What about this method?

Seems a good idea if you have a super targeted niche.

that's a good idea, but can you still make profits to survive, and maintain it?

Your method of selling advertising on your site is one of the tried and true revenue generating strategies that still works for "high traffic" websites.

Therefore you would need to first build up a significant amount of traffic in order to show the potential advertisers that your site is attracting x amount of "targeted" visitors to see or click on their ad for their product or service.

In order to keep the site esthetically pleasing and interesting so that the visitors keep coming back, or invite new visitors to come, you will need to insert a good balance of extremely valuable content and make it interactive such as a blog that is able to spark debates amongst your visitors, and or have it function similar to a facebook fan page where there is allot of interaction and a reason for people to come back to your site.

If you can grow it without your site looking like a billboard and too many instances of adsense running, while you are happy with the income that it generates for you, then you may be on to something.

Arnold Stolting.

Content driven sites need to have blockbuster content to be a success. This can be hard if you:

A) Aren't passionate about the topic at hand.

B) Not good at keeping people reading your content and leaving the carrot dangling in front of them till they get to the end. Basically being good at writing and knowing what to write and when.

If you have those two in check, you'll be good to go.

Giving good content should always be your number one goal. Whether your offer is compelling enough for someone to opt-in or buy is yet to be determined. You need to test the market by driving targeted traffic to your offer.

Dave

tested proven method but always need to fine tune to increase your traffic and conversion rate. your niche area is very important as well. u might wanna see what are your compeitiors doing too. good luck!

cheers

It's been a while since I've been here. I used to come daily, many times a day at that. And now I remember why.

Everyone here has givin TREMENDOUS knowledge, and I thank you very much for it.

I was basically thinking about taking an ebook (for example), and instead of "selling it" using all the techniques anyone on the web has seen a zillion times, I would give it away for free. Putting it up on a site that would look sharp (with flipping pages or something similar). Therefore the readers are happy and traffic would be large (potentially), hence the sales of advertising, etc...

There would have to be a balance of course. You wouldn't want ads everywhere and it looking bad.

I obviously see a few flaws with this. Nothing that couldn't be worked out though. I just like the idea of my "customers" receiving dynamite information, knowledge, etc... from me without paying or going through all your normal sales funnel, email blasts, and the like (depending on what you're giving them of course, there are places where this marketing is the best choice).

A win-win so to speak.

Now I'm thinking of still doing this, but making it more community based where people can spark debate, discussion, etc... Just as a warrior mentioned above (thank you!) This way they keep coming back, and are telling their friends, family, co-workers, etc...

Thank you to all the warriors here and everywhere who contribute their knowledge like this. I now remember what this place is all about, and I love it. Should have never left.

Richard