I can't seem to get the examples to work. Any advice?

Sacrifice a goat beverage :/

Also, there are checklists for that , Basic debugging checklist , brian's Guide to Solving Any Perl Problem, CGI Help Guide , Troubleshooting Perl CGI scripts

Yes, work through these checklists, when you find a problem on the list, use a solution from the list, when you find a problem not on the list (rare), post the error message and problem description here

brian's Guide to Solving Any Perl Problem, CGI Help Guide , Troubleshooting Perl CGI scripts

So examine your server configuration and compare to https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/public_html.html#cgi / Apache Tutorial: Dynamic Content with CGI

learn about the internet,Web Programming: For Beginners, to get an overall picture of how the internet works, how tcp/ip, sockets, html, ajax, all fit together.