PPC (Pay Per Click) or CPC (Cost Per Click): What It Is, What It Costs

Search keyword marketing is paid for on the basis of how many people click on your ad, so it's called cost per click, or CPC (also referred to as PPC, or pay per click).

There are other advertising methods as well: CPL (or cost per lead), where you pay for each "lead" or potential customer you get from the ad; and CPA (cost per action), with the action taken by the customer being defined variously as filling out a form or signing up for something. There is also revenue sharing, where the site carrying the ads gets a cut of any purchases made as a result of the ads.

An interesting variant on cost per click is cost per call, a service offered by Yahoo! and AOL that is particularly interesting for very local businesses. In this case, you list not your Web link, but your phone number, and Yahoo! and AOL track the calls you receive through that ad. Obviously, it's also handy for businesses that don't have a Web site at all. How cool is that?