HI,
Could anyone help me as a newbie to Merchanting my site.
I would like to start a campaign to drive traffic through paying per sale.
I simply can not risk a ppc campaign as the coffers would dry up pretty quick.
Any ideas please?

You may be able to sign up for a PPA (pay per action) account. Sign up for AdWords first and leave dormant. Google will contact you to see if they can help. You can ask then about the PPA program which is currently in Beta.

Expect it to cost a similar amount to PPC though.

>>I simply can not risk a ppc campaign as the coffers would dry up pretty quick.

You must make sure that your site is set up in such a way that any visitors delivered to your site via PPC are converted into sales. If you cannot do that, you will be wasting your money. Also, if Google aren't getting paid because your site doesn't convert visitors to sales, you will not be allowed to use the PPA model. Either that or Google will suspend your ads until you have improved the quality of your site.

there used to be some low level inexpensive affiliate programs that will do this and provide a network to drive sales.

New and smaller advertisers are not eligible to participate in Google's PPA. Here are the
Google AdWords PPA Requirements:

"Can I participate in the pay-per-action beta?

You're eligible to use pay-per-action advertising if you have received more than 500 conversions through a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) campaign in prior 30 days.

Please be aware, however, that pay-per-action advertising is only available in certain languages."

Extensive information is in the Google PPA FAQ.