Creating an Islamic Website Part II

Assalaamu Alaikum,

This is the second and final entry on how to create and maintain an Islamic website. As many of you know, I run the website Islamic Learning Materials which is a site primarily about educating people about the basics of Islam. I’ve learned a lot throughout the years of running this website, and I hope to share some of this knowledge with others.

In the last entry, I talked about the basics of building an Islamic website. These basic principles are essentially the same for all websites, Islamic or otherwise. In this entry, I will discuss some things that are unique to Islamic websites.

Unless you’re going to run a blog, or use a free website (something I totally advise against), or you want your site to be completely non-profit (that’s perfectly noble and there’s nothing wrong with that concept at all), you probably would like to make some money from your website.

However, many people have problems with gaining profit from Islamic endeavors, and I completely understand that sentiment. However, these website don’t run themselves, and you should at least consider ways to earn income from your site that can at least pay for the hosting costs.

And that’s where Google Adsense comes in. I’m sure most of you have seen these ads splattered all over cyberspace. Using Google can bring in a few dollars a month and you’ll soon get addicted to checking your daily earnings. However, unless you’re getting tons of traffic, at least 1000 visitors a day, this will not bring in much money.

But if you do use Google, you must carefully watch the ads that are placed on your site. The ads that come to your site are based on the words you use…and it’s very often your words may match words of un-Islamic, and even anti-Islamic, websites.

Fortunately, Google has a feature that allows you to block ads from certain websites. This requires you to be vigilant and continuously check the ads that appear on you site.

In addition to Google, you can also use affiliates. Basically, you can use your websites to sell other people’s products. Several Islamic companies have affiliate programs including some Muslim publishing companies. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a good experience with any of them and I find them to be very cumbersome and poorly managed. However, I do want to support Muslim businesses so I use them anyway.

The best way to profit from your Islamic website is to sell your own products. You may not get many sales at first, but when they do come in, you’ll see the immense earning potential.

For instance, I sell Muslim children’s books and some Islamic lectures (some of our lectures are available free of charge, and many more will be in the future, Inshallah). I make more money from selling  just a few books a week than I make in three months using Google Adsense and affiliates.

I spoke about how to get good search engine rankings in my last post. If you do that well, you’ll get several visitors just from natural searches. However, there’s much more you can do to increase your visitors.

• Visit Muslim blogs, write good comments, and leave your signature and website. Trust me, if your comments are good, people will visit you.
• Go to Yahoo Answers and start answering questions about Islam. Leave your website as a source.
• Become a member of Islamic and Muslim forums and include your website in your signature.
• Print out a single page with your website name on it in big, bold letters. Run off several copies and leave them in a conspicuous place in your local Masjid or Islamic center.
• Include your website name in your email correspondence.
• Give your visitors and option to get regular updates asking them to leave their email. Protect their privacy like it was gold and keep in touch with them.
• Write articles for Islamic bloggers and secular sites and include your website in the signature.
• Create a free blog of your own, and write about Islam. Include links and references to your main website.

Inshallah, these tips will help bring in more and more visitors.

Remember to keep your Islamic website focused. Your website can’t be about everything Islam. There are already several websites out there like that, and Islam is too broad of a subject to cover sufficiently in one website unless you’re part of a larger organization or institution.

Now that I read through these tips, I see that most of them are the same for all websites, just with an Islamic slant. However, as Muslims we have to make sure our intent is sincere and clear. A website is not a blog. You can discuss several different things on a blog within a certain subject and make perfec sense. However, you can’t have an Islamic website with several pages devoted to Islamic history and then several pages devoted to translation of the Quran.

Focus is key.