To advertise or not to advertise

I just signed up for the Google AdSense program with my Blogger account. I guess that kind of gives away which side of the fence I've fallen on. I haven't previously advertised on any websites I've made, for the following reasons.

• I want my motivation for the work I do to be the glory of God. Not the hope of revenue.
• Ads can be annoying to site visitors.
• I fear inappropriate ads may be displayed on my site.
• I don't want to encourage excessive consumerism, with is basically what drives the advertising industry.

So why advertise on the blog then?

• Well, if I can get money for doing what I'd do for free anyways, why not?
• I want to test out AdSense for any future projects, to figure out whether the program is smart enough to show appropriate ads that fit with my values.

 I've wrestled a bit more with the idea of putting advertisements on my newest project, Expositor's Bible. The mix of Bible and advertisements just seem inappropriate in some ways. However, making the site is requiring a lot of time. And if the site makes it big and draws a substantial amount of traffic, it will require much time and money to keep it going, monitoring it, developing new stuff, hosting it, perhaps licensing costs to use some Bible translations and resources and so on. And there's a limit to how much of these expenses both time-wise and money-wise I can cover myself. Not to mention, it would be absolutely awesome if I could do that for a full-time job, in stead of sneaking in a few hours here and there between all the other things that need to be done.

So how can I create the needed revenue from the site? There are a few options

• AsSense. Maybe, but does it work well with an AJAX-based web application? And will it show appropriate ads?
• My own advertising scheme. I could develop an advertising program myself from scratch. I have some ideas for how to make a sensible program for AJAX-based sites, that would display relevant results. But I don't want any of you nice folks to steal them, so I won't tell you exactly what they are. If I go with this option I could also allow other sites to join the advertising program, and it could be a whole business on its own. Do I really want to get into the advertising business though? We'll see...
• Membership fees. I could charge to join the site, or create one free and one paid version, where the paid version would include some non-free material like some Bible translations and resources. People generally don't like paying for content online though.
• Asking for donations. Could be annoying to users and subtract from the seriousness of the site. Thank you for ruining that, TV-preachers with Rolls-Royces and private jets...

Other good suggestions are also received with thanks. Does anyone have any strong opinions against advertising on a website?