Many people add advertisements to their blogs and try to monetize the site as soon as it is up. The time when there are practically no visitors and hence no money to be made. The temptation is obvious. We don’t want to leave money on the table.

When we should start adding ads is one of the most asked questions online today. Everyone wants to know the perfect time to take this step. We want to leave ads out of the blog because we know it may turn off certain visitors but we know that eventually, it is something that has to be done.

Most of us read income reports from other bloggers and then quickly sign up for adsense. We spend hours tweaking and making sure it look perfect on our blog and then we proceed to make $0.02 in the next 30 days.

An Experiment to Illustrate

Last month, I added an adsense unit on two of my newest site. The result, a combined total of $1.69 in earnings. The rest, $177.70 to be exact, came from another 2 sites. At the current pace, I can afford 100 months of adsense-free advertisements on the two new blogs if I’m willing to forgo one month of earnings on two higher traffic sites.

So in my particular case (one that is typical for all new sites), leaving ads off the new sites was an easy choice.

Patience will be Rewarded

There is really no rush to put advertising on a blog. During the first few months of your blog’s life, the focus should be about driving traffic because money will not come unless there is decent traffic and a developed brand.

Notice on BusyBlogging Dot Com that there are no ads yet. This is not because I cannot find advertisers but because I intentionally wanted it to be clear of ads for the first few months to attract as many visitors as possible.

I know that once I start to develop a following by writing good blog content, advertisers will come knocking on my door asking to put ads on my site. Waiting for this to happen will make the decision to put ads onto the blog much more natural, instead of forcing it on the blog just because I cannot wait.

Putting ads on prematurely doesn’t make you money, so hold off and build your blog first.

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