By admin | Date: April 1st, 2010
My son is 16. That says a lot about why he wants to play guitar. In fact, he asked me a few months ago to borrow my 40-year-old Yamaha classical so he could learn a few chords and try to get going with his instrument.
Last week it became official — he bought his own Fender electric guitar and amp. So he’s serious! With that in mind, we started to investigate a few options for serious guitar lessons — something this self-taught guitar player had never taken. There are quite a few options today that didn’t exist when I was in my teens. Some of the best are online.
There are a slew of ways to learn to play. You can see guitar renditions on Youtube of just about every famous song of every genre — classical, jazz, folk, rock, metal, country. You name it! These are fairly helpful, but really practical because you have to pick and choose.
A better option is to find some of the online guitar courses that are available for reasonable prices. They walk you through the basics to advanced methods in any style you wish. Three of them are Guitar Super Stars, Jamorama and Guitar Tricks — probably the top two guitar sites on the Internet.
Guitar Super Stars is pretty nifty — it’s a stylish site that touts your ability to “learn any style with any teacher you want.” There’s a long list of titles to show you what video lessons you’ll get for your $47. This site is aimed at wannabe rock, metal or blues guitarists — electric is the name of the game at Guitar Super Stars!
Jamorama is a very classy operation with a site that offers a “step-by-step” system to Learn Guitar — and they claim over 70,000 satisfied guitarists! Jamorama provides four different packages so you can choose what’s best and easiest for you: a FREE course; their Standard Edition for rhythm guitar; the Deluxe Edition, which has a lead guitar focus; and the Hardcopy Edition – a DVD-based course that includes online membership. Prices vary from $49.95 to $149.95. Personally, I think Jamorama has the best options for choosing how you want to learn.
Finally there’s Guitar Tricks. Guitar Tricks claims to have invented online guitar lessons back in 2000. This site offers a broad variety of options for the raw beginner all the way to the experienced guitarist. They also offer 24 free lessons for new “basic” subscribers. But their best feature is that they offer more than 3,000 individual lessons provided by dozens of instructors. You get full access to what you want for just $14.95 per month. You’ll also like the dozens of personal testimonials from VERY satisfied members — they have a “songs” tab on their site where students have posted recordings of their progress. Guitar Tricks has the long-term experience — and it shows.
If your son or daughter (or even YOU!) is looking for help to become the next star of the guitar, all of these options are good ones. Check them out for yourself and encourage your kid to keep at it. Guitar lasts for a lifetime.
By admin | Date: January 1st, 2010
We’ve worked with a lot of nonprofits over the years to help them in a variety of ways. One of the biggest is teaching them how to raise funds for their programs. One of the challenges many smaller nonprofits have is that they have no one on staff with experience in fundraising or marketing — a development director. As a result, fundraising can be pretty haphazard and the notion of building sustainable support rarely appears on the radar screen.
That can change right now! With the recent launch of Fundraising Success Team, small to medium sized nonprofits have an online resource center that can help them grasp the essentials of marketing, donor communications and resource development. Fundraising Success Team is the brainchild of nonprofit gurus Barry McLeish and Jeff McLinden, longtime practitioners, consultants and teacher/trainers. With co-founder Bradley Burck, McLinden and McLeish have created a site that’s chock full of information, including white papers, e-books, special reports and podcasts/vidcasts that help simplify the sometimes confounding and complicated work that grows nonprofits. Among the three, there’s more than 70 years of experience in the field of nonprofit development. As a result, nonprofit boards, CEOs and development or communications directors can be confident that Fundraising Success Team offers practical ideas and tactics to help build a successful fundraising strategy that meets the need for both short-term funding and long-term sustainability.
We highly recommend Fundraising Success Team’s FREE e-newsletter, To Your Success! Arriving once or twice a month, the newsbrief provides practical, “put-to-good-use-NOW!” ideas and tactics for raising more money and keeping donors delighted. And for a small annual fee (currently $395), you can access the entire catalogue of resources as a premium member of their site. Since the fee includes free admission to their annual Fundraising Conference (a $350 value) there really is no better value for organizations that can’t afford often expensive fundraising consultants. That’s exactly why Fundraising Success Team was created.
Our recommendation is to try the newsletter first — you’ll like it. Then spend the small fee for annual membership — it’s the best value since it includes the Annual Fundraising Conference. You’ll like Fundraising Success Team — found at fundraisingsuccessteam.com.
By admin | Date: December 17th, 2009
Hey, and welcome to the first post in Wordsmith Web Reviews! This blog will contain reviews of various Internet Marketing products with honest, trustable feedback. I’ll try and cover a wide variety of products such as SEO products, WordPress products, AdWords and even List Building products. Be sure to check back over the coming days as we have the opportunity to tell you about our experience with the types of software, services and information that want you to “spend money to make money!”
The Internet is full of all kinds of interesting things — and we’re interested in many of them! Like online gaming? We can show you some cool things. Like astronomy? We’ll show you some of the neat stuff that’ll open the heavens to you. Interested in nonprofit work? We’ll point you to resources that can help you raise money.
Wordsmith Web Reviews is here for you… If you have a question, let us know. We’ll try to get you an answer!