getting started in PPC affiliate marketing

recently I just decided to take another stab at this- my first time around I earned around 100$, but spent around 130$. I guess this is supposed to be a bit better than most people manage during their first run.

the first time around, I tried advertising a high-pricetag item- the commission I'd earn would be anywhere from 50$ to 150$. however, the conversion rates I was getting were absolutely dismal- if I would've managed to get 1%, or even .5%, I probably could've managed to make it profitable. however, I was getting even less than that.

I'm hoping maybe I'm just having trouble with conversion rates because of the high prices. this time around, I'm just buying a lot of cheap clicks (with adwords) to promote ebay. since I already make a decent chunk off of ebay the performance incentives may be able to make things quite do-able... assuming there aren't any bids/BINs, I'd only need one out of every 100 clicks to end up registering. if the performance incentives kick that up to 13.00$, 16.00$, or 17.00$, I'd be able to deal with even lower conversion rates.

the nice thing about ebay, really, is the 30 day cookie. with their massive popularity- even if it wasn't directly because of anything you've done- some people will end up bidding or registering anyway.