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If you deal in intangibles, you may sometimes find it difficult to prove to customers that you're delivering a solid return on their investment. For instance, if you're a consultant overseeing a sales team, it can be challenging to know -- at least right away -- if your advice is actually working. Or if you sell an energy-saving device, nobody's going to know how it's working until the utility bills start coming. But think how hard it is to prove a return on investment when you own a prayer business.
Joel Gross, 25, doesn't seem daunted by that -- nor by the fact that he is an agnostic. He now has a tiny stake in the $4.6 billion spent every year on Christian products and services, as reported by ChristianRetailing.com. Last August, he hung up his shingle on the Internet and created Prayer Helpers. The product Gross's company sells: prayers. If you're down and out and want someone to pray for you, you just send $9.99, and Prayer Helpers will pray for you.
It's not as crass as it sounds. Gross recognizes that his business isn't for all religious people. He says he sees this as a service for people who have private issues and don't feel comfortable asking friends and family to pray for them. It should also be quickly noted that Gross, who says he was religious growing up, is also not the one doing the praying. He has a silent partner, a longtime friend from his youth, who studied religion in school and is a Christian, handling the customer service side of the business, which includes interacting with the people who email and doing the actual praying.
Prayer Helpers is also offering a free prayer to customers who want to try the service. As Gross's Web site says, "We are so confident in the power of our Prayer Helpers to petition God on your behalf, in a fashion that leaves you totally satisfied, that we are offering an absolutely free prayer trial. We know that after you try our free prayer service, you will come back to us for every important issue that you need the help of God to resolve."
But it hasn't exactly been a booming business yet. Since Gross opened up Prayer Helpers, he has had few paying customers -- well, not even a few. "Two. We've had two customers," admits Gross, sounding a little sheepish.
While that may be due to the recession, or possibly due to the aforementioned difficulty gauging return on investment (you have to not just have faith in God, but that the prayer service works), Gross thinks the lack of customers has mostly been because "people don't even know there's a service like this out there, that you can go online and find people who will pray for your request and keep it private. That's been my biggest challenge, getting the word out."
Gross also has some competition in the blogosphere -- other online services that, for a fee, will pray for their patrons. In the Company of Prayer is specifically aimed at entrepreneurs and executives aiming to, in the words of their Web site, "provide a quick, daily prayer specifically to businessmen and women, who, like us, find prayer to be an inspirational tool in the management of our professional lives." Subscriptions range from as low as $12 a year, to $50 and even $250 per year.
Meanwhile, InformationAgePrayer.com, which came on the scene this year, is offered to people of all religions. What makes it different is that it utilizes a computer with text-to-speech capability, so it's not a person, but instead, a PC or Mac praying for you. The cost varies, depending on everything from your denomination to what prayer service you're using. Right now, if you're a Catholic, you can get a deal on the Lord's Prayer -- only pay $3.95 a month instead of the usual $6. Or you could sign up for the computer to recite a Hail Mary in your name; that's just 7 cents.
As for how Gross came to enter the online prayer business, a year ago, he and a friend were making a list of possible business ideas. Not surprising: Gross was a business major at the University of Washington in Seattle. (He now lives in Venice, California, and works full time as a Web designer.) As they chewed over concepts for a startup, the conversation made its way to his friend joking that Gross could sell prayers. Gross didn't laugh. He felt there was a business opportunity to exploit.
Gross admits that some of his friends and family, however, have been worried that he is instead exploiting people of faith. "The strongest reactions," says Gross, "have come from my atheist friends who think I'm taking advantage of Christians and people who are superstitious."
Meanwhile, his Christian friends, says Gross, have been more bemused and generally supportive, but even there, he admits, "They see it as a weird service."
Geoff Williams is a veteran business journalist and a regular contributor to AOL Small Business. He is also the co-author of the upcoming book, Living Well with Bad Credit.
2009-12-07 14:24:39
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