Thanks for your comment, David. Wow … your church meets in a comedy club! I can only imagine the number of jokes that has spawned! You might be interested in a post I wrote earlier comparing churches and bars: "What’s Different? Church vs. Bar." I think it’s great you’re meeting in a comedy club, it makes my head spin to think about but I hope you’re having great success in your outreach.

@Mark:

Thanks, Mark, for stopping by! I’m glad you liked the post.

@Rob:

Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for the kudos on the article. I’m delighted you found it helpful in any way!

Regarding your blog, you have a lot more readers than I do, for sure. You also have more subscribers than I do. According to Technorati, you also have more authority than I do:

BlogRodent | Authority: 65, Rank: 112,625
RobSingleton.net | Authority: 87, Rank: 79,365

So, you have 87 blog-sites pointing to you, and I have 65. There are ways to increase that number, for sure, and exchanging links is one way to do it. (Thanks for the offer, by the way.) Writing compelling stuff is the other way to do it, and perhaps better. After all, you have to convince someone to link to you from their blogroll, and many bloggers get a little resistant to doing that since their blogroll reflects their reading tastes (usually, anyhow). Plus, if you’re too eager to get links you may wind up sending the wrong message to your readership anyhow?— I assume that a blogger’s blogroll reflects his taste and style. That leads me to believe that if I like a particular blogger, I might like his blogroll links, too. Unfortunately, the indiscriminate linker winds up leading me down rabbit trails, so once I realize that’s the case, I won’t even investigate the links. And that can backfire, because you lose a little credibility when that happens.

In short, persuading others to put you on their blogroll can backfire in terms of readership loyalty and trust. I wouldn’t mess with trust because if a reader digs you, they’ll keep coming back for more. And if your reader is a fellow blogger, you’ll wind up getting linked to from a post anyhow.

For more on blog promotion strategy, see my posts 39 Tips to Improve Weblog Traffic and Visibility and "Why Julie Blogs: On writers, writing, and blogging well".

Keep up the good work!

PS: By the way, I do maintain a large list of Pentecostal & Charismatic bloggers here. If you belong on that list as a P/C blogger, let me know, I’ll add you!

Also, just curious — I wonder if you ever have the same frustration as I do? As a pastor of a large church, I have close to 1,000 readers a day on my blog, but still have a very low authority on Technorati. I’ve learned that this is because I don’t have enough links to my site.

I was wondering if you would be willing to put in a link exchange with me at robsingleton.net. If so, please send me an email to robtherev[at]gmail.com showing me where you’ve linked it and I will do the same.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Rob Singleton

My church meets in a relatively sparse comedy club in Bethnal Green (East London – UK). We love it and it really helps to put people that have never been to a church before at ease. It is also a place that most of the locals will know.

Thankfully we now have a smoking ban in the UK so that got rid of one of the problems of worshiping when the room smelt of smoke!

No conversation necessary. My work-for-hire agreement states:

PUBLISHER agrees that AUTHOR may publish the WORK on AUTHOR’S own website.

I just can’t publish it or sell it anywhere else. However, what CTI used was about 50% of what I submitted since the other half was already covered adequately in the other articles.