[Linda Buquet]

Hi leeannbusby,

Welcome to 5 Star.

Oh boy this is a tough one to answer. Sounds like you jumped in and started trying to run before you know how to walk. I admire your bravery!
And you know what? AT LEAST you took action and jumped in. Some people get analysis paralysis and never even get started. PLUS you learned something from this right?

1st there is no one ideal way to start, there are many options. But the way you are going is one of the hardest and riskiest.

I am NOT sure, so double check this, but I think merchants on PatDotcom pay you directly? If you are paying PPC $ for a merchant and they don't pay you, you'll lose your shirt. OR if that program does not happen to have good sales conversions, you'll lose money. Keep in mind that many products only convert at 1-2 sales per 100 clicks bad ones 1 out of 500. So you can pay for lots of clicks before getting a sale.

The biggest concern I have is that you probably have not taken the time to learn PPC which is a science. Plus sent clicks directly to the merchant instead of your own landing page is not alway the best way.

Actually an even bigger concenr at this point is if you keep throwing money at it and did not make a sale - you don't know enough to even know what the problem is. The merchant doesnt convert? has leaks? has a bad landing page? you used the wrong KW? you didnt optimize the ad?

So I suggest you stop your ads. You need to learn how to walk 1st then we can figire out where you should go from there. Read every stickie in our newbie forum. Then read some of the posts in the niche forum and work on picking a niche. You can start off with a Squidoo page or hub page so you don't have to learn to build a site and it's free.

But before you can figure out the best strategy you need to do some work on finding a niche. THEN find the best product(s) for that niche and THEN we can figure out the best way to get started.