Dane

This tutorial was originally written for those who were participating in the private mainstream group. I have decided to share it here as well.


PART ONE
Okay...

Quick note first... I'm going to teach you how to make the viral ebooks and the opt-in lists without the directories/member sites etc first...

Once we all have a grasp on how viral ebooks and opt-in list (not ezines, opt-in lists that receive and auto responder series) work, we'll start adding the other elements one at a time and phase them into the program.

So, without further ado.... Here's "day" 1.

Day 1: Research.

We will be doing research for our project on day one. The first thing to research is a topic, or subject for our ebook or report.

We are looking for a subject that has a few criteria.

1. It must have demand. This means thet there must be people actively seeking out information on the topic.

2. It must have profitability. There must be a way to monetize the traffic. This can be either through affiliate programs or through the purchase of a resale rights product.


Finding your Topic

First palce to look for topics is yourself. What do you know how to do well? What magazines do you read? What hobies do you have? What do you do for a living? Any of these is good stuff for creating your viral ebook around. Also because you have knowledge about the topic the development and research will go more quickly. And if it's something you like doing you'll have an easier time of it since it won't really be like work at all. But if you have an idea for something you know nothing about but that could be profitable, don't rule that out either, as long as you are willing to commit a week to working with it and periodic update time over the next year or so at least.

Places to mine ideas
Here are some places to go looking for ideas for your ebook. Just surf through these resources looking for things that interest you.

Top 1000 searches at search.com
http://www.search.com/top

Top 1000 searches at MySimon Shopping Portal
http://search.mysimon.com/top

Items people are buying through Yahoo stores Right now.
http://search.store.yahoo.com/OT

Sign up with Commission Junction and sort all products by EPC (Highrer is better)
http://cj.com

Look at the click bank marketplace. items in each category are ranked by 1) most sales and 2) most commissions paid to affiliates.
http://clickbank.com

Amazon top sellers
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...sellers/-/main/

Most Popular Items in eBay
http://pulse.ebay.com/

Find 5 or 6 topics from the resources above and then check them for keywords and demand

Demand

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the process of finding keywords to use for search enginge placement. Most of you probably use tools like http://inventory.overture.com/. I'm going to suggest that if you are going to use free tools, you use http://nichebot.com/ instead. You'll get more information and better information from that resource.

but

I want to strongly urge you to consider getting a copy of Adwords Analyzer instead.

It isn't very expensive at all for what it does. And it will do in minutes what would take hours using free resources. Or do in hours what would take days or even weeks otherwise.

What it does is take your keyword and lokk it up on overture for search counts. Now, it won't stop at the first page, it will drill down up to three levels following the keywords for more and more targeted (and valuable keywords)

Next it will look up the keyword as a search on Google and get the number of results pages. Then it will calculate the R/S ratio for each keyword and the KEI for each keyword. Don't worry too much about exactly what these are, but remember that a low R/S is better and a high KEI is better.

Next it will get the number of Google adwords ads and the number of Overture ads for each keyword. More ads means it is a more competative keyword. You want to buy and optimize from lowwer competative keywords and sell from higher competative keywords.

OK, now if you have an adwords account, you can also have it get the estimated cost to get the #1 spot through an adwords bid and the estimated number of clicks you would get daily from that keyword bid. This will give you an idea of which keywords you can buy cheap to send traffic to your opt-in form for your viral ebook, and which keywords you can expect to make more money from when selling affiliate programs and your own products.

You can save the report as a .csv file and manipulate it in MS excel or OO calc. You can also save the keywords as a full keyword list for use in adwords campaigns. It will put each keyword as broad match "phrase match" and [exact match] and save the list to a text file. You can save the report as an html file or as a native AWA Report so that you can reload and update it later, as well as perform filtering and sorting and deeper tier research with the report.

You can learn more and get a copy of AWA at:
http://www.danemorgan.com/recommends/Adwords-Analyzer


Profitablility
Now go back through click bank and commission junction and do keyword searches to find products to sell. You want to find a mixture of things.

Also do searches at the search engines for your keywords plus "affiliate program" or "associate program" or "refferal program"

Another good idea is to do a [ site:clickbank.com "Your Keywords" ] search. This will root out more products related to your topic that aren't as heavily promoted, which means more commission for you (Provided they have a decent sales letter).

Also do some searches for your keywords at http://associateprograms.com. While there particularly pay attention to programs with two tier commissions.

About our product requirements

first we want a product that sells for around $40-50 and pays a 40-50% commission. Actually a couple of complimentary products at this level would be great, but we can work with it so long as it has at least one.

Second we want to find some recurring commission products. things that people pay for on a monthly membership basis... like hosting, or club dues, or services like submitters... Not neccessarily that function, but that payment model.

third we want to look for a product or two that sells for well over $100... $300-500 is great, but at least $100, and pays a GOOD commission. $50 or more.

As you get practiced you will easily be able to accomplish this in a day. (even a couple in a day). For now though we'll give you 2-3 days to complete this task. If you have problems ask for help.
If you have questions, ask.

__________________

Dane

STEP TWO

market research - What do the want, where does it hurt.

The second step (day) is for research. In step one we identified a topic that has both demand and profitability. Now we need to define specific areas within the topic that people want to read about.

I know that right now for many this seems to be redundant, or unneccessary, but there are millions of ebooks out there that no one reads because the author didn't bother to find out just what people wanted to know. It doesn't do us any good to know that people are interested in 401k investements if we don't know what specifically about a 401k investment plan they are interested in. If we just start writing our ebook without conducting any market research we might decide and ebook on maximizing the tax benefits of a good 401k plan would be a good product. But if no one really is looking for that information, but they are all looking for information on how to maximize the return on their 401k plan by selecting the strongest options available to them, we won't reach our market and our book won't get read and our links won't get clicked.


Forums
The first place to look is on forums. Just hit Google and type in "KEYWORD forum" with the quotes to identify a few forums set up for discussin your topic.

Once you've identified 3-5 good well trafficed forums, do some searches. What you want to search out is pain... By finding peoples pain with a subject you can put yourself in a position to offer relief through your ebook and through the offers you promote in it.

I don't recomend using the local search form at the forum, unless it's a smaller forum that isn't well indexed in Google. If it's large and well indexed, use Google to search it. Just use [site:forumurl.com "search phrase] without the brackets to ferret out the bits we are looking for.

So how do you find their pain? You look for questions. doe searche on phrases like;

where can i
where do i
how do i
how do you
how can i
how can you
what is the
what do you
what do i
whats the best
what is the best
how does
what does
how did you
where did you
can anyone recomend
does anyone know
can you recomend
do you know
i cant find
i cant get
i need
i want

and any other terms of this nature you can think of. The idea is to get a feeling for the specfic information that the most people are looking for, that you can offer the answers for.

While you are doing this I recomend using some outliner software.

I use and highly recomend KeyNote. http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html

It's open source and easy to learn to use.

When using it for this what you want to do is create a new file file -> new and name it KEYWORD TOPIC ebook.

under the menu bars youll see a tab called new note. Right click on this and click rename note. name it Forums.

Now in the left pane you'll see New Node. Right click that and click Insert node.
Now you have two nodes. Right click again and pick ad child and you'll have another node as a sub node or child of the top node.

I recomend doing it like this. As you read the forums and find the questions you are looking for mak a new node for each question you find.

For each question you will create subnodes (child nodes) for each thread where you find some one asking basically that question. each child node should be named for the form you found it at and the users name.


In the right panel paste in a direct link to the forum in case you want to revisit this thread. Then paste in the full text of the post asking the question and any posts that have answers that seem like good answers to you.

Don't edit too much, just dump information into the outliner.

NOTE: If you don't like outliner software you can use whatever other system you have for organizing information, but learning to use outliner software will improve your ability to gather and structure information greatly. I promise it.


Yahoo! Groups

Now we'll do the same thing for Yahoo groups (If you think you have all you need from forums that's fine, you can skip the rest. Generally your best stuff will come from forums, the rest is to fill in the gaps).

You will simply repeat what you did for forums, but do your searches for eg.
[site:groups.yahoo.com "keyphrase" "how do i"]

Usenet Groups
Same deal, but search at http://groups.google.com/ (formerly deja.com)

That's it for this step, though it should keep you busy for a full day at least to do it right and do it well.

__________________

Dane

STEP THREE
Okay, this one is real similar to the last one.

What we want to do is go through our list of questions from the forums and groups and select 5-7 of them. Pick them based on how interesting / exciting they are for people into the niche, how many times they were asked, and how comfortable you are with researching / answering them.

If it's a familiar subject for you I still want you to research the answers. There may be aspects of it you just do without thinking about, and you'll miss writing them into your solution. If you know nothing about the topic, obviously you need to research.

Places to find answers and solutions...

Obviously the forums... But ofcourse anyone can say anything in a forum, so take these with a grain of salt.

Search Google and Yahoo! for FAQs on the topic and grab any answers you find.

visit http://answers.google.com/answers/ and search for already answered questions on the topic there and grab them... no editing yet, just grab and organize the answers in your outliner or whatever system you are using.

http://amazon.com You have to have an account and log in for this. but search for your question topic. then click on a book that comes up and scroll down to find the "search inside" box. type in something dealing with the question and it will list pages that that term apears on with about 3 lines of text... click on the page name and it will load the page for you to read... grab your answer and file it.

Also not the "sips" right up in the main part of the book listing these are phrases that appear in the book a statistically improbable number of times... they are likely important issues on the topic.

http://about.com this is an old site that is a huge repository of answers and solutions to a staggering array of things people are interested in... search it for answers. grab them and file them.


Now that you have your research, read through each answer source you have and write key points to address in your answer or solutiong. strive to present a more full and content rich answer than any of the sources you found. Write this in your own words. DO NOT COPY. don't edit hevily either. just get the thoughts down as fully and completely as you can

__________________

Dane

STEP FOUR
Okay, now that you have your questions and answers, you are ready to start writing. For each question you should have 3-5 answers that touch on various aspects of the topic.

What you want to do is now edit these into your own words combining the best parts of each answer into your own answer that is more full and complete than any of the others were on their own.

Remember to taylor the answers to your audience. don't talk down to expeienced people if they are your target, and don't bash newbies with stuff thaey can't hope to understand.

Put your points into a logical order when you have finished writing each one, and get out your affiliate programs and look for places where you can make a recomendation to them right in the middle of the text...

things like:




Seed three or four of these into the five-seven points in the ebook.

Make an end section with a list of favorite resources (your blog, your article site, your adsense pages, etc... and a few big sites links. Only the top of the top though. most people will already know about them and you'll be associating your sites in their minds with these sites.

Make a final section thanking them fo reading the ebook and inviting them to download more ebooks from you, join your ezine, and a couple of soft sell pitches for paid affiliate stuff.

This whole thing should now be writen into OpenOffice and formated to be 1)easy to read 2) printable if possible.

__________________

Dane

STEP FIVE
Take the day off! Well sort of.

Send the ebook to at least one and preferably two or three other people to let them read through it. encourage them to correct spelling and grammer (people LOVE to do that ), but also ask them to write down any questions they have about any part of your book. Ask them to make notes of anything that they don't understand or feel is not explained or stated well.

For yourself, this is a GREAT oppotunity to think about what your next ebook might be about. (hint hint).

__________________

Dane

This is as far as we have gone so far. As I finish the remainder I will post it here if I am able, and if I am not able i will make it available to others who can make it available to you.

__________________

martinsc

very interesting read.
thanks dane!

__________________

www.TrafficHolder.com - www.TrafficAdept.com

Carrie

Woohooo!!!!! This looks fantastic and I've only just scrolled slowly through it. Let me go grab some cigs from 7-11 and then I'm settling in for a NICE read!
Thank you thank you thank you Dane

__________________
Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes. --jayeff

TheShiftyEyedBastard

Muchas gracias Dane. Lots of great info here. I printed the thread out so I can take a closer look tomorrow when I got some more down time

__________________
<A HREF="http://www.netpond.com/newadmin/click.php?cat=10"><IMG SRC="http://www.netpond.com/newadmin/banner.php?cat=10" border=0></A><br>
Kim Kardashian Video

thomasbyers

Thanks Dane. Very great article there. It should be a ebook its self.

Carrie

Holy shit. I got halfway through the first post and already I was buzzing with ideas, bookmarking like crazy, and had a dozen questions ready to ask.

Coming back in last month my plan was to do both adult and mainstream at the same time; specifically with a viral ebook (well one to start, want to get more built up of course) and lots of adsense publishing. I've already got my topic and have spent all the time/effort compiling the "meat" of the ebook. I have a title picked out and grabbed the domain. It's been so many years since I've done this (2001) that I am SO glad you posted this; you've got things in there I'd forgotten about and a ton of shit I'd never even seen.

So the point I'm at now is kinda a little here and a little there. I've got a lot of filling-in to do. And of course now I can't remember any of my questions...

Oh! When we are ready to launch the ebook, should we hold it off until we have a good infrastructure in place? Things like: Multi-tiered products at different price points available that we have also created (not affiliate products/programs), ad sense pages already published, etc etc? I am thinking yes at least to the adsense, getting the list software set up and auto-responders ready of course... but not necessarily the multi-tiered products. Those can be worked in after launch.

When you write an ebook, about how many pages do you aim for? (If you say "however many it takes" I'm hitting you with the nearest smiley, lol) The reason I ask is because it seems like you've got this down to a science where you're pumping these things out weekly if not every few days. Writing something really in-depth and thick (as far as virtual pages would go) would take too much time to do this more than once a week, wouldn't it?

I've gotta print this out, no way in getting around it. Going to go blind if I keep trying to go over it on my screen.

__________________
Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes. --jayeff

Carrie

"I'm sure most of you are familiar with the process of finding keywords to use for search enginge placement. Most of you probably use tools like http://inventory.overture.com/."
Boy you nailed it on that one. Overture and Wordtracker.
Have tried a few terms with Nichebot, and it kicks ass.

When looking at the ratios for Nichebot, what is a good ratio to target considered to be? It says the closer to zero the better, but that's relative. At first I was getting ratios of 14 and under and thought "okay, so I'm aiming for like 2 or less". But then I got ratios of 2,400 and the like and that blew my first theory. Using that as a ceiling, anything 100 or under would be great.
Generally what kind of ratio should we be looking for? (ie "X and under")

__________________
Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes. --jayeff

PornFactory

Great tutorial Dane ... thanks for sharing!

__________________

Dane

Okay, first let me clarify that what I'm talking about here is maybe not the complete picture for the ebook you are working on. These are short ebooks, reports if you will, that you give away and give others the right to give away. The idea being to spread them as far and wide as possible. But one great way to do this is also to excerpt portions of a main ebook you want to offer for sale and make one of these to promote that ebook with.

And yes, beyond just using affilite programs they work great for promoting your own products especially through your own affiliate program. by making the ebook brandable with the affiliates own links you encourage them to spread it even further and faster. There ain't no bribes like cash bribes. But you absolutely want any and all pages you refernce in the book up and working when you launch it, nothing will kill the virus like dead links.

And yes, following this process you can easily put out one or more a week, but obviously you have to keep them shorter to do so. That's why the 5-7 points to address. Just address those points. If you have more, they can always go into another ebook covering a different aspect of the topic. You can make them larger, but that's going to throw your production into a longer cycle, and mean you have to work harder for any paid ebooks you make. Ken Evoy writes 100+ page free viral ebooks, but he writes 1000+ page for sale ebooks. He's exhausitve. But for this to work, you don't have to be. You just have to provide value.

__________________

Dane

No, you're doing it right already. Think of it as a graded curve. If the smart kid gets an A you gotta have a B, but if they only get a C, you're good to go with a D. If the niche ceiling is 100, tens are what you want to shoot for, if it's 1000 100s are your goal. And this is a thumbnail rule, designed to get your to the less competative, but more tightly targeted keywords. You want to also put some good old fasioned human judgement into the equation.

__________________

Carrie

Ok, gotcha. That made it click into place. Yep the one I'm working on would be more the end-product or the upsell for these (well the ones in the same niche). I'll set it to the side and concentrate on these first. Do some branding and such before putting that one out.

Good god. He must be using voice typing software, otherwise it would take him forever!

__________________
Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes. --jayeff

Dane

Step Six

Now that you have your ebook back with corrections and questions from your proof reader(s) you'll want to read it through again yourself too. make any corrections and clarify any points that seemed akward. Also note any questions or comments that would alert you to a second ebook on the subject going into more depth one some aspect(s) of your topic.

Once you've made your corrections it's time to put the ebook into a useable format. You have three real options. In order from the least desirable to the most those options are:

1. html web document. You could simply publish the document to the internet and allow people to read it like any other webpage. Include a recommend to a friend script, or even use php to let people use affiliate codes to change the embeded links in the ebook so that they have an incentive to link to the book.

2. .exe compiled ebook. This option is again an HTML ebook, but you compile the HTML pages into a self executable program that people can download and read on their computers. In order to make this work you need a compiler. Specifically you need a compiler that allows you to make the ebook rebrandable, so that people can embed their information into the ebook in place of variables you place in it automatically without you haveing to recompile it fo each person. There are many applications available to do this, but the best zI have used is called eBook Paper from Wes Blaylock. It's not free, but it's not real expensive for what it does either.

http://www.danemorgan.com/recommends/eBook-Paper

There are, as I said, others, and even some that are free. For what it's worth this is one area where you seem to get what you pay for. I bought a number of these before i got ebook Paper and have not looked at them again since.

3. PDF. Adobe Portable Document Format is the most widely accessible and most widely adopted format on the net for information products. Anyone on any machine can read PDF. You can even read them in your palm device and even in some phones. Google, Yahoo and MSN can even index them. It is definately the publishing method of choice. In order to create PDFs you will need some software that outputs PDF by spooling it to a special print file. PDF995 is a free option that works with MS word. Open Office natively supposrt exporting to pdf, and there are numerouse applications that will convert HTML to PDF on the fly. Ofcourse you can always drop the change and get Adobe writer direct fromadobe, or maybe even pick up a discounted copy on ebay.com. Just watch for pirated software going that route. The guys at adobe are DRM experts.

You'll need one other piece of software if you go this route. It simply ads branding abilities to pdf files. it's called Viral PDF. As far as I know it is the only software of it's kind.

http://www.danemorgan.com/recommends/ViralPDF

A couple of notes on this software. It does work, but unless you are willing to buy adobe writer there are limitations. Support sucks, but as I said, within limitations the software works. Problem 1. Microsoft word encodes any URIs so the {-- and --} needed to create variable tags are converted to the UU % code for the braces during output. So unless you have adobe writer to open the pdf and edit the urls you will not be able to use MS word to create documents that work with brandable liks. So while you could let some one put their name or their web address into the ebook with the brander, you would not be able to let them embed live links. With Open office you can easily let people brand the links, but the text for some reason will not brand. So you could have an affiliate