The explosion in online education resources is hard to ignore, and Phlearn is one startup capitalizing on the opportunity. Phlearn claims to be the largest photoshop tutorial website on the internet. Yet for some reason, I’ve never heard of it until they spiked in our system this week. Other players in this space include CreativeLive and the well known Lynda.com.

However Phlearn tutorials are delivered consistently and with incredible quality. After browsing through the site, I found myself getting sucked into the tutorials, wanting to run out and shoot some photos just so I could come back and edit them. While Photoshop has become a tool used for much more than photo editing, Phlearn is focused exclusively on photography. That appears to be a good thing as the range of topics covered just within this vertical are practically limitless.

The company appears to also be using a strategy which has been proven time and again: use free content as the bait and then upsell to premium content. I personally haven’t paid for any of the tutorials yet but I’m incredibly tempted to do so. Interestingly enough, Phlearn has kept away from the recurring revenue model, opting instead for one-off tutorials each priced at $24.99.

While I’m not sure if the company has raised funding, it appears to be completely bootstrapped an profitable. In other words, it’s a great time to be in the online education space, especially if you are a master of your craft.