• Pay by yearly statement and check - direct statement customers can pay 12 months in advance. Customers wishing to pay 12 months in advance receive a 5% discount. Yearly pre-payment is not refundable.
• Pay by quarterly statement and check - You will recieve an invoice about 30 days in advance of the due date. You can still cancel and any paid months after the month of cancellation will be refunded.

About 20% of our customers ask us to help them get a quick start and then they maintain the site after it is up. Many find this an effective way to get a profession site up and running very quickly and economically. We have pre-designed layouts that are a quick and cost-effective way to get started. We can also build you a complete custom site or you we can give you an estimate to suit your particular needs.

Your site is automatically updated several times a day with fresh external content through RSS feeds, but let's face it, most of your members are there to see what is happening in the church. We recommend that you update your site a minimum of once a week to keep the content fresh.

Better yet, come up with a schedule that coincides with your church activities and update your site in several different areas several times a week. For example, say you finalize your weekly Sunday bulletin by Friday noon. Post those on the website right away. Can you get your sermon audio ready for upload to the site by Sunday afternoon? Maybe your members would like to listen to it again to let it sink in after the football game is over! Perhaps you freeze your newsletter on the 15th of the month; develop a schedule to post new articles then. Your users will learn to check the site for the new content when it is posted and will appreciate being kept up to date.

Church Chat Live is an add-on product that allows you to interact directly with people visiting your site. Visitors can initiate a dialog or you can pop-up a window and welcome them to the site and ask if they have questions. Church Chat can help you bring the Gospel message, help site visitors understand your church or ministry in greater detail, and even act as a semi-anonymous communication tool between you and church members.

We suggest you select a URL with the suffix '.org'. The '.org' suffix is the one designated for non-profit organizations as '.com' is designed for companies.

You may find that many URLs are already taken. Try to keep it as short as possible. Often it can help to use a combination of the name and initials. Many churches also tie their URL to the location, such http://www.churchnametown.org/.

1. Carefully fill in your description and keywords on your settings page (edit the site and click the settings button). Make sure your description is 30 words or less and that it is a description, not a mission statement. You do not have to repeat the title (Church or Ministry name). If you are a local ministry include the city and state. Include important keywords in the description like "Christian church in northwest Houston, Texas." Put your most important keywords first in the keyword box.
2. Search engines like Google claim they do not look at the meta-tags. That re-emphasizes the importance of putting key word content onto your site including keywords in the Page Title. It is our experience that using Google site map or analytics has very little effect on search engine listing.
3. Make sure your site title is filled in and includes your city and state if you are a local ministry - click on title/footer link in the site settings.
4. Follow all the directions in submitting the site to the search engines (from the Search Engine Submission button on the Admin page).
5. Submit your site in Yahoo! It is free. The 'suggest a site' is at the bottom of most pages.
6. Submit your site to the Open Directory Project. Go to www.DMOZ.com and click on the suggest URL. It is free as well. The appears to be less ability to respond to requests but try submitting your request anyway.
7. If you have a marketing budget you can try pay-per-click (ppc) Internet marketing. If someone searches for your category - you can pay to have your URL as a sponsored link. The first tier PPC engines are www.Overture.com and Adwords.Google.com - they are also the most expensive. Start small and evaluate whether the budget is well spent.
8. Make sure you are listed on local directories, the Chamber of Commerce site as well as denominational sites. You again might consider part of your marketing budget to pay up to say $100/year for listing on some of the local directories. Your marketing statistics (under site traffic from the ADMIN page) should show if you are getting referrals from these sites.