How would you like to invest $1 and get $1,000 back? How about $1,000,000?

“No way that’s possible!” I hear you saying. “No investment yields those returns.”

But that’s where you’re wrong. There’s one investment that does yield a one thousand percent or even one million percent ROI…

Investing in yourself.

You are your biggest asset, and your business will directly benefit from an improved you. That’s why in today’s guide, I share the seven best free and paid Shopify training courses on the market. Let’s check ‘em out!

Note: All the courses on this list were taken by a Sumo employee or a friend of a Sumo employee, and it’s based on their experiences.

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1. General: Shopify Academy [Free]

Cost: Free!

Length: 6 courses, Most Have 5-8 Modules Each, 1-8 Lessons Each, 1-10 Minute Videos

Format: Video, Text, Worksheets

Instructor(s): Samantha Renée, The Kular Family, Corey Ferreira, Adrian Morrison, Gretta van Riel, Jeff Delacruz

Community? Yes

URL: https://www.shopify.com/academy

It’s no surprise that Shopify itself is at the top of this list, as they know their product best. Shopify Academy is a free series of Shopify training courses for the complete beginner. It covers everything from setting up your first Shopify store to marketing, product photography, and more.

Each course has a series of 5-8 modules, and each module has a mix of short 1-10 minute videos, text chapters, and extra resources like blog posts.

The courses include:

Getting Started with Shopify with Samantha Renée

This course is for people who have never used Shopify before, or have tried but haven’t gotten the hang of it.

The instructor, Samantha Renée, is an ecommerce guru at Shopify and the co-founder of Weave Got It Canada, a luxury hair extension shop. Samantha used her ecommerce prowess to build the retail store to multiple six-figures per year.^[*]

Getting Started with Shopify has six modules:

1. Understanding Shopify

2. Signup and Get Started

3. Store Design 101

4. Launch Your First Product

5. Online Customer Service

6. Get Your Launch Checklist

Turn Your Hobby into a Business with The Kular Family

Like the Getting Started course, this teaches you how to find your product and launch your store with a purpose. I recommend taking both courses before you launch your site, to get a fuller picture of how to start and run your store.

The instructors, the Kular family, founded Jaswant’s Kitchen, an authentic Indian cooking blog that transformed into a retailer of Indian spices and cooking kits.^[*]

The modules include:

• Profit with Your Product

• Brand and Design Your Shopify Store

• Shipping Products on a Budget

• Marketing Your Business

• Launch Your Store!

Dropshipping 101 with Corey Ferreira

If holding inventory in your basement, garage, or a warehouse doesn’t sound like something you want to do, dropshipping is a dream come true.

With dropshipping, you can make sales and your suppliers (or Amazon if you’re using Fulfillment by Amazon) ship the product straight to your customers.

Corey Ferreira is part of the marketing team at Shopify.

His modules include:

• Identifying Your Niche

• How to Start on Shopify

• Finding a Product to Sell and a Supplier

• Finding a Product: Oberlo 101

• Finding a Product: Directories, Wholesalers and Google

• Getting Your First Sale

• Next Steps

Build a Print-on-Demand Empire with Adrian Morrison

If print on demand (e.g., t-shirts, hats, mugs, phone cases, etc.) sounds like something you’re interested in, this course is for you.

Adrian Morrison is the founder of eCom Success Academy (also on this list) and the founder of several seven-figure ecommerce businesses.

Adrian’s course has five modules:

1. What is Print on Demand?

2. Create Your Flagship Print on Demand Products

3. Create Your Shopify Store

4. Generating Traffic and Sales

5. Grow Your Print-on-Demand Empire

Grow Your Business with Instagram with Gretta van Riel

Instagram is a booming market for ecommerce, with over one billion monthly active users, and that number is only going up.^[*]

Gretta van Riel is an incredible entrepreneur who founded four multimillion dollar ecommerce businesses in the past six years, including SkinnyMe Tea, the 5th, and Dropbottle. She’s also the founder of Hey!, an influencer marketing platform that connects brands with influencers.

Gretta’s modules are:

1. How to Build An Engaged Following on Instagram

2. How to Create Content that Converts Followers to Customers

3. How to Create an Instagram Sales Funnel

4. How to Make more Sales with Influencer Marketing

Product Photography for Ecommerce with Jeff Delacruz

The final free training is all about product photography. Whether you dropship or stock your products, your product images can make or break your company.

You’ll learn this skill from Jeff Delacruz, co-founder of Products on White Photography, an agency that will take your product photos on white backgrounds. Jeff and his team have taken over 50,000 photos for 1,800+ businesses.

Jeff’s course contains five modules:

1. The Value of Perception

2. Being Strategic about Photography

3. New Business Owner on a Budget

4. Business Owner with a Marketing Budget

5. Increase Sales with Effective Photo Placements

In addition to these free courses, you get free access to live webinar trainings (like a Black Friday/Cyber Monday prep guide) as well as business frameworks and templates, including:

• An SEO Checklist

• Blog Post Templates

• Social Media Strategy Template

• Break-Even Analysis

• Cash Flow Projection

Long story short, if you’re new to Shopify and want to learn as much as you can without investing any money, start with Shopify Academy.

2. Analytics: Google Analytics for Shopify: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide [Premium]

Cost: $199.99 (Frequent Sales for $12.99)

Length: 34 Lectures, 2 Hours On-Demand Video

Format: Video, Text, Worksheets

Instructor(s): Adam Reed

Community? Yes

URL: https://www.udemy.com/google-analytics-for-shopify-a-complete-step-by-step-guide/

If you don’t already have Google Analytics set up properly on your Shopify store, you need to get on top of that. Analytics help you understand if your marketing funnel is working, improve your underperforming pages, maximize your ad spend, and so much more.

The course is taught by Adam Reed, a six-figure store owner who’s made over half a million dollars in Shopify sales.

You’ll learn step-by-step how to properly set up Google Analytics with your Shopify account, as well as how to navigate the software and set up funnels.

The lessons include:

• Introduction to Ecommerce

• Introduction to Google Analytics

• Signing Up to Google Analytics

• Linking Google Analytics to Shopify

• Enhanced Ecommerce

• Best Practice: Exclude Your IP Address

• Property Navigation

• Real Time Reporting

• Audience Reports

• Acquisition Breakdown

• Traffic Behaviour

• Ecommerce Conversions

• Creating a Goal Funnel

• Custom Reports You Need to Use

• Setting up Hourly Traffic and Conversion Reports

• Setting up Day of the Week Traffic and Conversion Reports

• Setting up Hour and Day Conversion Rate Report

• Setting up Day of the Month Conversion Rate Report

• How to Use Funnel Visualization

• Nailing Down Your Target Demographic

• Be Where Your Audience Hangs Out

• Finding Key Audience Interests

• Using Geo Location to Your Advantage

• Do You Need More Languages?

• How to Apply Analytics Data to Facebook Ads

• How to Apply Analytics Data to Google AdWords

• Proof this Works: My Facebook Ads Revenue

• Proof this Works: My Google AdWords Revenue

• Proof this Works: My Google AdWords Retargeting Revenue

This course is for anyone who wants a better understanding of Google Analytics and conversion funnels.

3. AliExpress Dropshipping and More: eCom Success Academy [Premium]

Cost: $2,495 (Or 3 Payments of $997)

Length: 8 Modules, 65 Lessons (With Sub-Lessons), 1-30 Minute Videos

Format: Video, Text, Worksheets

Instructor(s): Adrian Morrison

Community? Yes

URL: http://www.ecomsuccessacademy.com/enrollflex/

Ecom Success Academy is one of the most in-depth Shopify training courses you’ll find online. It’s taught by Adrian Morrison — the same Adrian who teaches about print-on-demand products in Shopify Academy.

Adrian has built several seven-figure online stores and even one at eight figures. If there’s an example of an ecommerce mogul, he’s it.

Here’s a look at a lesson:

The course covers everything from setting up your first Shopify store (including perfecting the settings) to sourcing products from China, dropshipping using Aliexpress, building your brand, Facebook ads, email marketing, and much more.

Here are all the modules:

1. Shopify

2. Sourcing Products

3. Facebook

4. Email Marketing

5. Building Your A-Team

6. Project Management

7. Long-term Exit Plan

8. Bonus Section

In addition to learning nearly everything you need to know to build a six- or seven-figure ecommerce business, you get a discounted Shopify plan with an extended free trial, discounts on recommended Shopify apps, and a weekly live webinar called “Profit Power Hour” where Adrian teaches you even more and shows you more real-life examples of the things he teaches in the course.

This course is perfect for anyone who wants a complete Shopify training from start to finish in a single course.

4. Mindset and Marketing: Double Your Ecommerce [Free]

Cost: Free!

Length: 7 Email-Based Lessons

Format: Text, Worksheets

Instructor(s): Drew Sanocki

Community? No

URL: https://www.nerdmarketing.com/products/double/

Double Your Ecommerce (DYE) is a free, seven-day email course that teaches you how to, well, double your ecommerce business!

The course is taught by Drew Sanocki, the founder of Nerd Marketing (a blog and podcast about ecommerce marketing). He’s also helped grow a dozen retailers, ranging from $0 to $300 million in revenue.

This course is unique in that it’s sent to your email over seven days; each email is one lesson. They look like this:

The lessons you get are:

1. Why you're here

2. The real reason most e-commerce companies stop growing

3. What REALLY grows an e-commerce business

4. The single lever Amazon uses to drive 35% of its revenue

5. What’s the most profitable thing you could spend your time/money/effort on? Learn it here.

6. Why a blind focus on “traffic” absolutely kills profitable growth (and what to focus on instead)

7. How to tie this all together and save time while you are at it

This training course is for people whose Shopify stores are hitting a plateau and they need to shift their perspective.

5. PPC: AdSkills Media Buying Masters [Premium]

Cost: $998/year

Length: 4 Modules, 21 Lessons, 1-60 minute videos

Format: Video, Text, Worksheets

Instructor(s): Justin Brooke

Community? Yes

URL: https://www.adskills.com/upperclassmen/

Before teaching his paid advertising methods through Media Buying Masters, Justin Brooke managed online ads for some of the top direct response marketers, including Dan Kennedy, Ryan Deiss, Russell Brunson, Ed Okeefe, and Jon Assaraf.

Justin teaches media buying frameworks that work across all the big ad networks like Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. He also teaches the “right size” funnel he used to scale ad campaigns for his own ecommerce clients, so you can set up a profitable paid advertising funnel for your products.

Media Buying Masters has four modules:

1. Fundamentals

2. Media Planning

3. Media Buying

4. Campaign Optimization

Justin’s videos teach both the fundamentals and advanced frameworks you need to make paid ads work for your ecommerce business. He also has a private Slack community, where you can hire expert media buyers who practice his methods and chat with other business owners who spend millions on ads per month.

This course is great for anyone who has a proven offer and wants to scale their store to the next level with paid ads.

6. Content Marketing: Content Mavericks Content Marketing Masters [Premium]

Cost: $498/year

Length: 5 Modules, 23 Lessons Total, 5-15 Minute Videos, ~4 Hours

Format: Video, Text, Worksheets

Instructor(s): Chris Von Wilpert

Community? Yes

URL: https://contentmavericks.com/content-marketing-course/

The next course on our list was co-founded by Sumo’s Copy Chief, Chris Von Wilpert. I’ve taken and loved this course — it’s a true gem compared to many of the generic content marketing courses on the market.

Why this course? Because Chris used his content marketing skills to double Sumo’s blog traffic in his first month after he was hired by Noah Kagan.

Content Marketing Masters has examples of successful Shopify stores driving traffic to their store with content marketing, but isn’t limited to ecommerce.

Here’s a sneak peek at the dashboard:

Content Marketing Masters has three modules:

1. White Belt (people with a new site, no list, $10/day budget)

2. Blue Belt (people with a site, small list, small brand, $100/day budget)

3. Black Belt (people with an established site, a decent sized list, $10k/mo budget)

Chris’s videos are all screen shares of exactly how he does each step. There is a Slack community, where you can ask Chris and his team questions directly (he helped me define my content marketing strategy for The Wandering RV!).

This course is great for anyone who wants to learn free and paid traffic tactics to grow their brand and revenue through content marketing.

7. SEO: Backlinko SEO That Works [Premium]

Cost: $995 to $3,995 Depending On Package (With Payment Plans)

Length: 6 Modules, 16 Lessons (Plus 12 Bonus Lessons), 5-20 Minute Videos

Format: Video, Text, Worksheets

Instructor(s): Brian Dean

Community? Yes

URL: https://seothatworks.com/

I can’t recommend SEO That Works highly enough. This course changed my business life. I used the skills learned in this course to build The Wandering RV from a few hundred organic search visits per month to over 4,000 per day.

Likewise, my income has risen. In July 2018, I sent nearly $70,000 in sales to Amazon in a single month.

Here’s proof:

It’s extremely easy to watch and beginner-friendly, with quick, engaging videos (you don’t need any prior SEO experience).

The instructor, Brian Dean, is a world-renowned SEO expert and the founder of Backlinko, a blog all about SEO and link building.^[*]

Here’s a look at a module:

Each module has four easy-to-follow videos; a bonus module has 12 videos, which include copywriting, social media marketing, email list building, hiring, and more. Most of the bonus module videos are interviews with industry experts like Brian Harris of Videofruit.

Each module has worksheets, extra help videos, and guides you can print and fill out as you work along. Beyond the modules, Brian gives you access to “Insider Sessions” — audio files that answer common questions.

Enrollment is open two times a year, and everyone takes the class together. Brian then releases one module per week after you sign up, so you won’t get overwhelmed or fall behind. And you get access to a very active Facebook group as well!

All in all, I recommend this course for anyone with a proven product who wants to focus on SEO and long-term ROI.

Want My Complete List of Shopify Training Courses?

The seven courses in this article are some of the best Shopify training courses in the world. But maybe none of them spoke to you.

That’s OK! Click the button below to get my complete list of 25 ecommerce and Shopify training courses (free and paid) on nearly every topic you can imagine.

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The highest ROI you can make is investing in yourself.

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