Our Funding Challenges

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Always operating on a shoestring, since 2008 we’ve managed to primarily pay our expenses from my personal resources and with advertising revenue from the web site and within the Daily Bible Verse emails. It worked like this – we purchased ads on Google search which guided visitors like you to the website. Some of those visitors clicked on ads and never returned. Others signed up for the Daily Bible Verse and clicked on ads within the emails. Many visitors came back to the website to use the online Bible or by clicking on the Daily Verse and other links within the emails. Traffic grew steadily and repeat visitors snowballed as more people subscribed and, so they say, the rest is history!

The key to this funding model is that the front end website traffic funded the back end Daily Bible Verse subscriptions. The front end visitor, by clicking on an advertisement was essentially paying for the cost of sending a Daily Bible Verse to our subscribers.

Then, in August 2018, Google decided to change their advertising algorithms. Literally overnight, the ads that I had been buying from Google for over 10 years simply stopped showing in Google search results. So our website traffic dried up, our subscription rates plummeted, and revenue dropped to near zero. Our expenses stayed the same.

Google offers no explanation for their action other than that they change their algorithms from time to time. We must get over it and move on. However, if we’re willing to pay about 10 times the price we’re used to paying for the same ads, then perhaps Google will start showing them again. We can’t afford that.

Meanwhile, we have tens of thousands of subscribers who have been receiving a Daily Bible Verse for years and expect to keep receiving it.

Who pays now?

Every day I hear from folks who are blessed by their Bible verse – perhaps just what they needed to hear from God on that day in their particular situation. Its amazing how God works through our most humble efforts. He’s used this ministry to further His kingdom and I’ll be saddened to have to wind it up.

One might think that if just a small percentage of our subscribers made a small donation, it would more than cover our expenses. The truth is that each year we receive only about four or five individual donations, of maybe one or two hundred dollars in total. Not enough to cover one month’s mailing costs.

So there it is. If I had the personal resources to keep things going I would. But I don’t. So please pray for this ministry, that our subscribers and visitors will find a way to help fund us going forward.

Thank you and God Bless.

Steve Howells – founder