Ministry Website For Your Church and Ministry
For a couple of weeks now, I haven't updated “The Disicplers” that much except the daily devotional “Morning Manna”. This is because I have been working on a project website, the home of the Morning Manna. It's the website of my dear friend Tom Smith, Morning Manna's author.
The website's concept is all about Tom's ministry called “Back To Bethel”. It is more likely a portfolio of his ministry. It has the collection of Morning Manna posts, poems, sermons, and even audio clips of his album.
It was kinda exciting because this is my first time to use one of the well known “website making” platform on the net.
Working on it allowed me to finally evaluate the capability of my dream web hosting company. It did gives you a lot of options if you own an account with them. Even if you have no experience at all in making websites, their platform is already enough for you to build such a powerful website.
They provides you with all the tools that you need in building a highly-focused, content rich website.
Here's the downside that I have seen with the platform that I am using, if you are only up to blogging, you will be disappointed with their platform because it really lacks some flexibility with the looks and archiving. This company only focuses on website making. I just wonder if time will come that they will try to improve their blogging platform for more professional look as my blog.
Before I forget, you can see what I have been working on over the couple of weeks. It is not yet done. There are still lots of things to do with it, especially the uploading part. But you can now visit it and browse it. Here's the link: www.back-to-bethel.org
Do You Want To Have Your Own Ministry Website?
Probably, some of you were already thinking of owning your own ministry website. However, you are still puzzled where will you start. Here's the first couple of questions that you would need to answer in choosing a website or a blog.
1.Do you want a simple portfolio of wisdom without thinking of the monetization part? Or do you want a portfolio of wisdom where you can earn some income from it?
2.Does your time allows you to work more than 10 hours a week? Or you only have about 7 hours a week to work with your site?
Many ministers especially those who are in the ministry have no interest of monetizing their websites. This is because they don't want it to look more like a business than to look like a ministry. Furthermore, they hate adsense and other scripts that they won't have any control over to what will be advertised on their site.
However, there are ministers who chooses to monetize their websites simply because of their economic condition. They want that their website will be able to pay for its own hosting plus a simple decent additional income for the family. I myself choose this path mainly because of economic reasons.
Well, don't get me wrong. But if you are a minister, and you are struggling financially and you really want to at least start a business with decent income, having a website as your business center isn't bad. Believe me, having a business over the net can help you especially in times of need (of course by God's working), this is based on personal experience. Just don't make it your main focus. Like all other businesses, as ministers, our main focus should be ministering others.
The first question will help you decide to what kind of services will you get and how much investment will you give for your own ministry website. If you choose a non-earning website, I strongly suggest that you just go to cheaper hosting sites. On the other hand, if you want an earning website, you go to a little more expensive hosting sites since they will offer you a better service for your website. You pay what you get, as simple as that.
The second question focuses on time frame. Well, if you are planning to have a ministerial website, certainly it will consume you some time. The big difference between blog and websites is that blogs need to be updated more frequently than websites.
So if you have only a very little time for setting it up, I suggest you go for a website. If you frequently update your readers, or if you have a daily email column, I suggest you go for a blog.
Whether you blog or make a website, you can monetize them if you want.
Is there any webhosting company that gives free hosting for ministry website?
Yes, there are lots of those over the net. However, I DON'T recommend them especially if you want to start right. Starting with FREE for your website is TOTALLY, I mean TOTALLY a waste of time.
Here are just some of the disadvantages:
1.FREE ones only give a very limited amount of hosting space.
2.FREE ones are hard to appear over the search engines because SE's doesn't have much respect with FREE hosted websites
3.FREE ones are hard to monetize since the webhost is the one who post advertisement over your “Hard-worked” articles. Meaning, they give it for free so that you can make a FREE Website CONTENT for them. In other words, they are only using you. Plus the fact that you cannot control what advertisement will appear on your website.
4.FREE ones are usually down.
Believe me, I already have tried bunch of these free hosting sites, and they don't do anything good for you and your ministry. That's why I decided to finally pay for hosting which gives me a lot of satisfaction over the performance of my website.
However, if you are up to blogging only, there are three FREE blogging services that I highly recommend which still can give you the flexibility of options and even for monetization purposes.
1.Blogger.com – This is the best by far that I can recommend. First, it is owned by google. And since it owned by google, of course you have the option to monetize it using the Google Adsense. Furthermore, you already have an advantage of having a higher SE ranking since it is owned by Google itself.
2.Livejournal.com – I am not so sure if this blogging site gives the option of having a google adsense. But as far as I see it, it is equally gorgeous as blogger.com. Having a lot of FREE bloggers subscribed in it, it just means that it surely has a good service.
3.Wordpress.com- I also like this FREE blogging service. The downside with wordpress is that, it is now against their policy to post an “affiliate link” and you cannot integrate Google Adsense in it. They are more focussed on the “CONTENT”. However, you can still use this FREE blogging platform if you want to have a minitry blog.
But Vince, How and Where Will I Start If I Want To Start Right?
Good question. Here's the thing. You can start by sending me the answers with the above question If you already have answered the two questions above, why not email me?
I would be happy to assist you setting up your own blog or website. Depending on what you will want, whether income earning website or ministry focussed website, I would be happy to give you some tips and recommendations so that you will no longer waste tons of money, and tons of time researching what's best.
Having more than 2 years of experience in researching for good hosting companies and website services, I can certainly pinpoint which are good and which are crap, which one is expensive and which one is cheap. It is because having a low price doesn't necessary mean that it is cheap. It may be cheap but your website is always down and they have a very poor tech support. That could mean a big loss for you. I am a victim of this. This is why I think, I already have the authority to tell which one is good.
In addition, I can also tell you which website services are needed for your website and which ones are not.
