Sunday, March 15, 2009
Free Guitar Lessons Online
That's a hot one.
How can they possibly do it - give away free lessons on guitar?
There are several answers, and none of them are particularly inspiring or refreshing to me:
1) Most "free" lesson sites are exceptionally limited in what they actually offer free. I've seen the most silly "lessons" out there, from holding the guitar, to listing off the parts of the guitar, and on and on. It's obvious why the lesson is "free" - it's virtually pointless and could be found anywhere free.
2) This makes their "free" offerings a teaser strategy to get you to sign up for - what else - paid online lessons. Let's face it - the "com" in .com stands for commercial. They all want to sell you something. Even if they are giving all their lessons away, they probably want you to buy something else of theirs on the same site.
3) In the rare instance where the lessons may all actually be free and comprehensive in scope, then the site it likely cluttered with all sorts of advertising and other offers - from Google AdWords to banner ads, to pop-ups, links and anything else trying to grab your attention away from what your were seeking - which was free guitar lessons.
4) The reason for all those banners, AdWords, and pop-ups is that the owners of the site get paid for displaying them. So their generous nature is actually a front for a money-making venture of another type, designed, really, to distract you away from their site so they get paid. Nice.
At Guitar-eze, at least I'm fairly direct at what the site wants you to do - which is buy Guitar-eze. I offer up a lot of information about what the method is all about, what you get when you buy, how open-D will help open up the world of guitar for you, but I don't hide behind a facade of "free" anything. I'm also happy to report that to date, I have resisted all forms of outside advertising on any of my pages (except a very limited links section at the bottom of my Testimonials page). I hate all that stuff when I'm surfing (as I'm sure you and everyone else does), but particularly on guitar sites.
Maybe in some future post I'll rant about how generally pointless it is to try and learn guitar while sitting in front of a computer screen...
So, to conclude, "free" anything online should be taken for what it generally is - nonsense - and nowhere is this more true than the wonderful world of guitar on the internet.
How can they possibly do it - give away free lessons on guitar?
There are several answers, and none of them are particularly inspiring or refreshing to me:
1) Most "free" lesson sites are exceptionally limited in what they actually offer free. I've seen the most silly "lessons" out there, from holding the guitar, to listing off the parts of the guitar, and on and on. It's obvious why the lesson is "free" - it's virtually pointless and could be found anywhere free.
2) This makes their "free" offerings a teaser strategy to get you to sign up for - what else - paid online lessons. Let's face it - the "com" in .com stands for commercial. They all want to sell you something. Even if they are giving all their lessons away, they probably want you to buy something else of theirs on the same site.
3) In the rare instance where the lessons may all actually be free and comprehensive in scope, then the site it likely cluttered with all sorts of advertising and other offers - from Google AdWords to banner ads, to pop-ups, links and anything else trying to grab your attention away from what your were seeking - which was free guitar lessons.
4) The reason for all those banners, AdWords, and pop-ups is that the owners of the site get paid for displaying them. So their generous nature is actually a front for a money-making venture of another type, designed, really, to distract you away from their site so they get paid. Nice.
At Guitar-eze, at least I'm fairly direct at what the site wants you to do - which is buy Guitar-eze. I offer up a lot of information about what the method is all about, what you get when you buy, how open-D will help open up the world of guitar for you, but I don't hide behind a facade of "free" anything. I'm also happy to report that to date, I have resisted all forms of outside advertising on any of my pages (except a very limited links section at the bottom of my Testimonials page). I hate all that stuff when I'm surfing (as I'm sure you and everyone else does), but particularly on guitar sites.
Maybe in some future post I'll rant about how generally pointless it is to try and learn guitar while sitting in front of a computer screen...
So, to conclude, "free" anything online should be taken for what it generally is - nonsense - and nowhere is this more true than the wonderful world of guitar on the internet.
