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.

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.

The newest innovation in Pay-Per-Performance advertising may well be the best idea yet. New CustomLead.com uses innovative banner ads to collect the email addresses of your target customers. Prospects enter their email address to receive information on your business. You pay only for unique confirmed email sign-ups.

The point is to build your own opt-in email list. You own the list and can use it indefinitely to email updates, send out new offers, and distribute information to your prospects and customers. Rather than a one-shot ad campaign, you can continue to work your list for weeks, months, even years getting the rich results repetition provides.

The great advantage to CustomLead's Pay-Per-Performance advertising method is that it revolves around email, by far the most popular feature of the Internet. While as few as 30% of the population surf web sites, almost everyone with a computer at home or work uses email. You reach prospects in a way people notice and respond to.

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.