New site: promote or get adverts first?

[cameron]

I am a newbie to the business and I have just created a new content site. My question is about the chicken and egg: do I promote it as much as I can and try to get a fair amount or traffic first? or do I go and try to get Adsense, banner adverts and links first, then try to build up traffic to increase the pay per click etc?

Thanks

[Clinton]

cameron, in the early days you are unlikely to earn much money and having too many ads (or any ads!) may put some people off from linking to you. DMOZ editors are particularly partial to sites that don't have ads on them. As are about.com editors and others. I'd start with no ads or very few ads in fairly inconspicuous places. At least till the links build up.

Before promotion and monetising comes the creation of content. Have solid content on there and then promote it to build up traffic. Many advertisers will want to see a fair amount of traffic before they advertise with you so till that happens affiliate programs and Adsense may be a better bet.

[benitez17]

I am a newbie to the business and I have just created a new content site. My question is about the chicken and egg: do I promote it as much as I can and try to get a fair amount or traffic first? or do I go and try to get Adsense, banner adverts and links first, then try to build up traffic to increase the pay per click etc?

Thanks

You can get Adsense, cheap text links, and low end banner network ads immediately, but as Clinton said, they aren't going to make any money without traffic, so it's kind of pointless to place ads on a site with no traffic. I would hold off on the ads until it gets a nice following.

[hooperman]

I always assume, rightly or wrongly, that other webmasters are less likely to link to your site if it's got adverts on it. While traffic levels are so low, it doesn't matter that you don't display any adverts either. I'd do this:

Have solid content on there and then promote it to build up traffic.

and then think about adverts.

[cameron]

Thank you, very useful answers. Is there a threshold/criterion, from the visitors statistics, as to when it is worth approaching the adviertisers such as the number of unique visitors per week/month?

[tke71709]

That all really depends on the niche of the site.

If you're running a play games online site then you'd, most likely, need a large number of visitors to attrack advertisers then a site dedicated to people who own porsches in New York City.