I've known someone who did this, they created a website (niche industry, offering docs, and tools), took years for it to gain anything meaningful in terms of ad revenue then one day out of the blue Google just killed their ad account and kept the money still in it. All they got was a "You violated the terms of service" without specifying how, what part, or giving the opportunity to appeal it. It was a boring website, in a boring field, and nobody took an interest until the revenue was even a little high (I believe it was the low 1,000s when it was killed).
Luckily the revenue wasn't enough for them to quit their job and do it full time, but it was still a financial blow.
I guess my point is: Ad supported is a nice idea, but it makes you very vulnerable to the big ad network(s). Even if you do everything right, if some automated system decides you did something wrong, click, you're gone. I've read stories about competitors hiring click-bots to click on ads until you get banned, and while I don't think that is what happened in the above case, it is another thing to be paranoid about.
Same happened to me. I ran Adsense and one day received an email from Google saying I was permanently suspended.
I knew I’d done nothing wrong, but there was nothing I could do to prove it to Google. Nor did they provide any useful info on what I’d done wrong.
This was the first experience I had of the perils of Big Tech monopolies holding the keys to entire sectors. Once they shut you out it’s game over.
Since then I’ve not found another decent ad provider. There are loads of awful ones that hit your users with deceptive and obtrusive ads. I just want banner ads, like Adsense served.
This is the type of thing I was interested in learning about. So if I have 50,000 monthly visits with people using around 25 pages per visit, and I show 1 ad per page.. it would generate $945.00 per annum. Ouch!
Luckily the revenue wasn't enough for them to quit their job and do it full time, but it was still a financial blow.
I guess my point is: Ad supported is a nice idea, but it makes you very vulnerable to the big ad network(s). Even if you do everything right, if some automated system decides you did something wrong, click, you're gone. I've read stories about competitors hiring click-bots to click on ads until you get banned, and while I don't think that is what happened in the above case, it is another thing to be paranoid about.