Ads on your website, can you make money?

[brisck1]

Hi everyone,
Im having a bit of a dilemma at the moment and was wondering if anyone with any experience in this kind of thing could help me out?

I have been preparing a website for a while now which has the potential to create aot of traffic and continue to grow well into the future.

The problem is that I want to keep the site and content/services I'll be providing free in every way, however i wont be able to do this off my own back as I wont have the finances to fund the service provider, bandwidth etc when it starts to expand and gain popularity.

So I have looked into putting some simple ads onto my site using applications such as Google Adsense.

So my big question is: Do website ads really generate cash and would it generate enough to keep my site going if I have enough traffic?

It would be great to hear from people with experience with this type of thing.

Im not overly keen on ads as I know they can be annoying sometimes but I plan on integrating them on a non-intrusive way (no popups!). What do you think?

Right now I know the site has some huge potential but I also need to feed myself and put a roof over my head :P

[vinnydarat]

I personally never use adsense so i can't comment on them, but selling prime advertising space can be very profitable if you have a high profile, high traffic site. I am working on a site at the moment that has real-estate agents bidding against each other for exclusive advertising space.

Also, if you get creative, it can still keep the feel and culture of your site without looking like you are desperate....lol

anyway, just my 2cents worth

[brisck1]

thank for the reply Vinny, may I ask how you get your advertising? and how you managed to get estate agents bidding for you like that?

[vinnydarat]

Sure, it is a site for our suburb and i figured one day that i would recieve at least one flyer in our letter box from each of the different real-estate every day. So i got together a good proposal and some projections and approached one of the smaller ones and told them that one of the bigger companies were looking at advertising, but i wanted to give the same opportunity to each of them. I then did the same to the others....next thing you know, there was a bidding war.

Property is rather lucrative in our suburb, so it was easy.

Once the site is finished, i will post it here for you to look at.

[brisck1]

sure, thanks alot :)