I suppose the title really tells all here.

Here’s their official 411:

If you use Good.ly to make a product recommendation on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else, and people click on and buy what you suggest, we give 55% of any earned referral fees to charity. The other 45% is used to run the service and continue marketing it. Anywhere you see a Good.ly link used, just a simple click could raise cash for charities.

If you’ve got a Charity in need, go ahead and check out the signup as well.

I like the simplicty of this model and the heart behind it too. The application is a part of the much larger affiliate campaign software and model from Skimlinks.com. Apparently, you can get good reporting and metrics from the clickthrus as well.

Would you use something like this if a Charity that you sponsor used it? It would be interesting to see an entire church and/or congregation rally behind it’s use for a particular cause.

As you scan the list of Technorati’s Top 100 list, pretty much the definitive ranking for blogs worldwide, you’ll notice a lot of names and institutions of the various sort. None, really, are explicitly Christian.

Tim Challies, apparently the #1 Christian Blogger is hanging right inside the 2,000 mark on Technorati, but will most definitely never break into the top 100.

But there is a man who is, and his name is Darren Rowse. Many of you know him as ProBlogger.

He’s currently sitting around #40 on Technorati. It took me a while to find this out, but I had a few hunches after picking up on some of the stuff that Darren would write, but this interview by Tim a while back definitely solidified it as truth.

There’s some very good stuff that Darren and Tim cover, and it’s well worth your read. Here are some quotes from Darren that I think are very relevant and powerful:

One of the things that I became a bit frustrated with over the two or so years that that blog (his first ‘Christian Blog’) was active was that I saw the majority of Christian bloggers gathering together to talk about subjects that related to them – but very little outward focus or interaction with the wider blogosphere.

While I think that there is definitely a place for Christian bloggers to do more inward focussed blogging (fellowship and doing faith together is a big part of what I see us called to do as followers of Christ) I wondered whether we were ignoring another part of what we’re called to be on about – mission.

Since spending less time in the ‘Christian’ blogosphere I’ve found my faith challenged and enlivened in many ways. I now run a large blog network with hundreds of blogs and lots of people working for us. Being involved in a large business in this way brings a lot of challenges in terms of the decisions you have to make and the interactions that you have with others. I think I pray a lot more than I used to as a result!

I’d love to see more Christians to catch a vision for being more outward and missional in their outlook in every area of their lives – including their blogging.

I think there is an incredible opportunity to be a part of the seeing in of God’s Kingdom if we do so.

I often write on ProBlogger that the key to building a great blog is to find ways to enhance the lives of your readers. I think that this fits pretty well with a Christian perspective also.

From what I know of the development of the Printing Press (a technology that changed the world) – Christians were at the forefront in using this tool to print Scripture. Many futurists believe that what’s happening online at the moment is as significant as what happened with the Printing Press – the world is changing. I guess my question is – are we as the Church embracing and using this new technology – or are we being left behind?

I simply love what Darren is doing and how he’s been extremely successful at providing value to anyone and every one. Good stuff Darren, keep it up.

Music is one of the areas that I have little to zero experience in.

Well, I’ll be honest. I played the piano when I was younger and I’ve been teaching myself guitar for the past 5 years and have memorized 4 songs. Yes, about 1 song a year; that’s how good I am at it.

But I digress.

The web is changing everything, from the business side, to sharing, to development, to crowdsourcing, to being found and getting started, to viral spread, everything.

Catalyst, which isn’t shy from doing something innovative, announced a little while ago the Catalyst Music Project, which jumped out at me, not because it’s super-innovative/never-been-done-before but because of the potential for this to become more than just a model but a paradigm-shift.

Make sure to check it out and submit your song if you’re so inclined, and if you win (and you went there from this post) make sure to let us know…!

My good friend Carlos, who recently announced his move with Integrity Music, has been schooling me so hard on the “industry” and “biz” of music and has opened my eyes to where he sees it all going, and the future looks bright.

I think there’s an opportunity for the Church to do things the world has never seen in terms of how we do music. We all know that we’re different in the why… but it’s what we do that’ll speak to the world who could care less about our unseen motivations.

What have you seen? What are you doing? How is the web changing the music industry in the Church?
Continue Reading…