When is the right time to monetize your blog?

According to kidblogger Carlo you should start to monetize your blog from the start. There is no good reason to not to monetize it. What if there were traffic spikes? Yellowminded on the other hand stated that there is nothing wrong with monetizing your blog from the start but it affects your focus on building traffic and quality backlinks if you find yourself checking your earnings everyday.

Actually there are no right or wrong answers to the question. Basically you can choose from the two options; put ads until you get traffic and/or put ads as you go.

Monetize until you have traffic

Without traffic, you won't make anything so there is no need to monetize your blog. You may want to start building traffic first. Monetizing it early will affect your focus in building traffic.

Monetize your blog as you go

Having ads on your blog coming from Google Adsense, Adbrite, Bidvertiser, etc. does'nt require too much effort. You just put some codes and leave it as you go building traffic. So why not monetize it from the very start?

My personal preference

I suggest monetizing your blog as you go. That is what I do when I created this blog. Monetizing my blog using adsense from the start gives me  the control of the design of my blog. If I started to build traffic first then I would have to choose a non-adsense ready template and when the time comes that I would monetize my blog, I would have to switch another template and its painful. Second reason was, my readers will get use to the ads that was placed on my blog. Thus avoiding negative comments.