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Archives for 2009

A Look at ChurchCrunch Stats: Site Usage, Visits, PVs


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To the left is the analytics from December 31st, 2008 to today, December 31st, 2009.

When I look at these numbers I’m honestly a bit disappointed, for a number of reasons.

The first and biggest is that I had as one of my goals for 2009 the goal of breaking one million pageviews. As you can see, I didn’t even get half.

I severely underestimated the growth pattern that I had hoped to accomplish and I have already begun and calculated the reasons why.

The most significant “issue,” if you want to call it that, has been the difficulty of sustained content generation. When I had done my market research and taken a look at other blogs within this field, most of which were secular, I extrapolated my estimate to what I thought was reasonable. The biggest part of the calculation was simply the number of posts per day that could be generated. The mark was 5, and honestly, that was a bit hard to sustain, especially when I’m the primary author and content generator.

My hope was that I’d be able to gather more guest posters in an increasing fashion over the calendar year and establish a robust rotation. I was unable to accomplish this goal as well, and as a result I couldn’t personally continue to pump out 5+ posts a day.

What I did, though, was become more strategic with my publishing and looked at my key metrics for posting times and other factors. It helped a good deal but there was really no opportunity for recovery.

Humbling, to say the least.

I’ve adjusted my goals for 2010, but in a little bit of a different fashion, and we’ll see how this year rolls out.

How has the year looked for you in terms of traffic visits, pageviews, etc? I find it interesting that even though I want to be a champion for openness and transparency, I still get this little pit in my stomach when I start sharing numbers. Maybe it’s my pride or something.

Your turn.

5 Reasons Why Your Ministry Should Use Dropbox


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I’ll have to admit: I’m a recent convert to the power of Dropbox, but if you know anything about me you know that once I commit, I commit.

And, that means that it’s extremely effective at what I need it to do. In other words, it’s just a darn good application or service. Dropbox has proven it’s worth (so far), and for the uninitiated, Dropbox is essentially a data backup, storage, and sharing service that is web based.

It’s free (to start) and compatible with Windows, Mac, or Linux machines. You can install Dropbox on any machine (multiple machines) and access the same data anywhere. Just imagine being able to have a universal folder of files and data on any computer.

And although you can read the full feature list here, below are 5 reasons why I could imagine your ministry using it successfully: [Read more…] about 5 Reasons Why Your Ministry Should Use Dropbox

Did Jesus Have an Affiliate Program? Do You?


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Haha. This cartoon is hilarious. But, if you start thinking about it critically you actually might find that… …

Ok, we’ll stop right there.

We’ve been having some great discussions lately (and more to come!) about monetizing blogs, making money, revealing stats, etc. for us in the evangelical and christian space.

My question is two-fold: Do you/Have you used affiliate programs? If so, what’s your “success” been like?

I’ve used a number of affiliate programs and am currently experimenting with how they will work in the upcoming redesign of this site. In addition, I’m going through my financial records and seeing truly how “successful” they’ve been, and to be quite honest I’m not really liking what I’m seeing so far.

Here are some of my short-thoughts about why it’s been hard, and why it may be hard for “us” to do this:

  • I typically advertise products that, generally speaking, don’t really market well to the christian and evangelical space.
  • I don’t “market” it often, if at all. It’s been a very passive process. In fact, this is more due to my anxiety about over-marketing in general. I don’t want to be “that” guy.
  • I’m not really interested in doing it much. The income could, I suppose, be somewhat substantial, but I don’t think that’s what my business is built on.
  • A general distaste for affiliate marketing. Not sure where I got this but I have it.
  • The products that would be interesting to our vertical and market don’t have affiliate programs. (Here’s a big opportunity for people and businesses…!)

And there’s more. But, enough of me, what about you?

A Look at ChurchCrunch Stats: Google Analytics Graph 2009


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As you can, the above is a look at my traffic in graph form from Google Analytics in 2009.

There have been a number of significant spikes, the two most obvious being “If God Text Messaged the 10 Commandments” and “The 10 Commandments of Twitter.” If you’d like to know my thoughts about the latter one in particular and how it helped me generate tons of traffic, you can check this post-mortem post here.

What this doesn’t show visually (very well, at least) is the general increase of traffic over the year. Honestly, when I looked at it initially, I was unimpressed. It looks just slightly up and to the right.

Taking a look at the week view and the month view provided a better high-level picture:

Yup.  A steady increase and a bit of a drop in the 4th quarter of this year.

You might imagine that the drop of traffic should be a concern but it’s not really a large one. Starting in the 4th quarter I dropped my posting significantly, literally posting half of the number of times I historically.

After we completed the first year I dropped to about 2 posts a day, and have consistently kept that up (except for Sundays, of course). Where has all that time gone? In short, strategy. I’ve been planning for 2010 for the last 3 months and I’m extremely excited to reveal to you guys shortly what it’s beginning to look like.

Another quick reminder and lesson learned from these graphs is that blogging, like many other things, is a game of time. It just takes time to increase traffic. Year over year over year I expect it to slowly increase. You can’t expect the huge spikes (and don’t plan for it… just prepare for it) and neither can you really plan for the slow-times either.

Tomorrow we’ll look at overall visits, pageviews, and more.

Understanding the Definition of ‘Technology’


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The term “technology” can be tough to define.

John Dyer posted 4 definitions to “technology” as they have (classically?) been understood. I’ve re-posted them here (and hit the “enter” key a bit more often for readability…):

(And yes, I freaking love that animated .gif over on the right side. I think it perfectly highlights this topic. I heart the interwebs).

1. Technology as Hardware

This is the basic level that most of us mean when we use the word “technology.”

As a piece of hardware (or an “artifact” for the anthropologist or “cultural good” for the sociologist), “technology” could be a clock, a shovel, a laptop, a belt, a thermometer, a can of root beer, a canteen, a tank, or a fake duck decoy.

These are basically things do not occur “naturally” – which, for theists, are things God himself did not make.

2. Technology as Manufacturing

Taking a step back from the devices in our pockets and on our desks (and the desk itself) are the things that are used to make all these other things.

Technology as manufacturing includes not just about the vat holding the molten steel for our next car or the robot putting together our next computer, but also the entire process (or “sociotechnical system,” as the philosophers say) from the people running the machines to the electrical grid powering the plant to the legislation passed that regulates the industry.

This conception of technology was largely non-existent before the Industrial Revolution.

3. Technology as Methodology

If technology as manufacturing encompasses all the physical goods and people involved in making hardware, this third usage is the knowledge and knowhow – or in Jaques Ellul’s terminology La Technique – behind all of these processes.

This usage of technology does not refer to a physical product or even the physical machines used to make the product, but the routines, methods, and skills used to make modern hardware. Consulting firms make billions of dollars refining and streamlining the methods (or “business processes”) that companies use to make their hardware.

Methodological thinking trickles into our lives every time we say, “Let’s try to standardize that” whether it be a recipe, a Bible study, or a parenting method. In doing so, we are putting together a set of actions, and making it a way of doing things – a technique. Ellul criticized this aspect of modern technological society because it makes efficiency the highest good above humanity, community, fellowship, and other values central to a Christian conception of God’s purpose for human life.

0. Technology as Social Usage

I label this one zero because it is the top level of how we as a society use technology.

Our rules for driving are a kind of social technology imposed on top of the hardware of the car. The simultaneous actions of 45 people forming an orchestra are also a kind of technology that binds together instruments, people, and music (again, there is an overlap with art and technology).

The way that you are reading this blog post (on a website, in a feed reader, etc.) and the idea that you might comment and I might reply are all social processes built on top of and intimately connected to the hardware, the underlying manufacturing, and even the technological knowledge of blogging.

So What?

Because. It’s a good thing to think about, that’s what. As the elite-guru-technology-thinker-extraordinaire put it:

Ultimately, having a deeper more nuanced understanding of technology can make us more careful in our usage and more cognizant of the humanity (God’s most precious creation) underneath it all.

Word. I can appreciate that.

How Is Your Blog Making Money (and How Much)?


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foxtrot-blog-money

Love FoxTrot.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the relationship between transparency and money making and how a number of professional bloggers handle this relationship.

I’ve seen a number of successful secular bloggers that either consistently share how they are making money and/or even how much they are making monthly and annually. Perhaps by doing so they are gaining more trust with their audience and really “practicing what they preach” in terms of authenticity, transparency, and the like.

I don’t see any bloggers in the evangelical space sharing that type of information.

What do you think? Would it be more helpful if more christian bloggers opened up their numbers to the world? Is this a place that makes you hesitant? (I hearken back to my Presbyterian days where everyone in the congregation knew how much the Pastor was making…)