Is this a worthwhile strategy?

Hello, im new here and I have a question... I am 17 and cannot yet legally make an income off my own business. I will turn 18 soon, but in the meanwhile I am producing a few sites.

Would the following be a good idea?

My strategy is to have my site online for about 4 months without ads and then when I legally can, i will place adsense and fastclick.

It is optomized, has a clean content structure, and over several tens of thousands pages.


Will this site be ranked highly in google and comparable search engines? I see sights without advertisements at the top of most lists.

Will this make it easier for my site to be placed in DMOZ and directories?

My general question is then, does anyone's adfree sites have higher pagerank and better search engine position?

I hope I have made some sense in my questions.

My advice is to move to a more liberal state/country.

Infact that law about not being able to operate a business under 18 is so unliberal that if I was in the same situation I would just brake it.

wont google cancel me or something... i dont want to risk that

I am unsure of the laws regarding people under 18 getting checks from ad networks. Regardless of that law, I think your idea does sound good. It is actually sort of exciting!

You get to spend 4 months developing your site to the best of your abilities. And then, after 4 months, you get to start generating profit.

Many sites that rank highest on search engines are educational sites that are non-profit. These kind of sites often generate more backlinks. Furthermore, these kind of sites have often been online the longest, so they should have more backlinks. But search engines do not analyze site and say to themselves, "Hey, this site is non-profit! Lets rank it higher!"

As far as DMOZ, non-commercial sites "can" get a faster approval than commercial. The obvious intentions of a site can influence editors.

An example: Obvious sites that are developed as "information rich" which profit off of advertising. Lately there has been a craze to develop quick informative sites, setup google adsense, then submit to DMOZ. Many of these are of low quality due to the creators desire for quick profit. Many of these sites aren't updated with new content ever.

DMOZ wants unique, and quality content. Just keep that in mind and u shoudl be fine.

Dude, sign up with the ad network under a parent's name (providing they approve, natch) and when you turn 18, switch the first name over. Ginchy!

No matter what i'd always advise holding advertising off until you get a steady flow of visitors, or at least some from your target market! This gives you a couple of advantages, sometimes people can be picky when linking to sites with heavy advertising or advertising that they dont aprove with, and it also gives you time to increase content - to actually make sure your site is worth people linking too and worth people visiting! Plus if you aim to update it over the first month or so then it can encourage people to return.

All in all, if you can setup a good site (or a few smaller good sites), before advertising goes on, when you do put the ad's on I think you'll be better prepared for it. Basically - GO FOR IT, there's not much to loose! :D

thanks everyone, I will be following the strategy of advertising in March after my sites have gained traffic. By then I will have several.

Sounds great thepoorman, feel free to keep in touch.

google never actually asks for your age....

i know, but then you go and read their terms of service...