Hey! Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals apply to certification prep, too

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Finding stellar savings during the frenzy of the pre-holiday shopping season has become something of a sport in its own right, with crazed consumers queueing up for killer deals on consumer electronics, computers, clothing, and even household appliances. You want to avoid standing right in front of the door to escape the crush when it opens, but you need to remain close enough to the front to grab at least one of the unfortunately named "doorbuster deals" that are so often available over the holiday weekend.

 

Or you might want to console yourself with the realization that plenty of good deals are available through your keyboard or tablet, while you sit at home in relative peace, quiet and safety. This is certainly true as far as certification stuff goes.

 

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I was forcibly attuned to this state of affairs because I'm signed up for Pearson IT Certification's newsletters (self-disclosure: I also blog for these guys weekly, too, on a variety of IT certification topics). Their Black Friday sale ad captures the breathless prose so familiar to all of us from newspaper and broadcast advertising at this time of year, and applies it to the somewhat unfamiliar, if not unlikely, venue for deep discounts that is certification prep:

 

Lest you suppose this is an anomaly restricted to a single player on the cert landscape, let this Google search on Black Friday "IT certification" lay that line of thought to rest. Therein, I found deals from various certification sponsors (Net Promoter, the National Career Certification Board and Zend, among many others), training companies, practice test vendors, and more. Discounts seemed to fall mostly in a range of 30-50 percent, with occasional blips outside that range (though more of them on the lower side rather than the higher side as you might expect).

 

The moral of this story is that if you're planning to pursue any certifications in the next year or so, then it wouldn't hurt too badly to spend some time sniffing out deals this weekend. What you find may not only surprise, it might also help you stretch those dollars from the piggybank a bit further than you expected them to go. Who knows? There may be enough left over that you could even exercise your consumer rights to "shop till you drop" on more tangible goods as well.

 

Happy Holidays, everybody!

 

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About the Author

Ed Tittel is a 30-plus-year computer industry veteran who's worked as a software developer, technical marketer, consultant, author, and researcher. Author of many books and articles, Ed also writes on certification topics for Tech Target, ComputerWorld and Win10.Guru. Check out his website at www.edtittel.com, where he also blogs daily on Windows 10 and 11 topics.