December 2020 EDW Reported

As per tradition, I like to relay the progress of the prior month and announce what is coming up in the current month. December concludes the first full calendar year of Evangelical Dark Web operations. Unfortunately, it was a month marred by high highs and low lows. Search traffic dropped considerable and the hope is that it is related to Christmas, as opposed to Google’s intervention. The only post that saw an increase was the Beth Moore discernment piece. This was due to her divisive social media activity early in the month.

There was not a consistent theme in December. Evangelical Dark Web went hard on numerous topics. Among them were Big Eva’s feigned and shortlived condemnation of Critical Race Theory; the church’s response to coronavirus, large churches and pastors acceptance of PPP loans from the federal government, and taking shots at several celebrity pastors. There was a lot of good content produced in December. The piece on churches and pastors taking PPP loans took a lot of time and I had to publish before I wanted to, but it turns out a Friday release didn’t bury the story. It gained a lot of traction.

Quick Stats

• Countries with the most visits:
  1. USA
  2. Canada
  3. UK
• Most Viewed Page (other than home):
  1. Discernment
  2. Social Justice Gospel
  3. About
• Post with the most views:
  1. Is Michael Todd a false teacher?
  2. Is Beth Moore a false teacher?
  3. Is Steve Furtick a false teacher?
• Posts from month with the most views
  1. Exclusive: These Pastors and Churches Took Millions in PPP Loans
  2. Churches are nowhere while Atilis Gym Ballmawr is setting an example
  3. The Story of First Baptist Church Naples Documentary Review
• Most viewed videos
  1. Steven Furtick’s Modalism Exposed +1235
  2. Beth Moore goes full Marxist. Never go full Marxist +872
  3. Andy Stanley – Obvious False Teacher +567
• YouTube Subscriber Growth: +40
• Most Referred to site: Download of PPP metadata

Site Changes

Every month I try to snatch victory from what seems like an unlikely chance at growth. This month I cannot say I succeeded, but I do think some setbacks led to greater growth. I made changes to multiple pages in an effort to retain an audience, especially from those who make Discernment requests. These were simple adjustments that should have been made a long time ago.

At the end of certain articles, I sometimes include a “call to action” with a pithy statement of what this is about to get people to subscribe. This had some success on the month’s biggest stories. The reason for saying all this is for those of you who are creating your own platforms to learn from my own progress.

January should see the beginning of major changes, which I will hopefully get into later. I have not finished thinking it all through yet.

Discernment

I said last month, I would work on writing about Carl Lentz and John Piper. I am happy to have followed through on both accounts. Carl Lentz was published on December 13, and that was rather quick to write. The case for Carl Lentz as a category 5 was doable in well under 2000 words. John Piper is finished also at over 4100 words. I have been sandbagging the article to wait out the Christmas season. It is scheduled for tomorrow. I do not know who is next. I’ll have to do a manual recount of the requests.

Video

On the YouTube platform, we regained the momentum lost in November. Doing the stream with Chris Santos was a fun way to explore the problem of and solutions to big tech censorship. Everyone in this line of activity should be aware of the things we talked about. Aside from that, the videos published in December were fine. Coming up will be a video on Pat Robinson and hopefully more streams.

Expansion

In 2021, we will be operating with a theme in mind. I’ve observed multiple platforms have yearly themes and it really solidifies a message that needs emphasis at a certain time. It can even be prophetic, like Steve Deace having “assume you’re being lied to” as the theme for 2020. More on this later, but it’s suffice to say, I’ve had a theme picked out for a while.

It will also be a year of expansion. Evangelical Dark Web will create a hub of resources to help likeminded Christians. There will also be monetization avenues explored, but it’s taking a while because any products I create must not be sourced from China as a matter of principle. I’ve been working on some cool designs. One of them was the ERLC logo perfectly blended into the North Korean flag to signify the ChiCom vassals that they are that was the picture for this article. That was the easy one. I reworked the 9 Marks logo to be a bit more accurate, and I’ve been playing around with some flag designs.

In any case, the monetization efforts I pursue will use the process of dropshipping so as not to make myself dependent on you buying anything, but will also allow me to create, more freely, products that promote a message and cause. I also intend to create a subscription service in the future that will provide additional value, as opposed to hiding the content created here behind a paywall.

Final Thoughts

In December, I put a lot of time into Evangelicals Dark Web, as well as planning its future. With the tide turning in the fight against false gospels, the time is now to keep the foot on the gas, metaphorically speaking. And that is what all these words on growth are about.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Ray