endlessvoid94 just asked about which ad network he should choose. I'm cross-posting my e-mail here so others can hopefully make a good decision: I'm not really

endlessvoid94 just asked about which ad network he should choose. I'm cross-posting my e-mail here so others can hopefully make a good decision: I'm not really sure how to estimate how much you can make. I don't work on that side of the business (I build products like video players and ad units that help people monetize their content more effectively) but I can tell you that unless you break out of 'traditional' units (ala start serving skins, interstitialls, pre-roll, etc), you won't make a decent living until you reach 2 million+ pageviews. Even at that point, you'll be looking at around $2-3k monthly revenue for a normal site. I would suggest you start looking at the following providers: AdMeld - Will optimize your 'remnant' ads by signing you up for a FUCKTON of remnant providers (like Google, just different). This can lead to some short term revenue gain (your $20-30/day will probably be pushed to $40-50/day). Google Ad Exchange - I haven't signed up for this in forever but I think the easiest way is to sign up for Google Ad Manager. Premium advertisers use whats called a 'small order system' (Like AdWords if you've used it) to buy on your site. If a few advertisers like you, they'll continue to buy. There's a ton of logic that goes into optimizing your inventory (example: you can adjust the minimum 'bid' you will accept until it's very low like $0.10 and a bunch of people agree to buy your inventory then you can jack up your floor to $3.00 and see if anyone forgets to change their 'bids.') and I used to work with the guys who run Pubgears.com which is a great resource. One of the founders is also a huge marijuana fan so that might help you :) Federated Media / Brash / IGN / Crave Online / UGO / GorillaNation / Break - These guys are all our competitors. They hit 18-34 yr olds, just like your site, and focus on men. Talk to all of them. The one you choose should be based on your experience with the 'publisher support' (each company calls them something different) person you speak with. Generally it's hit or miss. Some of them are assholes, some of them are flighty. Get one that seems friendly and responds VERY quickly to e-mails. Some networks care about you and will talk to you on a daily/weekly basis to see what's going on with your site and if you have any cool promotions, events, etc coming up. Other networks will just ignore you once you sign up and that's the last thing you want to happen. Collective Media / Burst / I-could-name-a-thousand-more - These are 'Blind' networks. So-called because they usually avoid site-specific buys. Instead they focus on selling a 'vertical' or a 'channel' like "Guys" as opposed to individual sites.They don't require their ad tags to be the first on your site so you can just throw them into your remnant chain ahead of google. If they serve you a premium ad, you'll see $2-3. If not, they'll just default to google anyway. Also as an alternative... people were talking about selling stuff. Here's a company I'm working with for my side venture that might be cool: OpenSky - These guys hook up influential bloggers/sites with product manufacturers. For example lets say someone has a hemp necklace (apologies for the lame example) that they want to sell to people. Your site might be a good fit for that, so they'd introduce you and send you a free necklace. If you dig it, you make a couple posts about them and they give you some simple .js to place on your site which renders an e-commerce store selling the necklaces. You keep a split, the seller gets a split, and Opensky gets a split (known in advertising as a 'three way split).