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We do design for churches but we tend to do it face to face

We add their sermons each week and do changes like newsletters etc

Quentin

Hi,

You can advertise in Christian magazines for example like Christianity Today, Methodist Times and run small adverts.

Face to face meetings.

Church Trade Shows

Bible weeks

And the list goes on and on. When you price your work do not be greedy as a lot of the smaller churches cannot afford to pay large bills. Be open and honest with them.

Another tip that I can think of is, you will need to do a lot of hand holding with some of the Pastors and Ministers, they know they need a website etc, but just do not know where to start.

I have done a couple quick websites for churches but I didn't really market to get them as clients. Both situations came about through word of mouth. And since I don't know much about local marketing I have focused on making their sites interactive, helping them build email lists, and helping them share sermons, etc. at their sites.

I love creating the sites and it feels like my own little ministry. Good luck!

Allegra

churches do need good websites, and for sure they need websites with strong social networking component to ensure that their members can interact with them continuously throughout the week. I tend to think that every church site needs to have a forum incorporated within for it to be really interactive and create that sense of community. If you are able to get a project to do a church website, do encourage that kind of input to be incorporated within their site. Of course that is work that needs to be paid for!

For the people capturing the sermons, any tips? What are you using to do it? Do they have to send you the files after to get them on the site?

Thank you for the ideas shared here. I was almost slipping away from this,but having read this thread, i will go ahead and design a site for a lady and a church owner who is quite a public figure,widely known in her state but got no website for her church. And this kept bothering me.

I would love to do something for churches. I think I am going to give them mobile versions of their site. I had this idea of setting up some kind of reward system for attendance when people check-in hopefully by phone to develop a list for future events/marketing and helping them to raise money by adding an online store of religious merchandise.

We did a church website one time as a favor to one of my friends - possibly one of our worst clients ever, the experience was extremely frustrating - guess not all churches are like that but it certainly taught me a lesson about doing favors for friends, we had in mind that we would get referrals from the site it was a great site too and we got absolutely nothing from it! lol

then a guy from the church took over and the site looks terrible now - go figure!

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Thanks for the mention Don.

I'm the owner of CheapChurchWebsites.com. Couple things to keep in mind when working with churches...

Sometimes a purchase decision is made by a committee, so even if you're a great salesman the church leader might still not be capable of pulling the trigger on the spot even if he wants to.

Like any other niche, you have to gain their trust before a purchase is made. Probably even more so with a church. Free reports, email series', personally answering questions promptly, providing hands-on demo accounts, etc. all aid in this.

Another interesting thing about this niche...churches seem to be accustomed to the monthly payment structure for a website. It's very common for them to pay an ongoing monthly fee rather than a one-time fee with small hosting costs (like commonly seen for most other businesses). This is great for building recurring revenue, but it also makes it easier for churches to jump around to other providers fairly frequently.

There are also a TON of church website providers offering very similar products at very similar prices. So it's important to set yourself apart, and offer something no one else does.