Sean’s pretty much right on for how to find hot products in clickbank. Most product directories will list products in order from best setting to worst selling.

As far as keyword tools, Google’s tool is very good. If you have a budget Market Samurai is a great keyword building tool. I think they have a 30 day trial or something like that as well.

Beating the competition, if your speaking of PPC then you’re going to have to make sure you track everything, no exactly what keywords are driving the sales. Tracking is a real pain, but if you don’t track you will never beat the competition.