I recently started affiliate marketing, just to see if it's something I would enjoy doing. So far I've invested about $8 into AdWords clicks (recieved about 30), yet with the 3 products I'm promoting via Clickbank, I have made no sales. Anyone have any advice on what products specifically or what types of products have good sale rates? I'm "Newbie" looking for advice, feel free to leave some.
I think your looking for instant gratification, your promoting 3 products which means each product has recieved 10 clicks. That is not nearly enough to base a judgement on how well a product converts. Are you using one word broad match keywords? Are you using a landing page? If your for Well Converting Producs then look at the gravity, However hose producs may not be good quality and may have high refund rates. Since your a newbie to adwords, I would reccomand you purchase "Perry Marshall's Definitive Guide to Google Adwords". That should help you with adwords.
In general I wouldn't suggest using your AdWords dollars to send people directly to a sales page. To really make a good buck on affiliate sales you need your own website with your own content, and a mailing list. A blog is a good place to start. Find a marketing niche (say, gardening), and post weekly on gardening topics. Have a script to collect email addresses for a newsletter (which can contain small clippings of your upcoming blog entries as you release them); Bravenet.com offers a good free email list manager (for up to 500 subscribers), and a good rate on higher numbers when you feel you need them. Once you have a readership in place, you can start making product reviews/recommendations on your site. You can also add Adsense ads for extra revenue. Then you can simply use your email subscription list to send out recommendations to your readers. So if you're going to promote using AdWords, the object would be to get people to your blog or info website rather than to your product pages. This will ensure you get the most interested, loyal, and targeted visitors possible to promote your products to. If all this sounds like a lot of work, just remember: Every single one of the largest affiliate marketers working today (aka "gurus") makes this system their #1 priority in every single piece of instruction they hand out. The key is to always remember that people who surf the internet aren't doing so because they want to buy stuff from you. They do it because they're looking for either entertainment or information. If you can provide information for free, you'll earn their confidence and they'll be more likely to buy something on your recommendation.
I agree with what you are saying gripdoctor, however I wouldn't reccomand driving adwords traffic to your landing page solely from getting people on your mailing list, unless your a landing page expert. Try directing as much traffic as you can with a presell of some sort directly to the product, BUT try to gather subsribers from a prominent optin box. Perhaps offer an information product as an incentive.
What I mean is using Adwords to get people to your content site. Ideally, the content should attract readers to become subscribers. Once that's done, it's much easier to direct them to the product page for your affiliate sales, either as part of your content (reviews work great) or as mailouts to the list. Either way, you have to establish yourself as an "authority" to really get peoples' confidence in your recommendations. I definitely agree with offering an info product as an incentive. Find a good PLR product in your niche that you can give away as a "gift" to subscribers...or write your own 10-15 page "special report".
I would not start out with Adwords. Try something free like article marketing or making Squidoo lenses. Then when you make some sales and learn more you can branch out to Adwords.
Have a look at the marketplace and find out products with high popularity. ( listings in the marketplace are ranked according to their popularity ) These can have good conversions as you have asked.
Just $8 investment is a small thing to get any sort of feedback. You should conduct trial and error and make your own research before making into the full fledged AdWords Campaign.