s
Login Join Starter Story
Source
Hear And Play
Education

Hear And Play offers online music lessons and piano video tutorials that teach people to play music by ear, focusing on gospel piano.

hearandplay.com · Founded 2000 · 10 public sources · Updated 2 months ago

Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 10 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →

How Hear And Play Grew

Learn piano by ear, fast.

How did Hear And Play grow?

Summary of the sourced claims below

Hear And Play grew by building an email list through offering free video piano lessons and sending promotional emails to subscribers. The company also expanded its reach via organic social media, maintaining a blog with articles and resources, and by engaging in online piano forums as a moderator to promote the site. Additional growth strategies included learning and applying SEO techniques, running an affiliate program, and using pay-per-click advertising to attract visitors.

Channels

11 channels · grouped by how Hear And Play grows

  • Organic social media

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “someone said, huh, Jermaine, you should put your stuff on the Internet. And I said the Internet. I had AOL 2.0... So about two years later, the year was 2000, August 6. I registered the domain name here and play.com. It was available and the rest was history. You know, I had to learn how to creat...”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “I just got the buzz going even before the center was ready, even before we had the concert because I got the buzz going. And I’d say in about a month’s time you’ll see what we’ve been working on. People are dying to know and that was the change of a big shift in our strategy...”
    medium
    “Once you've gone through the 2 hours of free piano lessons, we've got plenty of articles, resources, and premium piano lessons available on our blog and online store.”
    medium

  • Email List Growth

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “I built up a list of about 700 gorilla-style marketing, [??] on message forms and stuff like that. ... started a Yahoo Group. I had 700 members and as the moderator, I had privileges to send email. Sent an email saying we’ve updated the site.”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “We get about 15,000 subscribers a month, and our total list is about 300,000 musicians that play by ear.”
    high
    “Simply enter your first name & e-mail to access 4 FREE video piano lessons:”
    medium

  • Email marketing

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “Sent an email saying we’ve updated the site. Discover the secrets of playing piano by ear, you know, headline and I woke up the next day with a box full of sales. That day we would do $1,100 in sales, on that day.”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “Now we built a list of 5,000 people and they're waiting for my next product.”
    high
    “Simply enter your first name & e-mail to access 4 FREE video piano lessons:”
    medium

  • Guerrilla marketing

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “I’m going to ask you in a moment how you got traffic to this website because I know that you used gorilla style marketing to do it.”
    medium
    Show 1 more quote
    “I'm gonna ask you in a moment how you got traffic to this website, because I know that you use guerrilla-style marketing to do it.”
    medium

  • Affiliate program

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “Then we’d form an affiliate program. So at this stage it was like everything I learned was golden because I was that kid not scared to put into action. Did first, thought about it later. Corey or whatever I read said you need to have an affiliate program, a two tier program at that, like Amazon. ...”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “Then we'd perform an affiliate program. So at this stage it was like everything I learned was golden because I was that kid not scared to put into action.”
    high

  • Pay Per Click Advertising

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “Then I bought Corey's stuff. And that's when we really started converting these folks. And then soon after that, we joined goto.com. Remember, turned into Overclick, which turned into Yahoo. Overchair, yeah. Yahoo Search Marketing, and now Ad Center. So I mean, those were the glory days where lik...”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “then soon after that we joined GoTo.com, remember, it turned into OverClick which turned into Yahoo!. Andrew: Sure, yeah. Jermaine: Overture, yeah. Yahoo! Search Marketing and now AdCenter. I mean, those are the glory days where like for five cents and no competition, you know, so that $8,000 I m...”
    high

  • Online Community

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “I'd become a moderator, I remember, of every piano music forum I could find. And I would go to work with the time that I had, answering questions and using my signature to promote my site, you know, if you want free lessons, head over to hearandplay.com...I would just, you know, be that person in...”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “So, I’d become a moderator, I remember, of every piano music form I could find and I would go to work with the time that I had, answer questions and using my signature to promote my site. ... And I remember just having a bookmark folder of every site and every week ... I would go one by one and t...”
    high

  • SEO

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “FreeForAll link pages, adding my website to every search engine, every directory, you know, just gorilla style, just everywhere I could find to put my website I just put it out there”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “Then we started learning SEO, you know, figured out how to, you know, get our pages to the top. Then I remember hiring a service, Easy Rankings back then...”
    high

  • LinkedIn

    · 1 mention
    “I would go to work with the time that I had, answer questions and using my signature to promote my site. ... I would just be that person in the forum helping out, you know, giving and hoping that it would come back to me.”
    high

  • Direct sales

    · 1 mention
    “I can sell. That’s a big part of my success and it started 20 years ago.”
    high

  • Word of mouth

    · 1 mention
    “we have a core base. And when you have a core base of anything, I heard somebody say, if you have 1,000 people that love you for anything, you know, you'll do OK ... we have our base and we know who they are, you know, pursuits of trying to go beyond that base have worked, but it still brings us ...”
    high

How 3,299 businesses grow

Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each — Hear And Play’s highlighted.
  • Social media
    64% ◀
  • Referral/Word-of-mouth
    63% ◀
  • Search/SEO
    58% ◀
  • Email
    47% ◀
  • Community
    37% ◀
  • Content/Inbound
    35%
  • Partnerships
    32% ◀
  • Events
    24% ◀
  • Paid ads
    23% ◀
  • Outbound/Sales
    19% ◀
  • Press/PR
    17%
  • Marketplaces/App stores
    12%
  • Podcasting
    4%
  • Influencer partnerships
    3%
S
Starter Story
Support Privacy Terms