Advertising used to be hit or miss. You would place your ads and wait for results. If new customers didn't come through the door, you had little choice but to revise your ads and try again until you got it right.

That created a problem for companies both large and small. You could invest a lot of money before sales started coming in.

Now, the new crop of Pay-Per-Performance advertising methods give you results or you don't pay. Instead of paying to place your ad, you pay for each lead your ad produces.

You can adjust your ad, your media, and your method until prospects start to roll in. Only when you get results do you start paying small fees per lead.

One of the quickest ways to pull lots of prospects to your web site is to get listed prominently in search engines. Unfortunately, with over one billion sites catalogued, your URL can get lost in the crowd.

Pay-Per-Performance search engines give you a way around this problem. They list your site high for a fee. You can pay as little as a penny a click for each prospect the engine sends to your site. If no one clicks on your link, you don't pay.

The up side to these engines is you can adjust your listing until it works without going into debt. You can also list dozens, even hundreds of keywords that will bring up your link.

The big disadvantage to Pay-Per-Performance search engines is many keywords get very little response. Common keywords that draw lots of prospects are probably well known to other businesses in your industry. With everyone vying for the same keywords, the price can be bid up to several dollars per click.

Some top Pay-Per-Performance search engines are GoTo.com, NetFlip.com, FindWhat.com, SearchHound.com, and RocketLinks.com. Most require a $25 to $50 minimum to participate.

Pay-Per-Performance banner advertising is also popular. With banner response trending lower in recent years, businesses are looking for ways around costly cpm banner purchases that don't always get results. Services like ValueClick.com and PennyWeb.com make you pay only when someone clicks on your banner and goes to your site.

By using the big three kinds of Pay-Per-Performance advertising -- search engines, banners, and email -- you stretch your ad budget with guaranteed results. You also have the ability to analyze hard statistics that render your results crystal clear.

Perhaps most important, Pay-Per-Performance lets you focus your marketing plan on getting results rather than just increasing awareness. Not only do people learn your company name, you also get the guaranteed result of an interested prospect seeing your full offer either at your site or in an email.