Facebook Ads vs Google Ads – Which is Better?

This is a guest post from Mark Baartse, founder of Shopping Cart Reviews.

Did you know that Facebook is the most popular site on the web? It beat Google to the top spot in 2009. Yet, despite its popularity, when you talk about advertising, most of the talk is still about Google.

In competitive industries such as insurance, when you click on an ad in Google it can cost the company up to $20 for just one click - no wonder your insurance premiums as so high! Yet, while insurance companies are handing over millions to Google, Facebook is sitting in the corner quietly waiting for some attention – and offering a lot less than $20 a click.

So what’s the difference between Google and Facebook? They are quite different. People searching on Google generally have a lot more intention – they are more interested in buying. If you go to Google and type in “home insurance”, then there’s a fair chance you are interested in home insurance.

In Facebook ads are targeted based on interest. When you create an ad you show them to people who have expressed an interest in that area. You sell gardening supplies? Facebook ads allows you to target people who have expressed an interest in gardening. If it’s a local business, no problem, just target people in your city.

A big catch with Facebook ads is creatives – the actual ad you see. Usually you make an ad, and then you run it for the duration of the campaign. More sophisticated advertisers will create several versions and swap them to see which performs best. With Facebook, people get bored. Quickly. Have you been annoyed by Facebook ads that keep showing up? If you want to get lots of clicks boredom is your enemy so you need to change your ad constantly, perhaps as often as every 1 or 2 days! Just changing the picture is a good start.

As Facebook users typically have less intention than a Google user, they are less likely to buy (although I’ve seen some successful direct sales campaigns on Facebook). A good strategy is making a Facebook fan page and sending your visitors there instead of your website. By doing this, if they add you (or “like” you in current Facebook-speak), you get to have an ongoing connection with them and engage them in your company. In addition, their friends see that “like” in their news feed and some of them will then also “like” you. I know of people who got 5 users by seeing “like” in their news feed for every one they paid for.

Facebook advertising is likely to explode soon, so my advice is to get in now, beat the rush before it’s too late!

Mark Baartse is founder of Shopping Cart Reviews, an ecommerce resource site covering some of the latest shopping cart innovations such as Prestashop and OpenCart.

Joblessness Hits the Pulpit

More Churches Lay Off Clergy as Donations Drop; Few Get Severance Benefits

by Joe Light

When Tim Ryan was called to an urgent meeting last year to discuss his duties as children's minister at West Shore Evangelical Free Church, he knew something was amiss.

"This is really hard. I don't know how I can do this," said executive pastor John Nesbitt, who helps lead the 2,500 attendee megachurch in Mechanicsburg, Pa. The church, part of the Evangelical Free Church of America, had been growing rapidly but giving was down and well below projections as the recession weighed on members. So Mr. Ryan was losing his job, as was another pastor.

While the economy appears to be recovering from the worst downturn in generations, more clergy are facing unemployment as churches continue to struggle with drops in donations. In 2009, the government counted about 5,000 clergy looking for jobs, up from 3,000 in 2007 and 2,000 in 2005.

Church staff are feeling the pinch, too. In an October survey, about one in five members of the interdenominational 3,000-member National Association of Church Business Administration said they had laid off staff amid the recession. The official unemployment rate among clergy sits at 1.2%, far below the national average jobless rate, but layoffs can be particularly painful for ministers. Churches aren't subject to unemployment taxes, so laid-off employees can't collect the benefits available to other workers.

West Shore kept Mr. Ryan, 42-years-old, and the other pastor on staff for five months while they looked for new jobs, but many churches don't offer severance benefits, experts say."Churches are so reluctant to let people go that by the time they get to the point where they have to, they don't have the resources for a big severance package," said Bob Clarke, who directs programs that assist ministers in need for the Presbyterian Church in America.

Two things have contributed to the layoffs: a long-term drop in attendance in many denominations and the short-term stresses of the recession. Nearly 30% of church attendees said they had reduced their giving since November 2009, according to a survey of 1,008 adults conducted in late January and early February by the Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., firm that researches trends in faith and does consulting work for churches. Nearly half of the 3,000 members of the National Association of Church Business Administration say they have reduced or frozen salaries and benefits.

That is a tough blow for many clergy, because salaries are low to begin with. For example, the average salary of a youth minister with a few years of experience is $32,000, according to MinistryPay.com, a website run by the National Association of Church Business Administration. An associate pastor with a decade of experience might earn around $64,000. On average, men with a bachelor's degree earn more than $77,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Some church leaders fear donations won't reach prerecession levels as long as unemployment stays elevated. Church surveys report that giving dropped off sharply beginning in November 2008, when the overall unemployment rate was at 6.7%. Since then, contributions have slipped in tandem with rising unemployment. Some of the hardest hit by the recession have been megachurches, roughly defined as those with 2,000 or more attendees. Last year, the 6,000-member Granger Community Church in Indiana laid off eight employees and cut the hours of 15 other staff members.
A pastor's departure can have a particularly emotional impact on members of a congregation. When West Shore announced which ministers would lose their jobs at a congregation meeting, several members in the audience gasped.

"People knew we were behind on our giving, but I don't think people were comprehending that it would come to this," Mr. Ryan said. In addition to Mr. Ryan, the church laid off the pastor who led its 60-member disabilities ministry, which caters to mentally challenged and disabled church members. The pastor, who now works in a group-home system in New York state, didn't respond to requests to be interviewed. One 44-year-old mentally disabled busboy said several people in the class started to cry when the pastor announced he was leaving. "I had to walk out of the class to get some fresh air. It was hard for us," he said.

The extent to which ministers are susceptible to layoffs depends in part on which church or denomination they serve. Catholic and United Methodist bishops appoint clergy to their posts. So while a Catholic parish may have to eliminate a position, the bishop can relocate the priest to another church that can afford him. Meanwhile, placement offices for Jewish rabbis say the average length of the job search for rabbis has increased, but that few temples and synagogues have resorted to layoffs. But pastors in other Christian denominations are mostly on their own in managing unemployment and a job search. Right now, the Presbyterian Church in America, which includes about 1,700 churches, has about five pastors looking for work for each of its 54 job openings, about twice the level before the recession, said the group's business administrator, John Robertson.

Stiff competition isn't the only hurdle clergymen face. Each job comes with a laundry list of required qualifications that are sometimes more specific than is common in corporate hiring. Courts have consistently declined to interfere in the hiring of clergy members on First Amendment grounds, meaning the usual prohibitions on discrimination based on disabilities, age, sex, and gender generally don't apply said Dianna Johnston an attorney with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
A job listing for a pastor opening in Florida on the Southern Baptist Convention website, for example, requires that applicants be married and between the ages of 30 and 49. Another ad for a part-time position in Kansas warns that the committee won't consider someone who has been divorced.
Mr. Ryan, who served at West Shore for a year and a half but was never ordained, decided against uprooting his wife and four children and took a lay job in home remodeling offered by a member of the congregation. His new job? Carpentry—the biblical profession of Jesus and his father, Joseph.

"The irony is not lost on me," Mr. Ryan said.

For Attention of US Based Non - Profits

By MOLLY HOTTLE, Associated Press Writer Molly Hottle, Associated Press Writer

DES MOINES, Iowa – More than 200,000 small nonprofits across the nation are days away from losing their tax-exempt status because they haven't filed a new form with the Internal Revenue Service.

Many of these groups already operate on razor-thin budgets and some worry an unexpected tax bill could force organizations to close.

"The nonprofits in your backyards, some of them are going to be gone," said Suzanne Coffman, a spokeswoman for GuideStar, which tracks data on nonprofits.

It's most likely the nonprofits aren't aware of the Monday deadline that only applies to groups that report $25,000 or less in income, excluding churches. Those organizations may not find out until Jan. 1, 2011, when they're notified they have to pay taxes on donations they thought were exempt. And it could be months before their nonprofit status is restored.

Congress required the form, called a 990-N, when it amended the tax code three years ago and groups with a fiscal year ending Dec. 31 had until Monday to meet the deadline.

The Urban Institute's National Center for Charitable Statistics, which conducts economic and social policy research, estimated Friday that 214,000 nonprofit organizations haven't filed the form as required.

Tom Pollak, program director for the center, said organizations that lose their tax-exempt status are no longer eligible to receive tax-deductible donations and are not likely to be awarded grants.

Donors who give to the organizations that lose their status will be able to receive tax-deductions on gifts until January because the revocations won't be public until then.

In Iowa, the Warren County Historical Society was among more than 2,700 small nonprofits that hadn't submitted the form. The group's president, Linda Beatty, said she'd never heard of a 990-N until contacted by The Associated Press.

Beatty said she would scramble to get their application in, but if the society lost its nonprofit status, donations likely would drop and members would struggle to pay taxes until they could get the situation resolved. The group maintains a small museum and historical library in Indianola, south of Des Moines.

Stephen Baldassare, president of the Catwalk Theatre Guild in Arvada, Colo., said loss of its tax exemption would have endangered the college scholarships his group awards annually to two high school students and limited other programs.

"It's huge giving those scholarships," he said. "We'd also have to figure out how to do the rest of the functions we do. We would have to change how we bring in money."

In West Chester, Pa., the A Cappella Pops performing group also hadn't heard about the deadline.

Money already is a problem for the 40-member singing group, marketing director Bruce Koepcke said, and would have been far worse if donations dropped or the group faced a big tax bill. He said tax-exempt donations make up 25 percent of the group's revenue.

"We break even in good years," Koepcke said. "We can't afford to lose one iota of funding."

Bobby Zarin, an Internal Revenue Service director who works with non-profits, said the agency sent out press releases and letters to more than 500,000 nonprofit organizations to get the word out about the 990-N forms. She didn't know why the change was catching so many groups by surprise.

"I can honestly say this is the most extensive outreach we have done," Zarin said.

Ultimately, Zarin said the requirement would be helpful because it would eliminate defunct organizations from IRS records and provide more transparency for the public.

"It will give us a much cleaner list of organizations that actually do exist," Zarin said. "More organizations will be filing, so more information will be available."

Guard Against Embezzlement

Advice and resources to combat a growing problem.

from Your Church magazine | posted 5/10/2010

At first glance, the two churches don't have much in common. One is a large, historic congregation, in Washington, DC. The other, a smaller, much younger congre gation in a small Virginia town. Big differences, right? That changed in late December, when the former finance director of the DC church was arrested and charged with stealing more than $500,000 from that congregation during a six-year span. And less than a week later, the former bookkeeper of the Virginia church was accused of stealing about $300,000 over five years.

Both suspects used the money for big-ticket purchases—real estate, cars, jewelry, and furniture—according to the charges filed.

Embezzlement is on the rise in churches of all sizes. One major church insurer logged 32 embezzlement-related claims in 2009, up 12.5 percent from its recent annual averages. "Regrettably, financial misconduct tends to be more predominant in economic down times," says David Middlebrook, a Texas-based attorney specializing in church law.

Fraud experts often refer to a three-legged stool for embezzlement risk: opportunity, need, and organizational ethos.

Opportunity often is born out of non-existent or poorly managed financial controls.

In terms of need, church leaders must pay attention to hardships in the lives of their employees. The most common scenario for church fraud involves longtime employees who face an unexpected financial stress—a job loss for a spouse or an extended illness with hefty medical bills for a family member.

Some studies suggest the average tenure of a church employee who commits fraud is seven years. "These employees don't start off thinking they're going to steal," says Frank Sommerville, another Texas attorney. "They think they're going to borrow from you and pay you back when things improve."

Global Day of Prayer, May 23, 2010

May 23, 2010 is a very special day this year! Not only does the Eastern and Western Pentecost fall on the same day, but it is also the Global Day of Prayer! This is of great significance. Pray for God to give you the revelation of its importance!

Please join All The Praise and many, many others around the world as we unite in prayer and lift our voices to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! Let us cry out to God for the nations! Get down on your knees and ask God for a fresh anointing to wash over the nations! Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations as Your inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth as Your possession. Psalm 2:8 (Amplified Bible) We want to seek the will of God and ask forgiveness for our sins! Gather together with Christians from around the globe in fasting, repentance and prayer!

Welcome to All The Praise & Church Notes

Welcome to All The Praise & Church Notes!

Thanks for stopping by my blog. Feel free to leave me messages and thoughts about my posts. P.R.A.I.S.E. stands for Preparing Righteous Anointed Individuals Saved Everywhere.

Ophelia Livingston