I own a forum which is relatively new, about 4 months old and traffic has increased each month. I've been offering free advertising to companies involved in the niche my site caters too and I have 6 companies advertising for free (which is what I want for the time being). I've been approved by Google to run Adsense on my site and have one small Adsense banner running. Though I would like to begin running maybe two more banners from Adsense along with the other banners I have from the companies who are already advertising. So my question is this: Do I run Google Adsense at the same time I'm offering banner space for companies in the same niche? Or should I just run Google Adsense and not run the other banners? BTW: I offer free advertising as an incentive to increase traffic and to build awareness with others in the community. I will eventually begin to charge for advertising on my site once traffic has increased to a point where I find its justifiable. Am I better off running only Google Adsense Banners or charging advertising rates to display banners.
Why not? There's nothing wrong with running those ads together. It will boil down to how tastefully they are displayed on your site. Also, keep in mind that your other ads shouldn't mimic AdSense ads. In other words, if you run your own banner ads, it would be advisable to run AdSense as text ads only and vice versa. If they are both text ads only, then changing the text color / font-family would be advisable as well. What types of rates are we talking about? You can place only so many banner ads before your forum will start looking weird. Are you planning to have your own PPC / PPA program? If not, I can't see how you can make enough from displaying your own banner ads.