1. Do you offer a structure and layout to enable the upload and display of adverts?

2. Does your site reach a key target audience that will get your advertisers to spend money?

3. Do you have enough visitors to justify charging for advertising?

4. Can you offer sufficient tracking so advertisers can monitor results

If the structure of your website does not allow ad formats, then you should adapt your main design and take a look at how adverts can work around your current layout. What you must do here is place ads around areas of specific interest and ideally within text content. It is common knowledge within the web advertising industry that specific text content lures people to read information and advertising is best used within good readable material.

One thing to avoid is the use of too much flashy advertising in the left and right side sections of the pages. The best pulling ads seems to be simple formats that blend in well with text and your own colour scheme, so test ads on a regular basis until you are happy with the results.

If you have a site that reaches a good potential audience for advertisers, then you should be able to charge something for advertising space. Of course, a lot depends on whether you offer valuable options and big enough selling points, but the main attraction for advertisers is the fact that you can capture the right audience for them.

Is it true that the more visitors you get to your site, the more money you can make? Not exactly. A lot of advertisers will spend good money for reaching a higher quality of customer - in todays market, more is not necessarily best. It is true that more online sites can offer great click throughs and decent enquiry rates, but the quality of the potential customer to the advertiser is the key to long-term success. Of course, to provide quality you need to be able to prove it is there for the advertiser.

To prove the quality of response, you must be able to send the advertiser detailed reports on their web activity. Any website can provide a click through, but it is the name and address sales lead that impresses the most. If you can set up an enquiry form link from each advert, you can then capture full contact details for the advertiser - what's more, it's instant and no other advertising media does this better than the internet. If you set up an enquiry generating system on top of your normal view and click stats, then you will be offering something of real value to advertisers.

The main point to remember is that you want to stand out from the crowd, in terms of your offerings, customer service and communication. If you can build trust and credibility, you are half way there. If you have long-term happy customers, then you'll have a business model that will keep generating revenue time and time again.