# Is Sermon Audio a good investment?



## Andres (May 16, 2011)

Our church recently bought a recorder and this past week, my pastor recorded his sermon. I have uploaded it to my computer and have even edited it using Audacity. The only problem now is I am not sure where to host it. Our church webpage has the ability to host files, but when I attempted to upload it today, it said the file was too large. The sermon is a WAV file and is 470MB. Is this extremely large? 

I am now strongly considering signing up with Sermon Audio but I want to get some feedback from others who use it first. Is it worth the $29.95 monthly investment? That seems like a tad bit, considering we would only upload 4, maybe 5 messages a month. What are some positive results you have seen from hosting sermons on Sermon Audio? Any drawbacks? Is there a better site or option to host sermons? Thanks in advance for any input.


----------



## Notthemama1984 (May 16, 2011)

Use audacity to convert the file to MP3. It will shrink it down big time.

My view is that you should post some sermons on the website. See if anyone is listening to them. If they are, then sermon audio might be worth while. If no one is listening to them, then having a few sermons on the website should be enough.


----------



## EKSB SDG (May 16, 2011)

I handle the Sermon Audio for my future church home. I think it's a good investment. It provides a quick and easy way for people in the church to hear a sermon again 24/7 and it also provides a good outreach vehicle. You'll be able to track how often each sermon is being listened to and also will have a monthly report on the general locations of the listeners (state-by-state, country-by-country). You will need the audio in an MP format before you'll be able to put it on Sermon Audio.


----------



## kvanlaan (May 17, 2011)

Sermon audio fed my family and I through lean times when there was little faithful preaching in our lives and no other options. It is a blessing indeed.


----------



## JonathanHunt (May 17, 2011)

Yes. Sermonaudio will do far more to spread your sermons and publicise your church than sermons on the site alone.

Convert the sermons to mp3. Mine go online at 16 kbps, still quite acceptable quality, between 3 and 5 mb in size.

Look at the link to my sermons and ask yourself: How else would this unknown fool have hundreds of downloads?:

http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?sortby=downloads&keyword=Jonathan^Hunt&SpeakerOnly=true&currSection=sermonsspeaker&AudioOnly=false


----------



## Rufus (May 17, 2011)

JonathanHunt said:


> Yes. Sermonaudio will do far more to spread your sermons and publicise your church than sermons on the site alone.
> 
> Convert the sermons to mp3. Mine go online at 16 kbps, still quite acceptable quality, between 3 and 5 mb in size.
> 
> ...


 
I'm listening to at the moment actually.


----------



## he beholds (May 17, 2011)

I search by topic and denomination via sermonaudio. So your pastor's sermon might reach someone like me, who isn't always looking for a specific pastor but "researching" a specific subject.


----------



## Kevin (May 17, 2011)

Question for users of Sermonaudio, do you ever have people walk in the door on Sunday morning that heard you on Sermonaudio?


----------



## JonathanHunt (May 17, 2011)

Kevin said:


> Question for users of Sermonaudio, do you ever have people walk in the door on Sunday morning that heard you on Sermonaudio?


 
Yes. At least four times in the last couple of years.


----------



## Jeffriesw (May 17, 2011)

I used Sermon audio while searching for a good reformed chuch in my area. I was able to look back over and listen all his (pastor) sermons and get a feel for how he preaches and content.
My wife works at a computer 9 hours a day, she regularly listens to 2 to 3 sermons a day inle using SA.
I listen mainly at night and then download the ones I want to hear again or study more in-depth and then listen to them in my truck driving to and from work, hour and fifteen minutes each way.

Andres, I think it would be worthwhile to at least try it out. I regularly listen to sermons on there I would never get elsewhere.

---------- Post added at 11:02 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:58 AM ----------

Sorry for the poor typing above, forgotten bi-focals at home, fat little fingers and a small screen make for a deadly combination.

Sent from my iPhone


----------



## Rich Koster (May 17, 2011)

Kevin said:


> Question for users of Sermonaudio, do you ever have people walk in the door on Sunday morning that heard you on Sermonaudio?



I listened to 5 sermons before deciding to visit my current congregation. I was tired of websites/constitutions claiming they held to R doctrine, but it was on paper only and not being taught. 

Also, if people are absent, they can listen during the week or review points that may come up for later discussion. I think it is a worthwhile tool from one on the receiving end.


----------



## Andres (May 17, 2011)

Kevin said:


> Question for users of Sermonaudio, do you ever have people walk in the door on Sunday morning that heard you on Sermonaudio?


 
thanks Kevin. This is more along the lines of what I was wondering. I know the actual website Sermon Audio is a blessing as I often listen to it myself. I'm just wondering though how it might benefit our church. I didn't know if it helped with advertising in a sense that people would hear the pastor's sermons and then want to come to the church. I guess I would be happy if people on the other side of the world are enjoying my pastor's sermons, but honestly I am hoping to have more of a local impact. Does that make sense?


----------



## Notthemama1984 (May 17, 2011)

Andres said:


> I'm just wondering though how it might benefit our church. I didn't know if it helped with advertising in a sense that people would hear the pastor's sermons and then want to come to the church.



When I was looking for a church, I went to the various denomination websites to find what was around. After this I would go to their website and listen to any sermon they had. I would not have thought to search audiosermon for local churches.


----------



## torstar (May 17, 2011)

Oh, from the title I thought Andres was considering investing in or underwriting an upcoming IPO of Sermonaudio.com.


----------



## he beholds (May 17, 2011)

We once ruled out a church by previewing sermons. Oooops : )


----------



## Andres (May 18, 2011)

Thanks again for everyone's input. I have decided that I would like to use SermonAudio to host the sermons. I will bring it up to the session when we meet on Saturday. 

Are there any other options to host the sermon, preferably for free? I have edited and converted it to mp3. In my opinion, the sound quality is very nice. My only problem now is I don't know how to share it with others! I tried hosting it on our website that we currently have but it looks like I'm going to need to upgrade in order to host it directly on there. What are my other options? I really just want to be able to post a link or something so people can either listen to or download the sermon.


----------



## Covenant Joel (May 18, 2011)

Andrew, do you use WordPress for your site? You ought to be able to upload the mp3s to your site somewhere, and with WordPress, you can use the free audio player tool to let people play or download it. You could either keep a page updated or just write a new blog post (with a Sermons category) each week with the new sermon linked for download and with the free player).


----------



## Andres (May 18, 2011)

Joel, no we have a site hosted with Homestead.


----------



## Herald (May 18, 2011)

We've been using sermon audio for the past six months and it has been a definite upgrade over our previous audio site. Sermon Audio has a large internet foot print. We've had visitors because of Sermon Audio searches. Investment? I don't really like that word. It serves a need and does so quite well.

sent from my most excellent Motorola Atrix.


----------



## Scottish Lass (May 18, 2011)

We can't afford SermonAudio, and Tim isn't home for me to doublecheck, but I think we have used Podbean and now use box.net to host the sermons linked on our website.


----------



## LawrenceU (May 18, 2011)

Sermon Audio is one of the greatest uses of money that we have. I think we only have four sermons up at present and we consistently get comments from people that have listened to them. We have one person at least who lives in a very dangerous part of the planet for Christians who downloads our sermons.


----------



## ddharr (May 23, 2011)

Sermonaudio is a great resource. There are thousands of ministers using it so make sure you link on your church website the sermons you put on sermon audio. I also find it valuable when church websites have recordings of their sermons available on their own page.


----------



## Arch2k (May 23, 2011)

Sermon Audio is nice, but if your church doesn't have an extra $30/month to spare there are much cheaper options. We host our on our own website, and currently pay about $50/year through ICANNWholesale (recommended by Rich).


----------

