When is the right time to put ads up on your site?

I came across this question the other day on another forum. It was interesting to me because I noticed there were two distinct replies that kept surfacing:

1. Place ads on your site right away. If not, you are wasting opportunities to earn money.

2. Wait until you get 500-1000 visitors a day, then start to run some ads.

I had always been of the mindset that you should wait until your new site gets an established flow of visitors before running any ads that might potentially have your new members clicking off your site. But I started to think about it some more, and realized the answer is not that simple. A second variable needs to get added to the decision process. What type of site do you have?

My initial thoughts are if you run a new forum, where you are trying to get folks to sign up and participate, well then you don't want them leaving your site so soon through an ad. Hold off on the ads until you get some adequate traffic and activity.

However if you run an informational site (content only), with no stickiness or social aspects, then you may not care if your visitor leaves once they see an interesting ad. Your site could have answered their query/question with one page, and they are now ready to jump somewhere else. Why not make a little money off their departure? A site like this could probably benefit from ads being run from the start.

This of course opens up another question, why would anyone want to design a site that did not encourage visitors to stick around? Well it is not that we don't want folks to stick around, but it could just be that our site is really good at answering their main question/query. For instance if someone is looking for a recipe, and I have a recipe website, they may find what they are looking for and move on. They may bookmark me and come back the next time they want a recipe, but for this visit, they got what they wanted and they are leaving. Running ads from the start with a site like this might not hurt my traffic growth, since I'll get the bookmarks from folks who thought I was a useful reference they'll use again.

Other factors to consider is your ad placement, and of course the number of ads. I always recommend starting small. Don't open the doors to your forum and then pour on the ads. One or two wisely placed ads per page is usually all that is necessary. If the ads are placed well, they'll perform well and not be overly distracting. High performance will lead to higher payouts, which will lead to more money in your pocket.

Good luck!