How much traffic before advertising?
 

I have three blogs I have been working on. I am trying to get about 30-40 posts on each blog before I really try to trade links with anyone, or submit to blog directories.

These are 'How-to' and Technology blogs. Each blog has its own domain name and its own theme etc.

I was reading online that you should get a decent amount of traffic before you put any advertising on your blog yet none of these sites I have been looking at throw out a specific number. So I have a few questions for any of you bloggers out there.

What kind of traffic do you guys aim for before posting on those links, banners, or google ads?

Have you ever tried paying anyone at odesk or freelancer to write comments on your blogs or comment on other blogs to build up your back links?

Thanks in advance!

Put ads up from day one in my opinion, just don't be obnoxious about it.
You can submit to blog directories with 5 posts. Why wait for 30-40?

I think it is worth waiting to put up ads and banners before you know what your audience is. Maybe this is the main idea of SEs to wait before they send you traffic?

I think 2 or 3 months is sufficient, but when you talk about mainstream, I would say it takes around 200 SE hits a day to make it worth the buck.

What he said. Google isn't going to be fooled by a lack of ads early on.

Google frowns upon affiliate links. I did a test earlier this year with 2 similar domains and similar posts (but still unique). To one I added no ads, the other one had 4 or 5 banners. Guess what? The one with no ads got around 3 times more SE traffic within 4 months being online.