Help - 16% click to buy but 100% cart abandonment

Hello Warriors,

I want to start by thanking the community for the awesome information here - this is my first post, but I've learned a huge amount reading on this forum over the last 6 months. After absorbing lots of tips here I took the jump and started testing my first IM product, in the dating advice space. The product is an e-book plus video lessons.

Problem: I'm getting 100% abandonment of the cart, and I can't figure out why. I'll give as much detail as I can (without giving away my sub-niche) below:

1. I expect I will need to build a list, build up a relationship with them, etc. but before jumping in with both feet and spending money building a list, I wanted to test whether or not my sales letter worked.

2. To do this, I did a 'dry-test' by putting up the sales letter and driving traffic to it, and testing how many people clicked on the "buy" link (figuring if I can convert at low #s with direct PPC traffic, if I build a targeted list I can do better)
- I drove about 400 users via YSM PPC to the sales letter
- Approximately 16% clicked to buy and filled in their name (which I did not retain during this test because I want to respect their privacy, the form was a 'dummy')
- 100% of those clicked another button to be taken to a 'payment' page. (I used a 3-step process to simulate that a purchaser would have to jump through some hoops to actually buy). The payment page simply said "sorry, the product is coming soon, visit [URL] and when we launch I'll give it to you free" (I want to give them it free for helping me test)
- During this dry test I was also split-testing pricing. I split-test pricing at $49, $99, and $179. There was little difference on the click-to-buy rate by price (less than 5% variation between the three).
I thought this was a good indicator that there was desire for the product, so I proceeded.

3. Based on the above numbers, I decided to finish up the product and launch it. I did that, then wired up the sales letter, with no changes, to my 1shoppingcart checkout. I tested to confirm that payment worked with both paypal and credit card. My 100% money back guaratee was prominently displayed at the top of the cart purchase page.
- I drove 200 users via YSM PPC to the sales letter
- Approximately 16% clicked to the 1shoppingcart cart.
- 100% of the carts were abandoned - zero sales.

4. Next I figured I'd test whether the cart was not performing, so I tried PayPal's cart (buy now button). I tested to confirm that payment worked with both paypal and credit card.
- I drove 200 users via YSM PPC to the sales letter
- Approximately 15% clicked to the paypal cart.
- 100% of the carts were abandoned - zero sales.

5. Next I wondered if users were confused about the price before they clicked to buy so I changed the "buy" link from "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" to "CLICK HERE TO ORDER FOR ONLY $179"
- I drove about 100 users via YSP PPC to the sales letter
- Approximately 12% clicked to the paypal cart - zero sales.

6. Last, I figured I'd just ASK people why they're not buying. I changed the process so the sales letter linked to a page which collected name and email address first (aweber HTML form), and after collecting that directed the user to the Paypal order form. I drove 50 users to the sales page, 8 clicked to buy, and ZERO filled in their email address.

I'm estimating that someone who clicks to buy has spends about 4-5 minutes on the sales letter page, implying they've read it.

I'm using both Google Analytics and Prosper202 to track data.

So I'm thoroughly confused. If my sales letter didn't work, I'd expect to get few/no clicks to the cart, and low on-page reading times. Instead in each case, over the course of nearly 1000 users, I believe I've consistently gotten over 12% reading the letter and clicking through to buy, but nobody willing to even give an email address, and zero sales.

Since this is my first attempt at selling an IM product, so I'm probably really missing something.

I'm more than willing to test again and again, but I'm running out of ideas about how to test the sales letter - and am thinking it would be unwise to start building a list with a sales letter that doesn't convert.

What am I doing wrong? Your wise advice is appreciated!