We started “trying” the Christian Home Based Business thing in the summer of 2008. Since then we have tried a ton of different things.

So this blog is here to show you:

• what we’ve done
• how we did it
• the mistakes  we made (so you don’t make the same!)
• What’s been the most profitable

There’s a couple ways for us to stay connected

1. Add your name & email in the box to the right.  We’ll be sending you emails that share what we’ve done & how we did it.  The emails will be more in depth and won’t be made public. (These are only available for the people on our mailing list)

2. Subscribe to our RSS Feed.  That way you can be notified whenever we have entered a new post!

We look forward to working with you and helping you succeed in your Christian Home Based Business!

Many Blessings,

RK, Kelike & Kalena Castillo

In this series on Product Creation I want to tell you about the best possible resource you can invest in for your Home Based Web Business.

It’s called The Immediate Edge.

It’s is run by two geniuses in the Internet Marketing game: Dan Raine & Ed Dale (and of course their teams).

I signed up for this membership a couple times for their $1 7 Day Trial.

And finally I decided I need to invest in this resource for my business.  So I signed up and have never regretted it.

In fact, I followed the Immediate Edge on twitter and it is the only site that I wake up, grab my phone and check Twitter to see if they have posted anything new.

The info is that good!

Dan Raine is a testing nut job and is constantly testing anything and everything to see what is working in the internet marketing world today.  And since he is testing so much stuff he will tell you exactly what is working today.  Not some strategy that worked like 2 years ago, TODAY…

Here’s what they cover in depth:

• SEO
• Social Marketing
• Product Creation
• Market Research
• Copy Writing
• List Building
• Advertising
• Buying & Selling Websites
• Business Building
• And a whole lot more…

So…do yourself a favor.

Go read this letter http://www.christianhomebasedbusinessideas.com/Immediate-Edge

And sign up.

You won’t regret it.

The second business model we have used to make money from our Home Based Web Business is creating our own products.

For us, this is always step 2 for a home based business. Step one would be following the Challenge Strategy to test a market.

You see, when I started this internet marketing thing I already had a product that I thought would sell really well. So I bought BeBiz and started trying to market the thing! Only to find out that it isn’t that hot of a market. By Hot Market I mean people aren’t going to Google with their credit cards already out to be able to buy something to solve their problem.

So I spent months and months developing my product and a couple years now trying to figure out how to market the thing.

To avoid these months and months of hard work without that much payout I would have:

• first found a Micro Niche
• built a site around that micro niche that promoted some sort of affiliate product
• Used Our Home Business Advertising System to Drive Traffic to that Site
• tracked the ratio of visitors to buyers
• If I have a .5% ratio or 1 person bought from 200 visitors  I will move on to creating a product.  If I have had 200 visitors and no one has bought I will change my call to action on the page to see if I can get a .5% conversion

Once I have found a buying market, or people who are actually ready to buy something in that market from my website, I will then move on to creating a product.

The nice thing about creating & selling your own product is you get to keep 100% of the profit unless of course you partner with Joint Venture partners or affiliates to promote your product.  Then you have to pay them a percentage but it is much nicer to have 5,10, 15 or more people promoting your product for you!  You will make a whole lot more sales that way!

So…this series is all about how to create your own product and the programs I follow to help me in this scenario.

I recently purchased Rosalind’s Super Affiliate Handbook.
She’s the real deal.

She is making tons of money as an affiliate and she teaches you pretty much everything you would ever need to know about Affiliate Marketing.

And she started off just like most of us will start off.  She had no previous business experience!

Fast forward to today and she is making nearly half a million a year selling other people’s stuff.

One of the things I liked the most about the book wasn’t just a simple strategy or how to write a proper review.

I actually loved that she taught how to write, and gave examples, of disclaimer pages and the like.  Last year 2009 the FTC came up with some new laws on how affiliates and other people selling stuff need to communicate.

i.e.  If you click the picture above or any of the links to the Super Affiliate Handbook and decide to actually purchase the book, I will actually get a commission for sending you to that site.

You have to give full disclosure and you are supposed to have privacy policies & disclosure pages on your site but I had no clue what to write on those pages!

But she actually gives you templates you can pretty much copy & paste and add your info to.

Why is this important?

Because you don’t want the FTC banging down your doors, seizing your credit cards, bank info and slapping your kids!

Just kidding with the slapping the kids part but the FTC can ruin your life and having just a few pages on your site that can save you from them is worth the measly $47 you would pay to get these swipe files and a couple hundred other pages that will teach you how to make money via the inter webs

So do yourself a favor and go get the Super Affiliate Handbook today by Clicking Here

One of the best pieces of software that I have found for Affiliate Marketing is a service called Datafeedr.

Many companies in the Ecommerce space have datafeeds, or feeds that give all the data on the products they sell.

And this can potentially be thousands of products.

So what Datafeedr does is get all the different feeds from different companies and creates a way for you to add a store to your site with those product feeds and each product has a buy link that is your affiliate link!

Brilliant!

If you want to see a site I have created with the Datafeedr plugin go to http://BestWomensWinterBoots.com.

So here are the steps that I follow when I am creating a Datafeedr store.

Step 1- Market Research

For all market research I use Market Samurai.   I get an idea of a potential niche market and I type that into the keyword research module.  Then I follow the “Golden Rules” for choosing a potential market (greater than 80 searches a day, less than 30,000 competing pages & at least a 15% PBR).

Then I choose a main theme keyword, i.e. “Womens Winter Boots” and then 3-5 (or more) category keywords i.e. Womens Dress Boots, Womens Snow Boots, Womens Snowboard Boots.

Step 2 Buy a Domain Name

Then I buy a domain name with my main theme keyword in it.

Step 3 Upload WordPress

Using Fantastico in your Cpanel upload wordpress to your new domain name.

Step 4 Upload Datafeedr Plugin

Follow the instructions from the Datafeedr site to upload the plug in to your site.

Step 5 Create and Upload Your Store

When using the Datafeedr Plugin you have to create a store.  Basically follow the instructions on the Datafeedr Store and just a shameless plug for the Datafeedr team; they have the best customer service for any product I have ever used.  If you ask a question in their forum they usually answer it right away, if not it will get answer within a day or two.

Usually I just search for my main keywords and make each category keyword a category for the store and then upload that store to your site.

Step 6 Add Your Affiliate Links to the Site

This is really easy in the plug in settings just go add your affiliate number or link in the settings page.

Step 7 Drive Traffic to Your New Site

Now begin to get people to visit your site utilizing whatever Home Business Advertising you like to do. I prefer Web 2.0, Article Marketing & Video Marketing to get people to visit my site.

So….now that you have chosen a Home Business Idea you want to try.

The next step is figuring out how you are going to advertise your home business. Home Business Advertising utilizes the same system no matter which one of our ideas you are embarking upon.

If you haven’t read the post about the Home Business System that will help explain what I am talking about.

When you are starting any business venture you need to first focus on getting people into your sales funnel.

If you’re McDonald’s that means getting people into your doors or your drive thru.

If you are in Car Sales that means getting people onto your lot looking for the type of cars you sell.

If you are doing a home based web business that means getting traffic to your website.

Now…we utilize a number of different sources of traffic, and the sources are pretty much endless, but what I want you to do is to focus on one advertising method and stick to it to completion, test & track that and then move on to the next method.

This is really the best way to be effective in your Home Business Advertising.

So the 4 main systems we use to bring traffic to our websites are:

• Web 2.0
• Article Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Social Media Marketing

Our Web 2.o system is all about creating free websites at places like Blogger, WordPress, Posterous & others, adding content with links back to our sites and our vendor (if you’re doing affiliate marketing).

With Article Marketing we focus on getting quality articles on sites like Ezine Articles & Scribd and then we syndicate that article to tons of different sites using Article Marketing Automation.

Video Marketing is all about YouTube as they’re the 800 lb Gorilla when it comes to video sites but how you do your YouTube videos is really important.  You don’t just want people to view your videos.  You want them view your video and then visit your site.

And finally Social Media Marketing is all about Facebook & Twitter.  The thing about Social Media Marketing is it really is about being Social.  It’s like being at a party.  No one likes someone pitching their business to them at a party.  So…you gotta do this the right way.

So…if you stick around I will teach you, in other blog posts, ways to accomplish each one of the Home Business Advertising Systems.

Until then….

Many Blessings!

RK Castillo

For the last 2 years my wife & I have tried all kinds of different things to make money from home.

We created our own product, wrote a sales letter & marketed it through Search Engine Marketing, PPC Marketing & Social Media Marketing.

Next we tried a multi level marketing/ pyramid scheme type of business.  Just as a side note both Donald Trump & Robert Kiyosaki have said that everyone should
be involved in a MLM company to learn sales, marketing, leadership, etc.

Then we moved on to selling other people’s products, aka Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate Marketing is like a person who works on Sales Based Commission.  If a
person were to buy through your link you may get 6% or 12% of the buying price or if it is a Clickbank product it may be 50%!

And the one we are working on now is being Search Engine Marketing Consultants for small business owners.

In this series we are going to be as open & honest as we can about what has worked and what hasn’t worked.  And hopefully this will help you avoid the
mistakes we made so you can just get right to making some mullah.

Until then….

RK & Kelike Castillo

In my last article I talked about the Home Business System that will work for any business anywhere in the world.

And today I wanted to talk about the first step in the system “Leads.”

Everyone wants more leads into their business but how do you get more leads into your home based business?

I personally prefer internet home based businesses.  If you watch our family video “Interested in Starting a Home Based Business” you’ll hear why.

So step one getting more leads is all about Market Research.  And Market Research on the Internet is all about finding the keywords that people search for the most.   With the least amount of competition.

In fact I prefer 80 searches a day with less than 30,000 competing pages.

How do I figure this out?

You can do this for free by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, finding the keyword that has the amount of searches you need, then type that search phrase into Google in “quotes” and find the keyword that has less than 30,000 competing pages.

And do this over and over again until you find your main theme keyword and 3-5 category keywords.

And yes….doing this will take you a long time & some elbow grease.

OR you can use the tool that I use basically everyday that will do this for you in seconds.

That tool is called Market Samurai.  You can get a free trial of it by clicking here.

You just type in your main theme keyword and it brings up 200 related keywords to that.  Then you type in what you want, i.e. 80 searches a day and 30,000 competing pages and it shows you the exact keywords you will want to target on your website.

Once you discover the best keywords you then need to build a site around those keywords, optimize it to be found by the search engines, get links to that site and then you should be getting traffic (leads) to your home based business.

Have you ever wondered if there was a system to starting a home based business?

Something that you could follow and it would work?

Well…there actually is a system.  This system doesn’t only work for a home business but for any business anywhere in the world.

And I made a video explaining that system.

Your home business system is dependent on these 5 things.

Leads

X

Conversion

=

Customers

X

Number of Transactions

X

Average Dollar Sale

=

Revenue

X

Margins

=

Profits

We all want more Customers, Revenue & Profits but those are a result of the other 5 things.  And they work in succession.

If you want to double the amount of money you make you can either double the amount of leads you get, double the amount of times your customers buy from you a year, or double the price you charge for you products.

So no matter what you’re doing for your home based business, i.e. affiliate marketing, multi level marketing or a brick & mortar business, this system will work for any of them.

Hope this helps!

RK Castillo

I’m sitting in the airport in San Diego on my way home to see my wife & baby!!!

So I wanted to share with you my big take aways from day 2 and 3 of the Coming Home 3 Conference.

Dan Raine, of the 30 Day challenge, spoke on Sunday and blew us all away!

There are 2 Billion views a day of YouTube videos.  That’s 23,000 a second!  And if you have 2 or more videos in your YouTube channel you are 51 times more likely to be found in Organic search.

And they are predicting that by March of 2011 there will be as many searches on YouTube as there is in Google.

Now here’s the crazy part.  17% of all YouTube views happen on Facebook.

There’s 260 Billion page views on Facebook a month.  That’s 37 trillion a year!  And 54% of Facebook users log in everyday!

So…just looking at these numbers may be a little overwhelming but the whole point is that if you are going to start a home based business you need to find the hungry crowd, find out what they’re hungry for & feed it to them!  That’s the basic key to any business, anywhere in the world.

And right now the hungry crowd is on YouTube & Facebook.

So…be there!

At the very least, begin to make videos and upload them to YouTube.  It’s free!  You don’t even need a camera or anything to make videos.  Just use the free software on your computer (Mac or PC) and you can start adding videos today!

Many Blessings!

RK Castillo