Free Educational Resources for The Small Business Owner

I love free stuff. Who doesn't I also love learning and gaining wisdom on a wide variety of topics. So I have compiled a list of awesomely amazing free learning resources and educational programs available to business professionals and entrepreneurs. I am not paid or affiliated with any of these companies, but I do use their services regularly.

BookBoon.com

BookBoon.com offers an amazing array of free college textbooks, business books, and travel guides. All books are written exclusively for bookboon.com. Business topics range from accounting and finance to time management planning, IT, and marketing. You will also be able to find textbooks for varied areas of study including calculus, engineering, earth science, and statistics. My favorite part of bookboon.com is their wide selection of books on MS Office programs. Guides for the 2003, 2007 and 2010 versions of MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access, Visio, Outlook, and Publisher are all available for download on the website. An added bonus, Bookboon.com allows users to download multiple books at the same time using a zip file.

National Association of Certified Public Bookkeepers (NACPB)

The NACPB is an organization composed of accounting and bookkeeping professionals. This organization is an excellent tool for accounting professionals or business owners and entrepreneurs who are responsible for maintaining their own financial financial records. Although a majority of free training and educational materials are available to members only, there are other valuable training opportunities available to nonmembers as well. The following is a listing of current lessons that are free to both members and nonmembers of the organization:

How to Build a Highly Profitable Bookkeeping Business
Accounting: The Language of Business
Tax: Introduction to Federal Taxation and Understanding Federal Tax law
The Need for Payroll and Personnel Records
Excel: Getting Started
NACPB also provides free accounting and QuickBooks competency tests, which can be reached through the NACPB website at http://www.nacpb.org.

Free-eBooks.net

Free-eBooks.net allows people to enjoy free limitless reading of electronic books through their website. Free book downloads are limited to 5 ebooks per month for members with free accounts. Users can pay for more or unlimited downloads. The site offers fiction and nonfiction reading choices, plus academic articles and textbooks. Books can be downloaded in several different formats, including Mobi, PDF, ePub, and HTML. Writers can also submit their ebooks to be featured on the site. For a limited time only, Free-eBooks.net will promote a writer's ebook for free. http://www.free-ebooks.net

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is the largest single collection of free eBooks, with over 40,000 ebooks available to read online or download for free. Project Gutenberg carries only high quality books that have been digitized and proofread by their own volunteers and staff. Most of the books available on the site are older literary works. A majority of the classics are available on the site for free.

BetterBottomLine.com

BetterBottomLine.com website and blog is run by CPA and QuickBooks expert, Scott Gregory. This site offers free tutorials on QuickBooks that are available for download. The site currently offers 14 free tutorial guides on topics ranging from remote access options to new features in QuickBooks 2012 edition.

Education-Portal.com

Education-Portal.com allows users to take free college level courses online. Videos of select free courses are available for viewing online. After watching the videos, students can take a free quiz to access their knowledge and understanding. The great benefit of using Education-Portal.com is that their classes prepare students for the CLEP exam. CLEP, which stands for College-Level Examination Program, was designed for independent learners and anyone can take the exam. Each exam is $77 and will earn 3-6 college credit hours.

The following are a few of the courses available through Education-Portal.com:

Biology 101: Intro to Biology
Business 101: Principles of Management
Business 102: Principles of Marketing
Chemistry 101: General Chemistry
Economics 102: Macroeconomics
The list above is only a small sampling of the free educational resources available on the Internet. With a good Google search one will find an array of training tutorials and eBooks, many of which are free of charge. Many businesses and organizations offer these free benefits as a marketing tool or membership incentive. Whether you are a college student or business professional, I urge all to take advantage of the free knowledge that is available in this age of information.