I started Youth Leaders Academy over two years ago. We had just moved from The Netherlands to Germany because my husband got a job there. As it turned out, it wasn’t possible for me to get a job. So I decided to use my many years of experience in youth ministry to start a blog. Thus Youth Leaders Academy was born.
My primary goal wasn’t to make money. Believe me, I would have chosen a different niche because there isn’t much money to make off poorly paid youth pastors 🙂
I just wanted to serve and help other with my experience. I was in a place where I couldn’t work as a youth pastor, but I still wanted to stay involved in youth ministry and help others serve better in their ministry.
Success!
Youth Leaders Academy did better than I could have ever hoped. One year after its birth, the blog placed in the Top 20 of Youth Ministry Blogs. I also managed to get a couple of really great search terms in which I started to rank first or on the first page. As a result, I did really well in organic search traffic and my blog grew.
Through my blogging activities, I came into contact with many great youth pastors and youth ministry volunteers across the world. I went to youth ministry conferences in the UK and the US where I met many of my online friends in real life. I even managed to publish a book with the number one publisher in youth ministry from some of my blog post with some new material added.
Then a few months ago, I was contacted by one of the ‘big names’ in youth ministry, Joshua Griffin. He had just moved his own very successful blog (he’d had the number one spot in the top 20 of youth ministry blogs for years with his blog More Than Dodgeball) to a new home: a place where various big and not so big names in youth ministry had started to blog together. Josh asked me to join them.
The Move
I took about two weeks to think about it, but moving the blog felt like the right move from the very start. I had a very clear goal with Youth Leaders Academy: I wanted to serve other youth workers with my experience, through writing. And that’s what I did, but this move would only enlarge my audience and my reach. Also, it would mean a lot less administrative and technical work for me, two sides of blogging that aren’t my favorite to say the least.
Still, it’s not an easy decision to transfer everything you wrote yourself to someone else’s blog. In a way, you limit your freedom and your options when you do that. But I knew it was the right decision and so I moved my entire content over to the Love God, Love Students blog.
The ‘old’ Youth Leaders Academy is still there, though officially ‘hidden’ from search engines. I still have some technical issues to work out before it will disappear completely. I’ve even found a buyer for my domain name, so in a few months, I won’t even own the site anymore.
The funny thing is, it wasn’t hard at all. You’d expect it would be difficult to let go of something I’ve built myself, but it wasn’t. It just felt right and I had no trouble letting it go, which is why I knew moving my blog was the right thing to do.
So from now on, you can find my youth ministry posts at the Love God, Love Students blog. And of course I’ll keep on blogging for ChurchMag!
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