Time4Learning invites homeschoolers with access to blogs or newsletters for their support groups to review our program.  We give them a free month for their kids: they write a review of us.  Some people love us: some don't. Some recommend us to all their friends, some position Time4Learning as appropriate in only certain ways.   We appreciate all thoughtful reviews and we much prefer this word-of-mouth approach to marketing rather than an expensive campaign which we couldn't afford anyway. Heres some homeschool curriculum reviews.

We also approach some people with blogs and newsletters and invite them to review us. Some do, some don't.

However, we sometimes run into an attitude which is a pet peeve of mine.  What do you think of this attitude?

"We only review free sites, paid sites need to pay for advertising"

Now, at first glance, I could see why people have a bias against helping out businesses where-as "free" sites are considered to be in the public interest.

I personally feel that this is naive and has perhaps unintended negative consequences which I'm surprised that the homeschoolers do not notice.

How are the free sites for children financed? Perhaps they are done as hobbies by well-intentioned people.  When this is the case, I am the first to support them.  But mostly, they are "advertising" supported.  How do I feel about  overly-commercial free sites such as Disney, Yahooligans, Microsoft's "Learning games" sites and the others. They use using education and games to advertise to my children, to sell to my children, and to trick them into downloading spyware or advertising-filled materials disguised as free downloads (after asking the player, often a child under 10, to click on a contract headlined "to download the next level of this game" and with small print allowing the vendor to install spyware, advertising ware, and other nasties on the computer).

While there are many good learning and game web sites, I didn't have the time to constantly sort through them.  This is actually what got me to start Time4Learning, a subscription-based with support-for-parents no-advertising-to-kids website.  We started out as a way of managing online time blending education with games and keeping the kids away from the overly commercial or violent sites.  However, we found that our investment in great educational software lead us squarely into focusing on homeschool curriulum for PreK - 8th. Thats how it happened.

PS - I have offered to buy adspace on the site that answered me this way. Its a great site.  I'll check, after I place the advertisement, if she would mind me mentioning her site's name here