What’s happening?

Posted 02 Mar 2011

We’re entering another busy time, in the run up to Easter. So what’s happening? Here’s the answers:

On the Website - My trusty web designer Dan has been very busy. We have a great new landing page, which shows 4 random cartoons when you arrive. We were keen to show viewers the artwork style as soon as they arrived, rather than after several clicks and much head scratching as they wondered how to find the cartoons!
Soon we will have a new Main Navigation page, which will highlight all that the website has to offer: the BCP blog, my Twitter tweets (uploaded automatically to the website), links to the new Encyclopaedia and Articles & Issues sections, & much more.

We regularly get “hits” on the website from all over the world: between the dates 12/12/2010 and today, we have had 2,766 visits to the website, from 107 different countries. The top 5 being:

USA 952 visits
UK 893 visits
Canada 110 visits
Philippines 100 visits
Australia 57 visits

Interestingly, we have also had 1 visit from someone in Iraq, 1 visit from Iran, 6 from Saudi Arabia and 5 from the United Arab Emirates. There have been 8 visits from China and 33 from South Korea… although none from North Korea, unfortunately! Wouldn’t it be great if these were people searching for Jesus?… something to pray about there.

Marketing – we are now advertising in the Church Times and in the Church of England newspaper – CEN

If you want to see the adverts (only a couple of sentences on the 2 website’s!) then here are the 2 URL’s. Just copy and paste into your web browser and you should be taken to the page with Bible Cartoons listing:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/link_results.asp?id=274&category=Church%20Resources

http://www.religiousintelligence.org/churchnewspaper/webdirectory/

We have taken out an advert on Facebook which will appear before a lot of people in the weeks leading up to the big day, directing them to the Bible Cartoons website. That means that a lovely, colourful cartoon (drawn my yours truly!) will be appearing on about 14 million people’s computer screens throughout the world, in the run up to Easter. The hope is that many more people will go to our BCP website & become aware of what we are offering: nice looking Bible-inspired cartoons, thoughtful research notes, ideas about how to use the Bible Cartoons to appeal to younger audiences at church, & the opportunity to meet the Creator of the Universe… no, not me… Jesus Christ!

Drawing – I am currently colouring in 6 cartoons that tell the story of Jesus healing the Paralysed man, in Mark 02. I have recently uploaded 5 cartoons that tell the exciting story of Joshua and the fall of Jericho, the pivotal point at the beginning of the Hebrew invasion of the Promised Land.

Sales – I finished the 11 cartoons that tell the story of Exodus – The ten plagues of Egypt cartoons at the end of 2010. We have managed to sell the set three times so far. This set of cartoons appears to be very popular with Sunday School teachers, who are our main customers on the website, to date!

Prayer Requests – we have been approached a few times over the last few months by people who love the cartoons, but would like them for free. Yesterday I received a request from someone in Brazil, who said he couldn’t afford the cartoons, but would like to use them all the same, in youth work. Making the cartoons readily available (even free of charge) fits in with our spiritual goals for the BCP. We have deliberately kept the price of the cartoons low (£1 & £2 each, depending on the quality the customer requires) in order to make them as readily available to as wide an audience as possible. However, our marketing lady says we are not charging enough! On the other hand, it nevertheless costs quite a lot of money to market and promote the website, so we do indeed need to make some sales, at least in order to cover the costs of the website and marketing the cartoons. Therefore, we would be very grateful of your prayers for divine wisdom for us to know what to do in this regard.

As I wrote earlier, many people from all over the world are accessing our website. I urge you therefore, to join us in praying for people who may be looking for Jesus, and who just “happen” to stumble across our website. Pray that our viewers may be challenged and encouraged to put their faith in Jesus. He can use anything (including our cartoons!) and anyone to reach out to a needy world & say, “Here I am – trust in me.”

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement – Martin Y

Comments

Comments are turned off for this article