That is actually how I felt when faced with yet another grueling late night session of manual ppc keyword research. People thought I had a new baby in the house when they took a look at my red eyes with bags underneath. My days became endless cycles of search, test, tweak, repeat as necessary. I will be the first to admit that trial and error is a good way to go when you have deep pockets and a secretary or intern to do all the ppc keyword research. But for the other 99% of the population, it is not a realistic option. It is akin to shooting in the dark and praying that you hit something, anything.

My days would consist of searching keywords & keyword combinations, testing them, tweaking them, re-testing, re-tweaking, re-testing and then back to searching again. It seriously felt like I was a scientist in a lab, mixing chemicals while trying to find the vaccine to save the world from a major disease. Trial and error is okay when you have unlimited time and money, but for the rest of us, it is simply not practical. Worse than that, it is like shooting in the dark and hoping when the lights went on that you had actually hit within 30 feet of your target.

Now I am considered somewhat old fashioned, as I shun the use of software tools if I feel I can do it better myself. One area where I prefer no to use software tools is when I am researching new niches. I have found that you do not get the full picture of what people are looking for when using software tools.

However, when it comes to PPC keyword research, I feel differently. In this area I strongly recommend you take advantage of PPC keyword research software to help you find the winning keywords.

There are 3 main reasons why this is one area where it pays to use a good software tool.

1. With PPC research tools you are able to spy on competitors secret winning keywords and their most successful ads, so you will know whether the keywords you are using are the ones that make money even before you begin your campaign.

2. PPC research tools enable you to see your competitors ad text strategies, what products they're promoting in combination with the landing pages and keywords that are making them a profit.

3. PPC research tools save you time and money by knowing right away if it's worth your time and money to promote a particular affiliate product using PPC.

It is as simple as this: The primary goal in PPC advertising is to attain a high clickthrough rate. The way to do that is to have the winning keywords and winning keyword combinations. With PPC research tools tools you are handed the winning keywords and winning keyword combinations on a silver platter.

I could do the same job myself, but it would take me double the time and more than double the money to get results remotely close to what I would get using a good PPC research tool.

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