Most of the sites on the Internet exist primarily to share knowledge. Others exist to provide an income for the authors. Still, others exist simply because they can exist. In todays world, where blogs are created not by the minute but by the second, it’s hard to come up with a topic that a blog, or a site, should focus upon. Even harder is the task of making a plan as to whether the site in question will make money, or if it will simply provide content free of charge and with no advertisements whatsoever. Here I’m going to talk about making a simple, but important, plan of whether or not you should have any advertisements on your site.

If you have a site and have been thinking of whether you can, and whether you should, make money off it, you have to ask yourself the following questions first;

• Is the content that you’re going to be writing, in demand?
• Who is the target market for that content?
• Does the target market have access to the same information [as your site] elsewhere?
• If the target market has an alternate access to the same information, are those alternate resources charging for their content, or are they providing it for free?

In asking these questions, one has to know that advertisements of any kind are almost like paying for content. You see an ad, and thus spend a second or two looking at it, thus giving something to the site in return. This mentality has not yet reached a high level, but very soon some people may start associating every ad with a subscription site. In contrast, a site with no advertisements is providing something that resembles a premium service; no ads of any kind, and quality content.

You should find out your own target market and then decide if they’re willing to pay, either through money or through their time, to support your site. If you have a personal blog and expect people to pay money to read your posts, you should either be a known-writer, or should have needed content that people associate with your name and thus are willing to pay for it. If you have a corporate website with ads, then the image and brand of your site name goes down, as people assume that your company or service is not doing good and depending on advertisements to support its finances. An only exception would be a service where the main [or the only revenue] comes from advertisements, such as the areas at About.com .

Another thing you have to keep in mind is the quality of loyalty of your users. If you get a lot of random users, you have to build a loyal following to your site. Having your site bombarded with ads, or even having ads on your site that might distract your readers from your content, may scare away a few users who would have otherwise, when there would have been no ads, stayed longer. Thus, you have to make sure you limit the number of ads on your site, even if some people seem to be enjoying them. Users might not visit a site again if they feel annoyed by ads, but someone who likes a site may not mind having a few ads around and will actually visit the ads to see how they’re related to your site.

In the end, always start with something that gives everything to the reader. Slowly, and later on, ask the user for something in return and test their response to see if they’re willing to spend time, or money, for your content.