Looking for insight on how to start a Christian blog?
Are you thinking about spreading the gospel online? Maybe you feel passionate about demonstrating a Christian lifestyle or showing people biblical alternatives to common principles, and you’re thinking a blog might be a good tool to do that?
I think you’re onto something!
A blog can be a great way to share Christian insight, evangelize, reach people, offer prayers and devotionals, and so much more. Unfortunately, many Christian people don’t know how to start a Christian blog. Others, might know how to start one (technically), but they don’t know how to monetize it, so they end up doing the Christian blog “on the side” as a “hobby” because they still have bills to pay!
You might be able to relate. In this post, I plan to share with you:
- Examples of successful Christian blogs
- Christian Blog income reports so you can see the potential of Christian blogs earning money online
- Answers to common questions about Christian blogging (leave yours in the comments section if you have them)
- and, a Step-by-Step Guide so you can get started
The Mistakes I Made with My Christian Blog
I started a Christian blog around 2014.
At the time, I was Active Duty in the military, a full-time student, and a mom. I was getting my Bachelor’s degree in religion from Liberty University (a Christian university), and I thought a blog would be a great way to share advice and tips for how to apply the Bible to daily life.
I still think blogging is a great way to share advice for how to apply the Bible, but I made quite a few mistakes that prevented me from being successful with my Christian blog.
I’m sharing these mistakes with you in effort to prevent you from wasting time and being ineffective in your ministry.
Blogging online is a little different than evangelism offline because there are technical components.
My Christian Blogging Mistakes
When I started my Christian blog, I barely knew anything about starting a blog, but by watching Youtube, I was able to buy a domain name, install WordPress, and start writing content. I wrote 140 posts on my website, but I didn’t get the visitors and income I was expecting, so when my family needed a “real” way to make money, I had to focus on things I could guarantee would work.
That was unfortunate because I really wanted to help people with my Christian blog. Now, that I’ve been able to build How to Entrepreneur into a successful money making blog, I look back at my Christian blog, and I know what I did wrong. When I begin working on it again, I know I’ll avoid some of the bad habits I had before like:
1. Writing what I wanted versus writing what people were looking for
I was writing what came to mind without validating the demand for that content online. I would read my Bible or Christian books and become inspired by the topics they wrote about, and think, “that was such a powerful message I’d like to share”, then I’d begin writing about it without knowing how people would find it online.
Depending on where you plan to get your visitors from, this strategy may or may not work. I see churches who get the majority of their website visitors from their congregations offline, and they write what they believe their offline audience wants to see without attention to what people are searching for offline.
I didn’t have an audience yet though, and I wasn’t relying on offline marketing. I was depending on Google or social media to send traffic, but I didn’t put myself in the mindset of a search user, or validate the amount of people who would be looking for that information.
With How to Entrepreneur, I do research before writing anything to make sure each post is something people are searching for online, and to ensure I use the terminology they’re using when they search. For example, I could write a post titled, “How to become a blogger for Jesus”, but if no one is using that terminology, then Google may not serve my article in the search results because it’s not directly relevant to the query.
2. I wasn’t properly optimizing my articles for search engines
Most people begin looking for information online using search engines. They might want to know what to cook for dinner, what scripture is relevant for their situation, or how they should handle a situation they’re going thru.
When I was writing articles, I was trying to solve problems for people, but I didn’t know how to optimize my content, so Google would rank it. When my articles would be far from the first page of the search results, no one would find them, which meant, no one was visiting my website.
3. I doubted myself a lot
I didn’t have a community of people who knew what I was trying to do. Instead, everyone I knew thought I was chasing a “pipe dream”, so I constantly doubted whether I was doing something legitimate. I had questions like:
- “Can Christian blogging work?”
- “Can I make Christian blogging work?”
- “Am I following a pipe dream?”
- “Where are the successful people who have done this?”
How You Can Avoid Mistakes I Made
After trying and trying for more than one year, putting in lots of effort, and getting minimal traction, I stopped working on my Christian blog. I don’t want that to happen to you. Avoid the mistakes I made by getting good training and a supportive community who knows what you’re doing works. Learn how to get traffic from search engines, how to use social media to attract website visitors, how to run paid ads, and how to validate content ideas.
Before I started How to Entrepreneur, I signed up for some training that made my experience with How to Entrepreneur completely different than my experience on my Christian blog. Now that I’ve gotten this blog to be profitable, I will go back and work on my Christian blog with new insight.
Please avoid my mistakes!
You can get started with a free WordPress website, free training, a community of 2 million+ people to support you, and my 1-on-1 coaching when you visit here.
How a Blog can Fit into Online Ministry
A blog can be a great place to get started in ministry. The traditional way of starting a ministry is to:
- Do evangelism
- Find a building
- Try to get attendees
- Raise donations
- and use the Donations to fund more ministry
You might have a heart to start a ministry, but it might not be realistic for you to get started the traditional way. In fact, stats show people aren’t donating like they use to, so even established ministries are facing challenges with relying solely on donations. Maybe you:
- Don’t want to raise funds for a building
- Don’t want to rely solely on donations
- Or, you want to make a convenient and accessible way for people to learn a biblical worldview on things
A blog is a great way to raise funds for an offline location, diversify income rather than relying on donations, and to offer a convenient way to learn a biblical worldview.
Other Terms Used to Describe Christian Blogs
While you might call it a “Christian blog”, other terms people use to refer to Christian blogs include:
- Christian devotional blog
- Spiritual Blog
- Online ministry
- Blogging for Jesus
Christian Blog Examples (with Income Reports)
It’s very uncommon for Christian bloggers to share their income. Many of them feel badly about monetizing a Christian blog because of various philosophical reasons, however, running a blog comes with expenses, and if you want to reach lots of people, you’ll need funds to do that. Ministries offline monetize their ministries thru products, services, events, and other things just like other businesses do, and it helps them to reach more people. Here are a few examples of Christian blogs that have shared what they’re making online:
Sarah Titus
Sarah Titus doesn’t blog directly about Christian Lifestyle all of the time, but she focuses mostly on home management, organization, and starting an online business. Regardless, she always gives God credit for her business success and typically makes mention of Him in her writing, so I’ve included her. Starting in her 2nd year of blogging, she was earning $23k/mo! Majority of her income comes from selling digital products.
Girl and the Word
This blog teaches people how to live an abundant life. She talks about lifestyle, decor, and faith. Her 2018 income reports show that her income was growing. She has three separate income reports, and on them, she showed her income rising from $5k to $9.5k per month. Majority of her income comes from working with brands and posting content that’s been sponsored.
Pastor Dre
Pastor Dre has a heart to serve inner city youth. He started an online business because he knew the people he was trying to reach are finding solutions online that aren’t the best. He wanted to prevent the inner city youth from following advice that leads them astray. Now, his blog is less than one year old, and he reports making sales and even getting more people to visit his offline church as a result of his digital marketing skills.
How Often are People Searching for Christian Solutions Online?
You might be wondering whether or not people search for Christian advice online. You definitely don’t want to start a website on a topic people don’t want to know about. I want to show you proof that people are searching for Christian advice online using two tools: Google trends and Jaaxy.
Google Trends
According to Google Trends, there’s an ongoing interest all year around for Christian devotionals, Bible studies, Christian alternatives, what the Bible says about all kinds of life situations, and what Jesus did about various different things. With this in mind, it’s clear that search users are looking for information online.
Jaaxy – Market Research Tool
Jaaxy is a tool you can use to see the number of people who search for a specific keyword, and how many people are competing in the search rankings. Ideally, you want to choose keywords that are in high demand and low supply. Using this tool, I’ve been able to validate that there’s lots of keywords people are searching for to find Christian solutions. If you’d like to test out some of your keyword ideas, enter them below, and see what Jaaxy says.
How to Start a Christian Blog – Step-by-Step
If you’re interested in starting a Christian Blog, these are the steps I recommend:
1. Choose a Niche or Target Audience
When you’re starting a Christian blog, it’s starting a ministry. Can you imagine how it would be to try to get the seniors, children, singles, married couples, widows, parents, and leaders to get the specific advice they need to be successful facing life if they were all in one room listening to one advisor?
Usually, in offline ministry, they break the people up into groups, so they can speak specifically to the problems that group might face. For example, teenagers might deal with things like confidence in school, peer pressure, drugs, or bullying, but Seniors wouldn’t deal with that as much, right?
When you choose your niche, you’re choosing a group of people you’re going to serve. You can add more target audiences over time, but it’s important to serve one group well, then build on top of that success.
Christian Blogging Niches
Some Christian blog niches you can consider are:
- Parenting
- Christian Lifestyle for Men
- Christian marriage
- Christian Lifestyle for Women
- Creation and Evolution
- Christian Adoption
- Advice for Christian Teenagers
- Christian Fashion Advice
- and, there are many more
Just about any niche you find online, may have a Christian perspective. When you find that, you can create a Christian niche site or add that as a sub-niche in a more broad Christian lifestyle site.
2. Build a Website
Once you’ve chosen a niche, then you want to build a website. Your website will serve as your “virtual campus” where people will go to get Christian advice or to seek counsel. If you’re ready to start your Christian website, you can test drive my top recommended WordPress website builder here for free.
3. Monetize your Site
Once your website is built, you want to plan out your monetization like a small business owner. You need to think about how your blog is going to make money because its money that’s going to:
- Pay your bills
- Pay your business expenses
- Pay people that work with you – Giving jobs is a great gift
- And, pay for advertisements and other things you’ll need to get your messages out
Here are some options for how you can monetize your Christian blog:
Christian Affiliate Programs
There are several Christian companies and non-religious companies that help solve problems for people that might cross paths on your blog. Things like home decor, entertainment, courses, software, clothes, and other things can be sold from your blog, and they might be things your website visitors would like to use anyway!
You can sign up as a partner for companies like:
- Pureflix
- Dayspring
- Faithbox
- and other independently managed affiliate programs
You can also sign up with affiliate networks and sell products that aren’t necessarily “Christian”, but are relevant to a Christian audience. For example, maybe you like a vendor who offers modest clothing, but they’re not necessarily a “Christian company”.
Recommended Reading:
Christian Digital Product Ideas
In offline ministries, there are lots of courses and seminars that offer lifestyle advice, but many of the traditional ministries haven’t translated their information online. You can help by bringing Christian advice and courses online. Depending on what you topic you talk about, you can offer online courses: from free to hundreds of dollars. It depends on the value of the topic you’re sharing about. You can also offer:
- Guided meditations or other audios
- eBooks
- Checklists
- Bible journaling downloads
- and there are so many other things you can offer
For example, Christian leaders (like Dave Ramsey or John Maxwell) have made thriving businesses promoting a Christian worldview on a topic everyone deals with.
Recommended Reading:
- Podia Review – My #1 All-in-One Digital Product, Event, and Membership Solution
- 7 Best Online Course Platforms (a Comparison)
Physical Products you can Offer from your Blog
Physical products can be made in-house or they can be sourced from a manufacturer. You can make things like t-shirts or items with messaging on it, or you can make other solutions that can help people by making their day-to-day lives easier.
Christian Services you Can Offer Online
From a blog, you can offer services that help people in your audience in some way. You can offer coaching or counseling. You can offer services that require education or a degree (like legal advice, accounting, etc.), or you can offer services that have a closer connection to your blogging (like posting sponsored content on your blog or sending an email to your email list).
Christian Events Online
Churches and Christian organizations have all kinds of events, but there’s a scarce amount of them online. Things like women’s seminars, parenting seminars, or holiday events are fairly easy to find in local ministries, but in the online space, the Christian community doesn’t seem like they’ve gotten to the point where they offer many live interactive events (aside from streaming a service online).
Wouldn’t it be nice to host a Christian interactive paid event where you could help people who want to apply a Christian worldview to an area of their lives? Thru webinars, online seminars, or online meetings, you can help people who are looking for Christian ways of applying things.
Christian Blogs and Display Advertising
There are several companies who pay for display ads online. Once you’re getting traffic to your website, there’s an inherent value in having an audience that other companies can get in front of.
You can add display ads onto your website that can generate hundreds or thousands of dollars per month in passive income. Of all monetization options, display ads require the least effort once you have a site with significant traffic.
Christian Blogs and Diversification
Like other businesses, it’s important to diversify. In the beginning, you want to build one strong income stream, but as your audience grows, you’ll be able to offer more things that will diversify your income streams. You may start out with affiliate marketing, then see gaps in the market, and move onto creating your own products and services–that’s the route I recommend.
4. Publish Content
Offline ministries attract people because of their sermons, communities, and other services. Online ministries attract people to their content: videos, audios, articles, and graphics. You have to commit to consistently publishing content in order to keep an engaged audience online. When I get started with a new platform online, I like to do 90-day challenges where I give my best effort for 90 days to see what’s required to get results on the platform, or even if I have the where-with-all to do what it takes at the time.
5. Get Traffic
Publishing high-quality content will lead to getting traffic. You’ll need visitors coming to your website in order to make money (regardless of which monetization strategy you choose), so make sure that after you’ve set up your website and monetized it, you focus on getting traffic by publishing high-quality content. Some content types that lead to traffic include:
- Articles
- Audio
- Video
- Graphic
- Ads
6. Make Money
Once your website is up, you’ve chosen a niche, you create relevant and helpful content, your site is monetized, and you’re getting traffic, then you can expect to make money with your Christian blog. It’s possible that you can make enough money with your Christian blog that you can replace a full-time income, give lots of jobs, and make a big impact, so make it happen!
Conclusion
I hope this article demonstrated for you the demand for Christian advice online, proof that Christian blogs make money, and steps to for how to start a Christian blog in a practical and actionable way. If you have any questions about this, leave them in the comments section below. If you’d like help starting your Christian blog, test drive what it’s like with a free website and training. Join me here to get started.
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