How is this possible? The answer is by driving thousands of new visitors to your Christian website. Do I guarantee your business or ministry will double? Absolutely not. It may triple or quintuple. If it is already large, it may just grow by a good percentage. But if you follow my instructions, and are truly offering something of value to people, it will grow.

Decide if your business or ministry will really meet a customer need or minister to a visitor’s heart. If you are only creating a website to make money without providing something of value, then you will not get the traffic and this method will not work. This is only for those who are just waiting for visitors to find them, who have a great product, or who are ready to reach out to others for Christ.

The first requirement is for you to put aside any fear you have about technology or trying something new. What I will show you can be done by anyone who knows how to surf the internet and use a word processing program. Were you born after the technology boom, have no idea what the latest internet terms mean, or wonder if you are going to catch one of those computer viruses or if your mouse will crawl off your desktop? Get over it.

You learned to ride a bike, to use a VCR remote, and to use a microwave, so it’s time to be a web developer. I say it this way because college students are creating their own web pages as quickly as term papers are typed. If you are uncertain, take a deep breath, pray for courage, and read on. If you grew up with the internet, then just jump right in. Here is how.

The secret to getting surges of visitors to your website (and ultimately to you) is a blog. This is a web log, which simply means articles (or a journal) that you update at regular intervals. Some are updated daily, some weekly, and some monthly. Most websites from major corporations have blogs, including newspapers, news, google, etc. After each article you write, a system of “social bookmarking” will take over (provided you follow my instructions) and millions of people will have the chance to decide if they like what you have to say. The more people like what you write, the more they tell others on the internet, and your traffic grows exponentially.

You can add a blog to any website (even one someone else developed for you), and I will show you how to do it for free. I recommend you have your “post” or article already planned out ahead of time, so you can cut and paste it when the time is right. Why does it take one hour? Because you will need to have time to set up a blog, type a post, and submit it to places that will skyrocket your website traffic.

What does a blog look like? This is a blog. You are looking at the first post in a blog added to The Christian Billboard. The website has already been here for almost a year, but we just added a blog. Our other websites have had traffic grow exponentially from the addition of a blog, so it was time to add one here (single posts have brought in surges of thousands of new visitors within hours of being added to certain social bookmark sites, and search engines like google seem to especially like blogs, in our experience). We decided the best way to start our blog is to explain the process to our visitors so you can repeat it for your own business or ministry!

Notice the website address (URL) at the top. The blog was added to the website so it reads www.thechristianbillboard.com/blog and then the title of this post is automatically added each time you type an article (you only type in your title, the software creates the web page for you!). In the left sidebar I have linked to my website so you can return there at any time. I am also modifying this blog to look more like the website (you can customize yours at your leisure).

Let’s get started. If you get lost on this terminology, it may take you more than an hour as you follow the links to learn more about each component, but even if it takes you a few hours, doing what God has called you to do is worth the effort-let us help! Go to your CPanel (where you see statistics on how many visitors come to your website- usually accessed with a name and password at yourdomainname.com/cpanel). If you are an advanced user, you can set up your blog directly , but for now I will explain how to do it with the shortcut.called “Fantastico”.

Using Fantastico (the blue smiley face button in CPanel), select wordpress, new installation, and then fill in the gaps (login name, password, email). Next, it asks where you want the blog. If you have just created a website and want the blog to be the first thing visitors see (ie. your website is a blog), then leave it in the root (/) file as instructed. If you want to add the blog to an already established website (like this one where it is www.thechristianbillboard.com/blog), then type /blog for the file location. Finally, click on install.

When it asks, give an email address so it will email you a copy of the instructions in case you forget. When it is done, you should see a link to sign in (something like http://www.yourwebsitename.com/blog/wp-admin). Click on this link and it takes you to a sign in screen. Type your name and password, and you now see your blog. You did it! You have created your own blog. You will be asked to give it a title, which you can always change later. (10-15 minutes- unless you clicked on the helpful links below to explain more detail for any of these steps).

There are many ways to customize it. You can change your “theme” (the overall look of the site), add “plugins” (which help you do or show items in a special way), and match your blog to your website. To start, I recommend you immediately go to Options and Permalinks, and choose “Date and Name Based” for the structure. This helps the search engines find your posts, since the website name will be filled with your title name (as this one is) instead of numbers or letters that mean nothing to visitors. I will post future articles on customizing your blog, but if you are interested in some clear instructions to get you started, here are some recommended articles: Tamba2 has resources on wordpress installation and themes, Wordpress.org Docs has a great searchable database for support, and Lorelle has some basic and advanced tutorials for bloggers.

For now, one of the default themes lets you change your header color under “presentation”. You can also change the background color. Visit here for a list of colors, and then select presentation, theme editor, style sheet, and near the top where you find background color, replace the six number/letter combination with one you choose. Click update, and then “view site” to see if it is what you want. If not, change it again until you like the background color. Be sure to only change one thing at a time so you can easily change it back if you mess up (you do not want to mess with the other parts of this style sheet until you know what you are doing). (10 minutes)

Next, your readers will want to know what kind of information they can find on your blog. Will you tell them reviews, guides on use of a product, or ministry updates? Usually you will create categories for your posts, as you see here in the left sidebar. Your categories will only appear once a post is included in them, so I have placed this post into every category for you to see how it works. To create categories, go to “Manage” “Categories” and then select “create new”. Give it a name, and there you go. Keep going until you are done. Your categories will either be ordered alphabetically or in the order you type them in (unless you add a “plugin” that can change this altogether). (5 minutes)

Now you are ready to write your first post. There is already a sample post (Hello World) waiting for you. You can delete this at any time, and start your own. Click write, then click in the appropriate categories for the post (on the right)- you can select as many categories as you desire, or if you select none, they will resort to the default category. Type in a title where it says “title” (see, I told you it would be easy), and then type in your text in the box below.

You can type directly into this program, or better yet, keep a copy of all posts in another program and then paste them in when you are ready. You need to type these in something other than Microsoft Word (Notepad works fine, or another text editor. I use Dreamweaver)- documents pasted in from Word get all scrambled with question marks and mess up a blog. If you have already done this, paste it in. If you want to type directly in to wordpress, then just start typing. There are other ways to do this, some much more technical, so explore as you have time and learn about customizing or modifying your blog. (15 minutes, but I recommend you take time planning what you write and use this time to paste it in- or else be sure you are an excellent writer who can create what others will want to read in such a short time).

Now, after typing, choose “save as draft” and then you will be able to scroll down and see how your post will appear when it is published. Do you like the paragraph spacing? If not, change it. When you are satisfied, select “publish”. You did it!  Now, the last 15 minutes of your hour is left for you to help others find you.

So how do millions of visitors see your wonderful and inspired words? Easy. There are literally millions of people right now searching for something to read online. Part two of this article will show you how to let them find you instantly through your blog, how to get thousands more visitors to your website every month (and possibly every day), and how to generate revenue for your ministry or business through your website.