on Safari for iOS

1. Open your “Settings” app

2. Click “Safari”

3. Select “Clear History and Website Data” and confirm

4. Exit all browser windows, and reopen

How to clear your cache on Chrome for iOS

1. Select “Settings” in your Chrome menu

2. Select “Privacy”

3. Click “Clear Browsing Data”

4. Choose the data type you want to clear, and click “Clear Browsing Data”

5. Exit all browser windows, and reopen

There’s no denying that Adobe Photoshop is a powerful photo editing tool, with loads of built-in features and effects. In fact, if you’re a marketer with little (or zero) photography or graphic design experience, Photoshop can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming.

However, if you’ve spent years learning the ins and outs of Photoshop, you might now be arriving at a point where you feel like you’ve exhausted all of Photoshop’s built-in benefits.

Regardless of your experience level, there are free Photoshop filters and plugins that can help. As a beginner, these free add-ons can help simplify complex editing processes. As an expert, they can help expand your available Photoshop tool set even further, and help lead you in new artistic directions.

Keep the following steps in mind when downloading the Photoshop filters and plugins we’ve included below. Each file must be saved in a specific location on your computer.

Free Photoshop Filters

Note: The filters below are technically Photoshop “actions” (.ATN files). An action is a pre-recorded series of steps that allows you to apply effects — in this case, filters — automatically.

1. Dramatic Sepia (via Efeito Photoshop)

Price: Free

Sure, you can easily create that classic, reddish-brown sepia effect in Photoshop manually by selecting Image > Adjustments > Photo Filters, and then choosing “Sepia” from the dropdown menu. But if you’re looking for a sepia filter that’s a bit more — well, dramatic — the free Dramatic Sepia action from Efeito Photoshop is a popular option.

Image Credit: Romenigps

2. Blue Evening (via Photographypla.Net)

Price: Free

Opposite the warm tones of the sepia filter above, Blue Evening cools down your photos with a pretty blue hue. This Photoshop filter adds a dose of solemnness to your images. You can also use it to soften a sunlit photo and emphasize a cold temperature outside.

Image Credit: Photographypla.Net

3. Old Photo (via DeviantArt)

Price: Free

If sepia is a bit too much for your taste, but you’re still trying to create a nostalgic, old-timey feel, the Old Photo action has got you covered. The action will adjust the color and contrast of your image, transporting it back in time (visually-speaking).

Image Credit: sakiryildirim

4. Nightmare (via Shutter Pulse)

Price: Free

Did you ever want to give your photo a haunting look? The setting of your shot only does so much to affect how people perceive the image. For added creepiness, you have the Nightmare filter. Download this Photoshop filter to make any photo look like it came from a horror movie.

Image Credit: Shutter Pulse

5. HDR Tools (via DeviantArt)

Price: Free

HDR Tools is a set of four “actions” that transforms dull backgrounds to reveal intense, eye-catching details. You can turn natural grey tones into beautiful backgrounds that create a contrast against the foreground you didn’t have before. The duller the image, the heavier the HDR filter you should apply.

Image Credit: Forfie

6. Dream Blur (via DeviantArt)

Price: Free

As its name suggests, the Dream Blur action adds a filter to your image that creates a subtle, dream-like atmosphere. Specifically, the action produces a dark, blurry vignette at the edges of your image while also upping the saturation levels.

Image Credit: JoshJanusch

7. Vintage (via DeviantArt)

Price: Free

Unlike the Old Photo action from earlier on this list, the Vintage action does more than just visually transport your image back in time — it also adds a distinctive neon effect (perfect for giving your next project a groovy feel).

Image Credit: beckasweird

8. Lithprint (via DeviantArt)

Price: Free

The Lithprint action imitates the vintage look produced by the black-and-white lith printing process. But compared to the other vintage filters on this list, Lithprint is much more drastic. In addition to adjusting contrast, highlights, and shadows in your image, it adds a gritty texture.

Image Credit: rawimage

Free and Inexpensive Photoshop Plugins

9. virtualPhotographer

Price: Free

If you’re struggling to produce particular effects in Photoshop (e.g., black and white, high contrast, polarization, etc.), virtualPhotographer by OptikVerve Labs could be the plugin you’ve been looking for. VirtualPhotographer’s primary claim to fame? It allows you to add complicated effects to images with a single click.

Image Credit: optikVerve Labs

10. ON1 Effects

Price: Free

Like the virtualPhotographer plugin, ON1 Effects is a free Photoshop plugin that makes it easier for you to add complex effects to your images. What sets ON1 Effects apart is that it boasts a library of filters — including vignette, adjustable contrast, and HDR look — that you can stack on top of each other, allowing you to easily build layers of different effects.

Image Credit: ON1

11. Snapheal

Price: $20

Snapheal is one of the best ways to remove unwanted flaws and blemishes from your photos. Cleaning up a person’s headshot or the background of a scenic shot? This photoshop plugin helps you polish your work in three steps: Upload your photo, remove unwanted objects, and enhance the final product.

Image Credit: Snapheal

12. Ink

Price: Free

This tool is a detail-oriented person’s best friend. Ink is a Photoshop plugin that allows you to see additional information on a design you’re creating — this includes text size, font name, color codes, and the size of your image in pixels. It also gives you grid lines to help you center and level your artwork.

Image Credit: Chrometaphore

13. Flaticon

Price: Free

Wish you could sort through thousands of free icons and add them to your projects without having to leave the comfort of Photoshop? Then Flaticon by Freepik is definitely worth a look. The free plugin’s icons are available in .SVG, .PSD, and .PNG formats.

Image Credit: Flaticon

14. RH Hover Color Picker

Price: $16

Photoshop’s color palate has been known to irritate users — especially those who need a more customizable dashboard to capture the color they need when editing and designing. RH Hover Color Picker is the solution. This photoshop plugin by Rico Holmes (hence “RH”) acts as a convenient flywheel that you can simply “hover” over your image as you perfect your illustration. It even gives you the RGB code of the color you’ve selected so you can easily find it later.

Image Credit: Rico Holmes

15. Pexels

Price: Free

You might know Pexels as a free stock photography gallery. What you might not know is that you can integrate this free content right into Photoshop. The Pexels plugin has more than 30,000 free images to choose from, and syncs your Liked photos with Photoshop so you can call up your favorite stock photos for quick editing.

Image Credit: Pexels

16. Focus

Price: $60

Focus is “portrait mode” on steroids. A smartphone camera can use portrait mode to blur the background of closeup imagery, but it often can’t handle wide, complex shots where you need to highlight specific parts of the photo. For that, you have Focus. This plugin, now available in the form of Focus 2, allows you to blur backgrounds, set the blur’s intensity, and sharpen the edges of the object you’re focusing on to make it truly pop out of the picture.

Image Credit: Skylum

17. Tych Panel

Price: Free

The free Tych Panel plugin makes it easy for you to create double panel (diptych), triple panel (triptych), and quadruple+ panel (ntych) projects in Photoshop. Just select the number of rows and panels you want, as well as the alignment style, and Tych Panel will format everything for you automatically.

Image Credit: Lumens

Ready to get started? Download some of the filters and plugins above and grab your free guide to photoshop below.