Ad supported sites litter the web. Advertising is so much a part of the internet that people expect it anymore. Advertising can be added to any site, even if that site sells other things. Many major manufacturers consider that if you will not buy from them, at least they can get a few cents from a clickthrough generated from their site.

Ads can be sold in a variety of ways: By impression - that means how many times it is seen; By click-through, which means by how many people click the link; or by a set period of time, such as by the month or year. The less traffic your site gets, the less an ad spot will be worth.

The key to ad supported websites is traffic. You have to have 100 times the traffic, or even more, to generate a profit from an ad supported site that you would if you were selling a product. The reason is that when you sell a product, you make dollars. When you get a clickthrough from an ad on your site, you get pennies.

Your site is going to require a set of particular characteristics to generate a return. And you are going to have to be willing to be patient, or to spend something initially.

1. You need good content. Your content must be original, popular, and it must consist of more than just links or content feeds.

2. You will need to have regular updates if you want to get repeat traffic. Repeat traffic makes the best use of your advertising efforts, otherwise you are constantly trying to find new people to advertise to.

3. You need to put work or money behind the effort, because you need to get thousands of hits per month to generate any income at all.

4. You will need to work on your site for six months to one year before you will see the real potential. You can work hard to speed up the initial response, but sites tend to gain momentum over time, and nothing can replace time in being able to guage the real potential of a site.

5. If you pay for traffic, you will pay far more than you make initially. Your hits will cost you several times the amount you get for clickthroughs on your site, plus you may have to pay for every visitor you get, but not every visitor will click a link out of the site. Over time, your ranking with search engines can improve enough that you no longer need to pay as much to get the traffic, but this takes a lot of time.

When you build an ad supported site, there is an order to how you build it:

1. Choose your topic and figure out how you want to get content - either by writing it, searching for it, using content feeds, writing reviews, soliciting visitor opinions or comments (hard to get, since only a small percentage of users will do so), providing downloads, etc.

2. Decide how you will manage new content. If your site is going to draw enough traffic to get repeat visitors, you need to have regular new content. You don't just need to decide how often or what kind of new content to add, you also need to figure out how to manage it. Some methods are:

• Add a new page and a new link for each new sizable addition. You can do this for articles also, though over time if you have too much to add, linking in can get tedious. It is an option for starting out on a budget though.
• Add new comments, observations, reviews, or tips... small items of one or two paragraphs in length, to the top of the page so they are visible at first glance.
• Mark new items with a marker, like the word NEW in a bright color, or with a small image.
• Place all new content on a NEW page, such as a Today's News, This Month's Additions, New This Week page. You can do one page with new items for the entire site, and you can either put the content on the page, or link to the content. When you update, you move the content or the links to the page in the category that they belong in. You can also do a NEW page for each category if you have enough content to justify it.
• Erase or archive the old content and link it to an archive page, and put the fresh content on the origninal page.

You can choose a number of methods, but choose wisely, because the method you choose will determine not only how your site looks and feels to the user, but also how difficult it is for you to update it on schedule.

3. Get your webspace if you don't have it yet, and get your domain name. Serious money making sites need a domain name and paid webspace. Moving a large site later can be very difficult, so avoid it unless you simply cannot afford $10 a month. We recommend iPowerWeb for web hosting, we use them and they are just great - they frequently run promotions where you get the domain name free for a year with purchase of hosting also.

4. Build your site template. Get all the navigation links in place, then duplicate the pages and put in the individual page headers. Make sure your navigation will work with the way that you chose to update your site, so that it is fast to update, and efficient for the user. Upload the template and make sure everything shows up correctly in the browser online.

5. Write your initial content, put in your images, etc. Your content need not be finished, but you do need enough content on each page to justify the existence of the page. This is essential, because you cannot even place ad links until you have useful content on the pages. "Under Construction" notices are frowned upon, and even forbidden by some companies.

6. Upload the finished site.

7. Register it with the search engines. SelfPromotion.com is the best registration service, you don't pay for it unless you feel it is worth it (I do, I pay as much as I can), and he gives you step by step instructions on how to register with the sites that do not allow auto-submissions. It will take you 30-90 minutes to effectively register a site where it needs to be registered. Time well spent, because he helps you do it right so your submission does not just get tossed out. Do not pay for any auto-submission program, they don't work!

8. Take a vacation. You have earned it. A delay right now is not going to make a lot of difference.

9. Begin other marketing strategies. You will do this for as long as you own the site. Make business cards and hand them out to all and sundry. Search out sites to exchange links with. Join a Traffic Exchange program (Bravenet has one that is free). Search out a niche site that offers inexpensive advertising and pay for an ad that reaches your target market (sometimes as low as $30 a year, or $5 a month). The work you do here is going to make a difference.

10. Put a newsletter link on your site if you want to start one.

11. Sign up for Google AdSense. You need some traffic to do this, because if you do not get clickthroughs then they will discontinue your account. This is an ad program though that puts keyword targeted (content related) ads on your pages. An example is at the bottom of this page. Read their terms of use carefully, and follow the rules, because they will boot you out if you try to trick the system or if you don't comply with their standards.

12. Sign up for a few related affiliate programs, and put the links in your site. Don't litter the site with them, check out the tutorial on Affiliate Link sites and use the guidelines there to be successful.

13. Continue to work on adding content, and building traffic. Those will be ongoing tasks over the lifetime of the site.

Once you have the site operating you can modify it as needed, find new ways to generate income from it, Keep improving the content, and keep refreshing your marketing tactics.

Actual Stats:

Month 1 - Cross linked site (asked for links on perhaps 12 other sites), site was pulling 200 hits a month, after registration with search engines and nothing else several months earlier.

Month 2 - Put in ads, site was linked to one other site. Site pulled 389 hits that month, $1.11 from ads. One contract ($150), one order that was cancelled.

Month 3 - Added articles, no further marketing, though two or three people found the site and stated their intention to link to it. Site had 700 hits, $5.04 earnings from ads.

Month 4 - More improvement, no marketing, but received several emails from people stating intention to link to site. Site had 1598 hits, approx. $26 earnings from ads. Some other affiliate link earnings also, not completely tracked.

Month 5 - Kept improving the site, added some additional ad boxes, had 2100 hits, approx. $46 earnings from ads. Two good sized orders ($300 worth).

These are actual stats from an actual website. This shows how link placement on other sites, and placement of context ads can work together to produce increasing traffic and earnings. This will plateau off at some point, it has to, but at this time it is growing exponentially each month. $1.11 is hardly worth the effort. $46 though begins to show some potential. Consider if the trend continues. How long till it reaches $100 a month? How long until it reaches $300 a month? And that money will keep coming in as long as the site is there and nothing goes wrong with it. It took months of work with no return. But once it is started and gets going, it will gain momentum and will keep earning with very little being put back in. We have seen this pattern over and over.

How much better could it do if the site was linked to even more sites?

What will happen if I put up another site?

Ad earnings ARE slow to start, but they DO gain momentum.