Clickbank Cash Cobra
How to Create and Sell Your Own Information
Products Successfully
By Arfa Saira Iqbal
Copyright Notice
You Do Not Have Resale Or
Giveaway Rights To This Ebook
© Copyright 2010 Arfa Saira Iqbal All Rights Reserved.
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Special Report: Starting a Successful Ebook Business
Welcome!
Welcome to this special report which is going to teach you how to start a successful
ebook business from scratch using Clickbank. The tips and tricks in this guide will give
you everything you need to create, distribute and market your product successfully.
So, without further ado, let’s get started!
Choosing Your Subject Area
First things first, you need to have something to write about. This could be anything you
have an interest in. Have you got a special skill or talent that is useful to others? Do you
have a particular area of interest in which you do really well and which people look to
you for help with?
Think about what you are naturally good at – this could be anything from cooking,
baking, DIY, dog training, looking after tropical fish, gardening, jewellery making,
anything. It doesn’t matter what you’re good at, as long as there is an audience for it,
you have a product you can create.
Once you have decided on your chosen subject, it’s wise to do a quick check to see
how popular this is. Use the Google Keyword tool to do a quick search on your chosen
subject area. The higher the volume of searches, the more popular the search. Ideally,
you should look for searches where there are more than 10,000 searches a month.
Once you have done this, I suggest you do a quick Google search on your particular
area. So for example, if I select Indian food, there are over 40,000 local searches a
month on these keywords. Now if I put ‘Indian Food’ into Google, you get all the
websites which deal with this subject area. In fact, for this search, I had 94,300,000
websites using this keyword!
That’s a lot of competition! This is when you should take a step back and ask yourself
which particular area of your chosen subject should you focus on. Perhaps look at all
the different angles of your chosen subject and do a take on that.
For example, my subject area is Indian cooking because that’s what I’m good at. But,
it’s far too vague. Maybe my intended audience want to know about all the best dishes
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in India and how to cook them? So I searched ‘best dishes from around India’ and this
gave me 284,000 results instead – a lot better.
Using this as my starting point, I am going to call my product: ‘How to Cook the Best
Dishes from Around India’. Using a ‘How to’ or other descriptive title which tells the
reader exactly what your product is about is the best way to go.
Other Ways To Research Your Product
An obvious one, but visit Amazon dot com to check what’s on offer here. If your product
has a sound chance of success, there will be lots of competition and lots of reviews.
Use the Best Seller search to see if your subject area has made it on this list.
Perform a search on Clickbank and see what’s already out there. That way, you get a
feel for the market place and will have an idea on price and what to include in your
product.
Doing a general search on directories such as Ezine Articles is also a great way to
check if there is competition and a need for your product.
Lastly, check Google.com/trends to see if there is a need for your product. You will be
able to check searches going back over 5 years and see the most popular keywords. If
you see something on the increase, there’s a good chance your product will do very
well.
Avoid using clever or obscure titles for your product – it could really backfire.
This is because on the web, if I do a search of ‘How to cook the best dishes from
around India’ or even ‘the best dishes from around India’, I am very likely going to be
found.
However, if I call it something like: ‘The Indian Spice Journey’, readers may think that I
am talking about the spice trade or something unconnected with what I am writing
about. You WANT your product to be found, and you want your product title to appeal
to readers and encourage them to buy.
Planning and Writing Your Ebook
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There is a very easy way of writing out your ebook. Planning your ebook is the first step
and will ensure that nothing is missed out. An easy way to do this is to brainstorm ideas
of what you want your ebook to contain. This should be every possible thing you can
think of.
Next, organize your ebook into chapters and place each idea under the relevant
chapter. After you have completed this, break down each idea into sections and
sub-sections and place them in a logical order, so that each chapter has several
sections and sub-sections. Sub-sections are not always necessary, but are useful when
explaining more difficult concepts.
At this stage, you may find that additional ideas come to you, so be sure to put these
down too.
So, taking the Indian cookery example, my initial ideas included:
Spices you need
Weights and measures
Specialist ingredients
Starters
Main courses
Vegetarian
Salads
Drinks
Desserts
Baking
Menu plans
Now, for each of these, I am going to place in order, with sections and sub-sections
where necessary:
1. Introduction
a. Specialist ingredients
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i. Where to buy them from
b. Spices you need
i. Where to buy them from
c. Weights and measures
d. Cookery methods
2. Starters
a. Vegetarian
b. Non-vegetarian
c. Specialty dishes
3. Main Course
a. Traditional
b. Delicacies
c. Quick meals
d. vegetarian
4. Salads
a. Side dishes
b. Drinks
5. Desserts
a. Traditional sweets
b. Specialty sweets
c. Baking
6. Menu Planning
a. Family meals
b. Dinner parties
c. Weddings and special events
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d. Meals for one
e. Meals for 2
7. End notes
a. Stockists
So now, we have seven distinct chapters and each chapter has sections and some
have sub-sections. This helps you collate your thoughts and gives your ebook a logical
order. It also ensures that you haven’t missed anything out.
Writing Your Ebook
Writing your ebook is simple once you have managed to create your plan. In fact,
unless you have planned out your book first, I wouldn’t even attempt to write the ebook.
The easiest way to write is to write in chunks of 10 minutes or so.
The aim is to pick one section at a time and set yourself a timer for ten minutes. Keep
writing and DO NOT go back over sections or correct mistakes. This way, you squeeze
every last drop of writing gusto you have out of yourself. Once you get into the flow, you
may be compelled to write for longer periods of time.
The point of 10 minutes is that it is manageable and easy to do. It’s perfect to slot into
your busy schedule and means you can write pretty quickly. If you are very pushed for
time, try just 5 minutes of writing. You can easily complete at least a page of A4 in this
time.
Keep going in 10 minute or 5 minute chunks whenever you can. Refrain from the urge
of correcting yourself – it only interrupts the flow of words from brain to paper. Once you
have completed your ebook, it’s now time to polish it up and edit for mistakes.
When writing your ebook, it’s important to realize a few things. It’s not like a normal
book so you should use a clean and easy to read font such as Verdana, Arial or Calibri
in point 12 or point 14. Always have lots of white space and page breaks between
chapters to make it as easy to read as possible.
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Editing Your Ebook
Here’s a little tip I picked up from a fellow writer. Work backwards when editing.
Seriously, it is easier to edit starting with the last paragraph and working your way to the
first. Now bear with me – there is a method to this madness, I promise!
When you start editing reading from the top down, your brain sort of jumps ahead
because it knows what you have written – therefore it’s easier to miss out mistakes.
When you read from the bottom up, your brain can’t follow through with what has been
written, so mistakes, typos and grammatical errors become more obvious.
Once you have corrected the mistakes, your next step is to read through the whole
ebook, chapter by chapter to ensure it makes sense. You may at this stage want to ask
someone to read it for you. I suggest you print out your work and then use the A-B-C
method below to get your ebook from OK to great:
A – accept
B – Bin
C – change
For each paragraph, decide which you would like to keep and mark it with an ‘A’. For
paragraphs you feel are redundant or want to scrap altogether, mark with a ‘B’. For all
paragraphs that need revising, mark with a ‘C’.
Now all you need to do is get rid of all paragraphs with a ‘B’, keep those marked with an
‘A’ and revise those marked with a ‘C’. Once you have made your changes, I suggest
you run through the editing process again to ensure your ebook is the best it can
possibly be.
A note here: paragraphs seen as too wordy should be marked with a ‘C’. Using fewer
words to get your message across is better for your readers and makes for a tightly
focused ebook.
Lastly, you should give your ebook a contents page, a disclaimer and an eCover. An
eCover is not essential, as you can use a royalty free image (Google ‘royalty free
images’) and jazz up the cover with some nice writing. But, if you want to look
professional, then I suggest you use an eCover which has either been professionally
designed (expect to pay between $50-$100) or you can create your own using
http://www.myecovermaker.com/.
Once everything is in place, you need to save your document in PDF format. Both
Microsoft Word and Open Office allow you to do this. You can use Adobe to create
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PDF documents, but in all honesty, it’s easier and cheaper to use MS Office and Open
Office.
Ok, we have our ebook ready. So now, we need to be able to sell it!
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Publishing Your Ebook
Once your ebook is complete, you now need to set a system up in place which is going
to help you sell your ebooks literally on autopilot. You are going to need several things,
and these include:
Domain name and hosting
A website to sell from
Clickbank membership
Sales letter
Squeeze page
Autoresponders – at least 6
Paypal account
You should be aware that although writing your ebook has only cost you your time,
publishing and marketing your ebook is going to cost you money. The old adage that
you need to spend money in order to make money is certainly true in this case!
I suggest you do a Google search on websites with domain names and hosting plans.
Good ones include http://www.pickaweb.co.uk/ and https://www.doteasy.com.
Many of these plans available from the hosting companies provide you with a website
builder tool with drag and drop interface. They are usually very intuitive and easy to
create within minutes. Spend some time on doing it properly, or pay a web designer or
minisite designer (you can find some excellent ones over on the Warriors for Hire
section on www.warriorforum.com) to do it for you.
Once you have your website with name and hosting, it’s time to make some money!
Clickbank Setup
An ideal place to sell your ebook is on www.clickbank.com. You will need to pay a one
off registration fee and once registered, you can start selling here.
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Once you are setup, you now need to create your sales page. Now, you have two
options. Your first option is to write the page yourself. Your second option is to hire a
copywriter to write it for you.
Writing Your Own Sales Letter
Writing a sales letter which grabs the reader’s attention and practically forces them to
buy your product is a very specialist skill indeed. A professional copywriter will charge
thousands to write your sales letter or copy for you. Expect to pay at least $2000 for
such a letter. So no, it’s not for those who don’t have the money.
You can write the letter yourself, but research has shown that letters you write yourself
do not convert (this is the percentage of readers who read your letter and then go on to
buy from you) as well as those written by a professional. Over time, this can amount to
thousands in lost sales – something you really want to think about if you are considering
making a real living from selling your information products.
Anyway, if you don’t have the budget (and I strongly recommend you keep away from
the cheap copywriters that you can find on job auction sites) here’s how to write it
yourself:
1. Attention grabbing headline – your headline acts as your ‘hook’ to pull prospects
in. You should write a headline which tells the audience exactly what your
information product is about. A good headline will state a benefit or an
advantage of your product and should make the prospect sit up and listen.
2. Lead paragraph – should continue to hook in readers by firstly identifying with
them and addressing them as an equal. So, if you are selling a cat training
product, you would open your letter with ‘Dear Cat Lover...’ or something to that
effect.
a. You should talk about the problem that your product aims to solve
(although don’t mention your product at this stage)
b. A story or anecdote of the typical problem your product solves is a great
way to lead into the product itself
c. Reveal some secrets that will help the reader (be careful not to give away
too much. Your information should be useful but incomplete, so that the
reader feels the need to buy your product to get the rest of the
information)
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d. Use sub headlines to ask questions to the reader or highlight important
and relevant facts and points about your product
3. Body – this is when you get into the thick of explaining about your product.
a. Introduce your product as the product that solves the problems the
readers are facing
b. Use bullet points to identify benefits and advantages of your product. The
more detail you have here, the better
c. Build credibility and the desire for the product by mentioning facts and
figures as well as product testimonials
d. Highlight the best features and how they will affect the reader’s life
e. Explain what not having the product will do for the reader
4. Call to action – this is when you make your offer, mention any bonuses you may
be offering and tell the reader the price. Then you need a strong call to action
telling the reader what to do next. So if you have a ‘Buy it Now’ button, you need
to tell your reader to click on it.
5. Offer a strong guarantee so readers feel more confident buying from you
6. Always include your contact information and sign off at the end of the letter.
7. Add a P.S to recap your offer and remind readers of what they are getting.
Pointers to Remember for Clickbank Products
Some things to remember when creating a page for Clickbank:
Always include your contact details in your page
Mention that your product is available for instant download in a PDF once you
buy the product
Look at other sales letters on Clickbank to get an idea of how to write yours.
Use an ecover on your sales page to show what your product looks like – having
no picture indicates you are lazy or sloppy
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Creating The Product Link
Once you have your sales page ready (you may wish to hire a designer to create your
page design, as aesthetics are very important, and highly recommended), you should
have a ‘Buy it Now’ button which needs to be manually coded in HTML to link to
Clickbank:
Buy it Now
In this code, replace ITEM with the product item number in Clickbank, and replace
VENDOR with your clickbank account name.
In Clickbank itself, you should follow the instructions on setting up your vendor account
here: http://www.clickbank.com/sell_products.html and add your products in one at a
time.
Once you have created your sales page, you now need to create the page from which
your customers will download your product from. This is called the ‘Thank you’ page
and is hidden on your website. You place the links to your product on the ‘thank you’
page and also include:
Your contact details should there be any problems
Note to the reader telling them that their statement will show ‘clickbank’ or
‘CLKBANK*COM’
Clear instructions on how to download the product
Once you have created your ‘thank you’ page, your details for this page should be
added into your page details in Clickbank. What you don’t want is people downloading
your material for free (hackers can easily do this). So, switch your ‘thank you’ page into
HTML view and place in between the and tag the following tag:
All this does is prevent search engines from displaying your ‘thank you’ page in search
engine listings. A good idea if you don’t want people taking your information for free!
Now that you have created and published your ebook and have it ready for selling, you
now need customers, so read on and find out how to market your ebook.
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Marketing and Selling Your Ebook
Marketing your ebook is the most crucial part of the whole ebook business bit. Get this
right, and your site could make you thousands upon thousands every year or even
every month on autopilot. Get it wrong and you will have spent a lot of money not to
mention lots of time trying to sell something that isn’t going to work for many reasons.
Marketing should not be seen as a one trick pony – you need to build as many
channels or ways to get customers as possible. Relying on one method alone can be
financial suicide.
First up, is finding a market for your ebook. Think of it like this – every niche has its own
forums and methods of attracting customers. Your job is to find these and really make
your product stand out from the rest.
An ideal place to start is by submitting your website to search engines so that your site
is available to display. Go to
http://www.addme.com/submission/free-submission-start.php which will submit your site
to over 20 major sites including Google.
A word of caution here – don’t worry about paying to submit to search engines.
Submitting using addme.com is free and once Google and other major search engines
index your page, other search engines will follow suit. So in case you are wondering,
no, you do not have to pay.
Submission can take a week or so, or several weeks before your site truly becomes
global. If you can wait, that’s great. If not, I recommend you try
http://www.searchenginerankingservice.com/ which will list your site on over 800,000
search engines and directories within 3 days.
With submission underway, I suggest that you initially buy traffic to boost Alexa and
Google rankings. This means that your website will rank higher in Google. Try traffic
sources targeted to your niche from http://www.startraffic.net. If you get sales from this,
that would be great, but don’t buy traffic expecting a sale – it doesn’t work that way.
Treat traffic as helping your boost your search engine rankings and helping you get
noticed more.
Targeted Marketing
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Twitter – using Twitter as a marketing tool is a great way to obtain exposure for your
product. In order for this to work, you need to have followers or your tweets will not get
noticed. You only have 140 characters in which to make an impression, so always
make every word count.
A great way to harness the power of Twitter without having followers is get someone
else to tweet for you. I recommend you go to www.Twiends.com and scroll through the
companies and see what they are doing. Pick a company or person closest to what you
are doing and have them tweet your tweets!
Blogging - An even better way to make Twitter work for you is to blog about your
chosen topic using something like blogger.com and then using the share function to
tweet about your posts.
A good tip here is to write about topics related to your niche WITHOUT pitching about
your product all the time. If people like what you have to say, they will retweet your
information and you can start building a blog following.
Ensure you post at least once or twice a week, making every third or fourth post a
GENTLE pitch about your product. Your aim is to build value in your products by
creating valuable posts that people will enjoy and find useful.
Facebook – Facebook is a great way to connect and share what you do with friends
and other companies. If you link from Twitter, you can automatically update both
Facebook and Twitter at the same time.
When creating your profile, make sure its related to your product/service and place your
website and other related URL’s in it. Keep your Facebook posts relevant and see what
happens. I recently had a web design company contact me about a consulting
partnership through Facebook. This can work great for you as long as you stick to
useful and relevant posts and not just random messages.
Creating a Fan page and getting people to like it is another way of promoting yourself.
You would be surprised how often people contact you at random wanting to be your
friend or liking your page. It’s always polite to like their pages back too!
YouTube
YouTube is brilliant for showcasing your product and talking about it. You should pick
the most appropriate keywords using the Google Keyword tool to add to your site. You
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can easily create your own videos using Camtasia 7 and maybe some background
music.
Post your video on YouTube remembering to point people to your squeeze page in the
links under the video. Send it out to your friends and place links to your video on
Facebook and Twitter – if your link gets retweeted, even better.
Article Marketing
Article marketing has been around forever, and with good reason. Once you have a
product that is worth something, then posting articles about it makes perfect sense
since you are demonstrating your expertise in the area.
For example, if I wrote an ebook on dog training, I may write a handful of articles based
on training a dog not to bark at strangers or perhaps what to do about an angry dog.
The trick is to give just enough information to arouse curiosity and then use your bio or
resource box to point readers in the direction of your squeeze page. Essentially, you
have told them what to do, but not the exact method how.
Obviously, if people want to know more, they are going to have to visit your site to find
out more. This method works very well in generating a surge of traffic for you. You need
to distribute your article to hundreds of directories to see a traffic surge - but it works
nevertheless.
Article marketing leads me on very nicely to the next method of marketing – squeeze
pages and autoresponders.
Squeeze Pages and Autoresponders
A squeeze page is simple a page which has been created to capture leads in the form
of email addresses in return for you offering prospects something for free. This could be
a free report or email course.
Suggested method: Use your squeeze page to offer a free report which solves an
immediate problem for the reader. So going back to dog training, maybe your mutt isn’t
house trained. So you might create a free report called: ‘How to house train your dog’
and list the main benefits of the report on your squeeze page.
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It doesn’t have to be a lengthy report – around 7-10 pages is fine. Make sure you are
clear cut in your problem solving ability. Mention what to do and don’t give away too
many details – remember you are saving that for your product.
At the end of your report, you can point visitors to your sales page. This will encourage
them to buy since if they like what they read on the report, there is a greater chance
that they will buy your product.
Also, once you have captured a readers email details, you should use that to full effect.
You want to build a list of all your prospects and you should send them a series of
autoresponders – at least 6 to presell prospects on your product.
How? By talking about different ideas in each email and pitching GENTLY to the
prospect every third email. NEVER EVER bombard your prospects with too many
pitches, since this will make them hit the unsubscribe button fairly rapidly.
Using an autoresponder such as Imnica Mail is cheaper than Aweber and Get
Response and overall cost effective. You can set your autoresponders to send out
emails automatically to each prospect as they sign up.
In your last email, it is recommended you pitch your product carefully by pitting it
against other alternatives. This way, you are making direct comparisons and showing
prospects that your product is the obvious choice.
This in itself will increase the click through rate to your site as well as increase your
chances of people buying your product.
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Advertising
Once you have a system in place of building your list and various ways to market your
product, you now need to do some form of advertising to get the word out. Also, you
should consider a launch price or introductory offer. This way, you can entice even
more people to buy from you.
Places to advertise include:
Forums specializing in your niche – you should put a paid ad up and be a part of
the forum, actively taking part in discussions. Place the link to your squeeze
page in your signature and when you make valuable contributions to posts,
people will see you as a ‘go to’ member for that particular topic.
Place links on link exchange sites such as http://www.link-exchange.ws/ ,
http://www.backlink-exchanges.com/ and http://www.linkmarket.net/ . This will
help get the word out and increase traffic to your site.
Advertise on larger ‘go to’ sites by placing banners and sidebar ads on them.
Simply contact the website owner for their rate card.
Consider offline advertising – it can be expensive, but can work very well. So for
a dog training product, you may wish to target vets and place an advert on their
newsletter/brochure.
Send out review copies and get feedback and testimonials in place. Ask the
readers to recommend you and make referrals.
Advertise on related sites. So for the dog training example, you may wish to
advertise on pet insurance sites and sites selling pet accessories.
Do a Warrior Special Offer (WSO) – a WSO is a great way to make money
quickly and get your product out there, especially if it’s related to Internet
Marketing and copywriting. A dog product on here wouldn’t do well, so check the
posts first and see what people are talking about before posting.
Hand out business cards whenever and wherever you can.
Place an advert in the local paper and get it on the first three pages since this is
where the ads with the best responses go.
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Be inventive – offer prize draws of a free product for everyone signing up within a
certain time period. This has the double whammy of increasing your list quickly
and giving people an incentive to get your report.
Use pop over advertising which is cheaper than PPC and more effective. This is
quite a laborious process as you need to target virtually every keyword and
competitive product you can think of. It also costs an initial outlay in click through
credits – usually around $200, but is a very effective way of laser-targeting
customers and bringing a flood of traffic to your site. Use www.leadimpact.com to
help you get started.
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Conclusion
In this short report, we have discussed the easiest way to create an information product
and the many different ways to market and advertise your Clickbank product.
Done effectively, these methods can provide you with a residual income on autopilot for
years to come. One thing to take note though – you can’t sit back and relax and do
nothing once you have your product up and running.
I suggest you review your marketing and advertising strategies at least one a week and
see what’s working and what’s not. You can then change your methods depending on
what is not doing so well for you.
Always be thinking about building your list and adding value wherever possible. You
may wish to offer anyone who has your report a discount on your product.
Finally, to really make a go of your product, you should invest heavily in marketing your
site and expecting to pay a good amount if you want to do well. Think of the return on
investment and how much you can make, rather than how much you stand to lose if
your marketing efforts are poor.
A good writer and copywriter can be an invaluable asset to your business and will
probably be the single best investment you ever make. The best product in the world
isn’t going to sell like hotcakes if your sales copy is uninspiring and lacklustre, or simply
doesn’t compel people to buy.
In the Internet marketing world, a 1-3% conversion rate (number of prospects becoming
actual customers) is considered good. Imagine what 5%, 6% or even 10% could do for
you! That’s the difference between a cheap writer and a good one.
Best of luck!
Arfa Saira Iqbal
www.copymagnet.com
www.arfawrites.com
If you would like to hire my services to help expand your business and help you attract
more profitable customers, please see the next page.
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I am a professional copywriter and commercial freelance writer. I specialize in sales
letters and autoresponders and any other sales or marketing material you need. I help
businesses and individuals boost their profits and increase leads and sales.
From small projects to full scale marketing campaigns, you can hire me to create
high-impact marketing materials which produce results.
Services offered include:
Sales letters
Autoresponders
Writing ebooks
Article writing and submission
Report writing
Sales material such as brochures, leaflets and web copy
Copy critique service
Re-writing bullet points
Keyword analysis reports
Proofreading and editing
Consulting
If you require any help with any of the above, please get in touch with me through
www.arfawrites.com or you can email me at: info@arfawrites.com.
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