Advertising on Virtual Communities

The latest issue of Christian Retailing reports on yet another alternative to the Internet communities such as MySpace and Facebook.

Some of you already use ShoutLife, a Christian community site. This new one is called Lights Together, which launched just last week. Lights Together takes a different approach by allowing the forming of “Webchurches” that will create “virtual congregations.” The site will enable churches to build their own Web sites, which will allow their members access to Lights Together. “Instead of coming in as individuals, they can come in through their church,” said Larry Carpenter, senior vice president of Send the Light, which is handling advertising sales for the site.

Lights Together has gone after sponsors for its site. Tyndale was the first Christian publisher to sign on, although their sponsorship was promised only for the site's beta testing period. LT will be announcing other sponsors soon.

Both ShoutLife and Lights Together provide new Internet sites for advertising within the Christian community. And it looks like the kinds of advertising will only expand with time. For example, in addition to national advertising, Paul McLellan, president of ShoutLife, says his site is implementing a geographic-based advertising program. In this program a local Christian bookstore could target its own clients.

Of course, as far as ShoutLife goes, advertising for books, music, etc. can simply come through establishing your own Web page. I recently put up my own ShoutLife page, but other than that, I've spent little time on the site. Too busy finishing a book right now. I asked the ACFW loop about folks' experiences with ShoutLife, and they were very positive. However, not all you BGs are on the ACFW loop. If you have a site and would like to give us the link, please do. And let us know how your experience with ShoutLife is going. Do you like the community? Do you get traffic? If you're an author, do you have any trackable data that shows it has helped book sales? If you're not an author, why do you have a ShoutLife page? Have you connected with people as you expected?

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Ransomed Dreams by Amy Wallace on blog tour this week.