I need help!

[fordio]

I read all about affiliate marketing (in sah) and thought what a great business that would be to run, I saved some money (about $2000) got my site up and running and thought that from there it would be relatively easy! How wrong was I?

Firstly, I advertised on yahoo UK and my sales were far less than my advertising costs. I kept tweaking my site and although conversion rates improved, I was still losing money. Realising that if I could get my advertising for less money I would be moving out of the red and into the black I opened a google account. My conversion rates dropped like a sack of the proverbial and I was losing money big time, I promptly stopped advertising. Anyone who has got any idea why this happened I would be grateful to hear from. (could it be more competition on google?)

Secondly, before advertising again I want to give my site a good make-over so it appears more professional. I Have been looking at templates and would like to know what more experienced affiliates think of flash animated sites? Are they worth bothering with? or will people get bored waiting for them to load?

Please help me as I would love to come back to this site as one of the success stories but at present I am feeling that my hard saved money is going down the drain. My budget is running out fast and I can't afford to get it wrong too many more times.

[Will]

Have you been promoting your website using free methods e.g. improving search engine ranking to get free traffic, writing and submitting articles to directories for distribution, doing something newsworthy and issuing a press release, creating relevant reports of value and embedding with your links, then giving them away in exchange for a name and email address so you can follow up?

[fordio]

I haven't tried any methods of getting free traffic yet as I thought I could be profitable in the first instance by purely advertising. I still don't know why my conversion rates went from 1.5% on yahoo uk to 0.2% on google. Any suggestions?