Seems you are facing a justification problem? A few things to consider:
1) Do you have competition doing ads?
Given your keywords (usually we replace whatever keyword/product one uses with the generic term "widgets" here), I would assume that you have lots of competition. WHat do their ads look like? Can you leanr from them? Not outright copy them, but taking an idea here, a phrase there.
2) Test your ads
Do you know you can do more than one ad per campaing? Make a whole bunch of ads with different text (called "copy" or "creative" among the specialists). See, which ad gets more clicks. Also users are more inclined to click on ads that change. Google rotates them automatically, so no need to worry.
3) Is your landing page OK?
Once the visitor clicks your ad, does he exactly get what he's after on your landing page? If he clicks on a "buy xyz..." link, can he actually BUY it on the landing page? Or does he need to change to a second (or even a third) page? Is the price given? Shipping & handling? Your full office name with phone number? Does the landing page look "spammy" or "shady"? Ask your mom about that one (no kidding!).
4) Are your keywords on target?
Your goal should not be to get as many clicks as possible, but to get clicks which convert to sales. Less keywords, more specific keywords, or targeted niche keywords might do better than broad keywords. If your keyword is "bananas", you will have a whole load of competition, high click prices, few conversions. But try "banana split", "banana cake", "banana cocktail", "organic bananas" (if that is your niche), etc.
Good luck!
If your ad text wording isn't very explicit your clicks may also be from researchers instead of download purchasers.
When I first started PPC I ran into the same thing. It is especially frustrating doing PPC direct to merchant since if they have a poorly converting page design there isn't much you can do about it.
For some campaigns, I intentionally write copy that will discourage clicks. Using language in your ad copy that will make the reader "disqualify themselves" from clicking your ad may help you to increase your ROI by reducing those "wasted" clicks.
Accentuate the negative. ;)
You want to discourage casual lookers, so include the price.
This of course only works for widgets where the generally expected price is much lower than the real price is! Nevertheless, this is an important point for many types of products/services.
over time the amount you're willing to spend to get a new customer (a sale, not a visitor) is going to tend towards the profit available from that sale.
That's why ideally you'll have a 'back-end'. Products and/or services that you can sell to your clients again & again.
If you only have a one-off sale (ie you're an affiliate selling someone else's stuff) then you don't have a business, you have a promotion.
Bloody hard to make money running a promotion!
If you have a business (with back-end products) then you can look at the 'lifetime value' of your average client & then decide how much you're willing to invest to go get one.
A strategy you may want to try is bidding different amounts to change the position your ad appears in.
Then test these different positions (say for a day, or for 100 clicks) and see how they convert.
You'll probably find that pos #1 costs you heaps & doesn't convert well (lots of click-a-holics!)
And anything below pos #8 is going to be on page 2 (on IE at least) of the ads & therefore a much lower CTR.
If you're starting out aim for #5-7.
This will have a (relatively) low CPC
and a reasonable conversion rate.
If you can't make it work there, it's unlikely to work.
The key - as always - is to test test test.
great suggestions in the other posts (although I personally wouldn't write 9 ads at one time.... write 2 or 3, test for 30-50 clicks (each ad) then delete the loser & write new ones...
cut & paste your losers into a word or excel doc so you can see any patterns & make sure you don't write another 'loser' later on)
good luck..
mike
