So you have the website and the traffic. Now what? Place ads on it to make some extra cash! Not so fast cowboy*, we have a few things to consider first.

Before you even start thinking of place advertisements on your website, you have to know an answer to this question : What do you want your visitors to do?

a. Buy your premium subscriptions or register on your website.
b. Increase awareness about your products and services.
c. Purchase something from you online.
d. Purchase something via your affiliate link.
e. View content or use services on your ad-supported site.

After you have an answer to this question, it’s time to decide about your advertisements.

Now, if you want to sell something on your website or increase awareness about your products and services, then remember : Absolutely no ads. Period.

Reason?

1. You want them to buy from you / know more about your products and services and by advertising someone else you will be diverting their attention from your message.

2. If, by any chance, you ever happen to place contextual ads like Google AdSense on your site then that would be shooting yourself in your foot. Why? The very same competitors that you are trying to outsell will be advertising on your site.

Just to be a bit more clear, I am talking about third party advertisements here not your own advertisements promoting your stuff.

The second case is if you want them to purchase something via your affiliate link. In this case, it will depends on how you are promoting the product / service.

Are you recommending the product on your pages or selling it via a sales pitch (no, not those banners but proper recommendations)? If this is the situation, you should be trying to sell your partner’s products the same way as you were selling your own products. After all, the dynamics of selling are same.

The only difference here is that people will have to go to your partner’s site to make the purchase and your partner will be the one processing the order and providing the product / service while handing you out your cut.

However, when you are promoting the affiliate product / service from a resource site where you even have their competitors listed or via a banner on your site, then there is no harm in placing third party ads and making some extra cash.

Another situation is if you want your visitors to buy your premium subscriptions or register on your website, then you should annoy them with ads. Yes annoy them! Take a look at this site to see what I mean.

By doing this you are offering them an incentive to take action to register on your site or pay for your content and in turn making some moolah by showing them the ads.

If you were selling premium content then I’d recommend that you show ads for your content only or non-related ads. You don’t want to be really promoting your competitors.

And finally, if you are providing ad-supported content or services on your site the there is no second thought about it that you must show as many ads to your users as you can while not annoying them. If you ads are annoying then they may not visit you again and hence declining your long-term ad revenue.

What kind of ads and ad placement is annoying, it will depend on your audience. For a teen audience, pop-up ads and big-flashing banners may be acceptable but the same may be absolutely irritating for more mature audience.

That business adage — know your target audience — is all but more important when you are deciding to place advertisements on your website.

Armed with the knowledge from this article, now you can make a decision if placing third party ads on your website is an option for you and, if yes, then how many ads you should be placing your site.

* If you are a girl reading this article, replace it with cowgirl.