Many webmasters avoid these pay-for-inclusion engines for fear that they will waste money and not get any results. If you use these engines and directories correctly, you can be sure that you will profit from their use. It is highly recommended that you do list with pay-for-inclusion engines - it's one of best, most guaranteed way to get traffic fast and profit from it.

To start with, you need to collect and calculate following values for your web site:

1. Unique visitors per month. How many unique people visit your web site (not hits or page-views)? You need a log file analysis tool or similar tool to be able to get this figure. You can use Hitbox.com or WebTrendsLive.com free.

2. Total gross profit per month in US$. This is total sales of all your products in a month, minus what those products cost you. For example, if you sell tables for $100 a table, and table costs you $60 to make, and you sell 30 tables a month, figure you should enter here is (100 - 60) x 30= 1200. Have your monthly average total gross (not net) profit for your business for all products and services you sell.

3. Number of unit sales per month. How many items or services do you sell in a month? This is total number of items or services you sell in a month.

4. Average gross profit per unit, which is calculated as monthly gross profit divide by monthly unit sales.

5. Conversion ratio, calculated as monthly unit sales divided by monthly unique visitors. It is very important to have a high conversion ratio. The conversion ratio is a measure of how many of your unique visitors actually turn into buying visitors. You should try to increase your conversion ratio using various marketing techniques on your site and products. A higher conversion ratio will mean that you get a higher return on your advertising dollars. It also means you can spend more on advertising and advertise more times, resulting in a cycle of increasing profitability.

Now, let us use these values to get sure profits through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit/AskJeeves. You can use software such as PositionWeaver PRO (www.positionweaver.com) to manage all your calculations and keywords and all, or you can do it manually using a calculator and some way of keeping records. Remember, following calculations tell you when you will be making a gross (not net) profit on your using engines.

Google.com

Google.com is one of largest and most used engines today. They now offer their AdWords program at https://adwords.google.com/AdWords/Welcome.html. Your AdWords text ads appear on search result pages for keywords you buy, and can be targeted by language and country. Pricing for AdWords is based on position in which they're shown. Google positions your ad based on how many users click on it over time. Current rates are $15, $12 and $10 (per thousand ads shown) for positions 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and $8 per thousand for positions 4 through 8. Accounts are opened with a credit card and no minimum deposit is required.

The trick is to choose very targeted keywords that will trigger your ad. Which means that only very targeted buyers will ever see your ad and your conversion ration will be incredibly high. If your keywords are not well selected, you will end up having your ad showing often but with very few people clicking on it. And because Google charges you for ad displays and not click throughs, you will be loosing money. You can set how much you wish to spend. Google takes money out of your credit card after it reaches $50, by which time your ad will have been displayed roughly about 5,000 times! If your keywords are highly targeted, many of people who see your ad will instantly become buyers and you will actually get your money in before you even pay Google! Your listing shows up in about an hour of your creating it.

It is more effective to have about 20 or more keywords/phrases you are targeting, specific and related to your site, than it is to have just one, so come up with 20 or more very specific and targeted keywords/phrases if you really want to win this game hands down.

Google allows you to create campaigns. A campaign holds its own keywords and adverts. Each campaign has its own statistics that are reported to you. The best strategy to use is to create a separate campaign for each keyword and each advert, rather than put all your ads and keywords into one campaign. That way, you will easily be able to tell which keywords and ads are doing well and which ones are not so that you can eliminate those that are wasting your money.

You should also ensure that for each ad you create for a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword or phrase appears in both title and description on that ad. Click through rations can be significantly improved when you have keyword being searched for included in title and description of ad.

Once you start advertising on Google, Google will give you reports showing how your ads are doing. From reports, take average amount of money in dollars you are paying for every 1,000 impressions/displays of your advert (this is called CPM or cost per 1000), which varies depending on positions your ad gets, and refer to conversion ratio and gross unit profit figures you calculated earlier for your web site. Now, in that Google report, you will also be told what click throughs you are getting for your ads, in other words, what percentage of times your ad is show does someone click on it.

Yahoo! rankings depend very much on keywords in your title and description, and keywords in category name you are listed under. Select your category very wisely. The best way to find a category for you is to search on Yahoo! for your major competitors. See which category they are listed under and get listed there as well. That way you will be sure you are at a spot where your potential visitors are used to going to.

The title you get listed on Yahoo! with is usually your business name. Yahoo! Is quite strict on this, insisting on listing sites by their business name (company name) and not their site name. Remember, title is very influential when it comes to how high you will come up on Yahoo! Searches. Because traffic from Yahoo! is so heavy, we suggest that you get a DBA (doing business as) business name that has keywords in it. Example: if your primary keyword is 'wedding gowns' but your company is called Tippy Fashions, Inc., register a business name under your company name that has your keyword. If you specialize in a certain geographic region, include that as well. For example, if your business is in Miami, then register name Wedding Gowns of Miami. Then have your title tag on your web site read Wedding Gowns of Miami - and that's all, nothing more in title tag. Then, on your home page, place Wedding Gowns of Miami prominently at top of page, so that it looks as though this is what site is called. All your logos and graphics should be changed to reflect new name, Wedding Gowns of Miami - remember, this is only temporary for 7 days while Yahoo! reviews your site for inclusion. You may change everything back to normal once Yahoo! indexes you. In your About page or company info page, have Wedding Gowns of Miami as listed business name (you can add that Wedding Gowns of Miami is a Tippy Fashions, Inc., business). Yahoo! also looks at Whois database to see what company name is listed as owner of your domain. You should also edit that Whois info at NetworkSolutions.com to include your new DBA name. While we are on topic of domain names, it is a good idea to register a domain name that reflects new business name you have for Yahoo!, such as weddinggownsofmiami.com for our example here. When you submit your site to Yahoo!, in company field, place Wedding Gowns of Miami as business name. Once you are listed by Yahoo! in 7 days, you may change back your home and about pages to be how they were before. This may sound like a lot of hassle just for one listing, but it is very important to have your primary keyword in title that Yahoo! lists you under if you want to get massive traffic. And only way to do that is to have those keywords in your legal business name. Remember, have your title and new business name (DBA) start with your most important keyword - position matters very much when it comes to search rankings on Yahoo!