Overview of CPC and comparision shopping sites

Hi,
I have a very basic question to ask.

As a background I am trying to sell online products which retails in
the range of $15-$30 only.I do not sell consumables like printer inks
where there is a great value of repeat customers.

I have tried CPC but due to the 1-2% conversion, my cost per order was
appx $15.Obvioulsy I can not sustain a profitable business as I am
making only $10 per order and spending $15 to get the order, a loss of
$5 per order.

So I have given up CPC.

Now I am going to try bizrate and other shopping comparision site as I
see lots of successful seller.And I think the conversion will be a
little better as customers actually see the image and price of the
product before clicking and that's why I think in the long run
businesses using shopping comparision site will be more successful
rather than CPC.

CPC brings in very generic crowd while bizrate brings in customer after
showing image and price of your products.

I am right? Any comments?/Suggestions.

Second question is if the CPC conversion is always going to be 1-2%
then how can sellers who sell 15-20 dollars worth of stuff be ever
successful?

Should I start selling digital cameras and plasma TV?

Thanks for reading.
Seo_student.

Hello,

I think you might be putting the cart before the horse here. You should
stop and figure out *why* your conversation rate was so low before you
change tactics.

Maybe your website isn't very intuative, or you were advertising to the
wrong audience, or your product isn't competitively prices or.... there
are a million reasons. Without knowing your website or your products, I
can't really give you much better advice.

Generally speaking, my experience has taught me that CPA (Cost per
Action)/CPC forms of advertisting are of more value than CPI(Cost per
Impression) when you are trying to directly sell a product online. I
would think this especially true for items only costing $15-30. But
YMMV, of course.

- Jamie
// Founder, SmallBizGeeks.com //
"A community of small-business technology entrepreneurs"