"over a month seems a big risk even by my standards."
yup welcome to finance ppc.. a sector where you can spend a fair few quid a click and most merchants have sites that deal with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of traffic with less tracking and reporting infrastructure to them then an affiliate would do on one of his own sites doing a hundred quid a day.
Even long term epc's can suddenly dip with no visible reason or explanation and all you'll get from some mercants is a shrug of indifference, also the odd finance merchants is happy to change cookie periods or application criteria without much notification too so you need to keep your eye on the ball too.
I usually do a releative increasing spend on finance after a tester ...eg £1k first month, then see what happens (could take 2 months to find out
if so spend no more than you did in first month till stats come in) then second month I spend whatever it made and say £1K again (if it made a profit) say it made £1k profit I'd spend £2k the next month, and then if it made £2k I'd spend £4k then..etc.. figures may change but theory doesn't.
worst case scenario is you loose your bankroll of 1k and the profit to date but not your shirt like you could do if you just went all in at it and max ppc'd it and spent £xxK and each month till the stats came in.
month 1 ... spend 1k
month 1 ....earn 1k profit
month 2 ...spend 2k
month 2 ... earn 2k
month 3.. spend 4k
month 3 .. earn 4k
simplistic figures but you get the idea, invest what you've earned plus your initial stake also you'd need enough budget to stand it as it could take 3 months to actually get credited with month 1's money but if you trust the merchant/network then go for it, if not wait till paid before reinvesting the cash lol.
once the volume or ROI tops out you take your profit each month take your profit then/ expand your ppc again, sometimes you're better off maxing the ROI rather than the spend so try and track by keyword if possible using LID123/UID123/SID123 etc, why spend £7k at 30% if you can spend £5k at 60% etc and use the other £2k elsewere and make more of it.
But make sure you don't pass ppc keyword data to merchants by "link id = keyword" as most of us have horror stories of spending thousands only to find we are asked to stop bidding a month or two in and the merchant pops up on the main keywords that convert !
You'd be wise to start towards the end of a month for a tester ... do 2 or 3 programs .. for a week or so and stop till the stats come in and see which is worth pushing,
good luck but personally I'd be looking elsewhere, finance is high figures but better ROI's are available elsewhere with less cash tied up in single campaigns and at such risk.
lol 
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