7 Habits of Highly Profitable Pay-per-Click campaigns

1. They're in a hot industry, or one that is very amenable to very close targeting, with only a handful of web-savvy competitors; or selling products or services that people seem to be in a hurry to get at, or have time limits attached (medical needs, necessities for sudden trips abroad, etc.)
1a. In a competitive industry, they have built in some kind of differentiation that consumers can quickly come to terms with;
2. They sell high-markup products;
3. They employ advanced strategy & tactics for proper deployment of Adwords, Overture, etc.;
4. So very important: they track which buckets of keywords are performing best (ROI tracking back to source and within that source, ad groups or even keywords)
5. If direct online sales will be difficult, they create a clear path to an alternative action such as a printed catalog request, a phone number to call for info, or online application form.
6. They're using laser-targeted pay-per-click keyword advertising, and owe a lot of their success to Google Adwords, etc., for creating such a brilliant, efficient, flexible direct-marketing channel.
7. They neither under-spend nor overspend on their online promotions. With the help of (4), of course.