Start placing ads right away or wait?

[Burnzy]

Every time I built a new website I placed the ads right away, but all I earn in the first few months ain't buying me a dinner so now I think maybe I should just leave the ads for when the website really gets popular. If I do that only when the website is popular I'll probably lose some bucks, but I'll have gained more visitors quickly so I'm thinking of doing this from now on. What do you guys think?

[Andrew]

I agree it's a good idea not to have the ads in until you get a good amount of daily visitors, especially if it's a community website. Then again, if it's a community website you may want to stick to very little advertising anyway.

There's one problem through: when designing a website for profit, you have to think well about the placement of your ads. If you don't place your ads right away you might have to redesign the website later when you do place them. One other option would be to find something proper and informative to put in that place in the meanwhile, but that doesn't look like an ad.

[ameck]

Or find some way in between--
Show the ads you must show in the placeholders but don't show any popups, intellitxt, full page, etc. Introduce those gradually.

Another thing you you can do for the ads is to show ad council ads or inner page ads (advertise sections of your site), it will make it look better than having those smiley central ads.