Profitable Mommy Blogging

I was excited to learn Alyssa Avant is this week’s “Buzz a Mom” interview participant. I had seen the announcement for Alyssa’s upcoming Twitter party on Resourceful Mommy, so I couldn’t wait to ask about her newest project, a membership site called Faith Leaps.

Here’s what she had to say:

Please describe your new membership site, Faith Leaps, for us.

Faith Leaps: Training for Taking the Leap of Faith Into Speaking, Writing, & Ministry, is a three month membership training program for Christians who are looking to “take a leap of faith into speaking, writing or ministry.”

This is an important site for you if you are feeling called to:

• Start a Bible study in your local church
• Start a club or organization in your community
• Organize a community project
• Write a column for your local newspaper
• Start a blog to minister to a specific group of people
• Chase your dream…

Whatever it may be, this program will help give the tools and the confidence to take the leap of faith.

What motivated you to add a membership site to your business/ministry group?

Membership sites have always been an intriguing idea to me, but more than that I wanted to provide something to Christians that I have yet to see available. I know that there are those out there who want to take the “leap” but just need a little bit of information, encouragement, and a tiny push.

Another motivation for creating a membership site was to add another “stream of income” to my businesses. I hope to one day get out of “service based” business as a ghostwriter and only do ministry and run websites that provide residual income through less service type means.

When did you first have the idea for Faith Leaps and how did you get from the idea to launching the site this week?

I was actually talking to a friend of mine from online who was helping me brainstorm ideas for other “income streams” and she mentioned a training program. That was months back, probably in December or so. Of course I put it on my “goals” for the new year and had planned to put it off until January.

However, a mentor of mine, Kelly McCausey, sent out an invite to attend Jimmy D Brown’s Rapid Fire Residual video conference and after watching it I was sold on creating a membership site and realized that my “training program” idea would work beautifully.

After watching Jimmy’s Rapidfire Residual Video, I joined his Membernaire program and began the steps of setting up a membership program. With Jimmy’s model you could set up a membership site in 48 hrs if you wanted to. For me the process has been a bit slower than that but still fairly quickly.

I actually started this on February 12, 2009. Basically, I determined how I would deliver the training and then created topics; Twittered to see who might be interested in the program, or if there was any interest at all; and began the process of setting up a website.

How do you anticipate the new site impacting your other ministry, business and blog?

It is my hope that Faith Leaps will be a source of residual income that allows me to outsource more of my “service based business” and focus more on the aspects of my ministry that I enjoy — writing devotions and articles for tween and teen girls; speaking to tween and teen girls and their moms; and creating content and training programs such as Faith Leaps for other moms who want to be in the ministry or have a “faith-based business or blog”. That is what I hope to continue doing more of.

Thank you, Alyssa, for sharing with us the story behind Faith Leaps .

If you are interested in taking a leap of faith in writing, speaking or ministry be sure to visit Faith Leaps. Also, don’t forget to participate in Alyssa’s Twitter party Thursday night!