Is Advertising worthwhile for me?

[cpenner]

Hi.

I'm building an online application to interact with volunteers at events. This site will involve hundreds to thousands of people for each event creating an account, and visiting the site regularly. To keep the cost down for events, I'd like to subsidize things through advertising.

On the up side, I'll be able to very accurately profile each user. They will be geographically clustered, and have many similar interests.

On the down side, the site will be behind a login screen, and served almost entirely with dynamic content based on each user.

From what I've read, I like the concept of Adsense - but the technical limitations may be too much for it to overcome. I don't have the time to build a whole advertising subsystem to allow the events to solicit their own ads.

Any pointers?

[ShaneMcP]

I can tell you that the only way you are going to start to make money from advertising is starting. I would recommend just trying something (like Adsense). If it doesn't work then you can learn from it. The most important thing is to do something though! Hope that helps.

[cpenner]

I can tell you that the only way you are going to start to make money from advertising is starting. I would recommend just trying something (like Adsense). If it doesn't work then you can learn from it. The most important thing is to do something though! Hope that helps.

I guess what I'm trying to decide is whether or not to build the system for advertising or not. There are some significant changes in how the site would be developed to make ads work. Also, I don't know whether having a well defined population of people repeatedly visit a site is as desirable as having a diverse group of non-repeat visitors.

Are there good contextual advertisers that can operate in a dynamic site behind a login?