There are three main sources for ads: sell advertising, affiliate programs or "pay-per-click".

Commission Junction (affiliate), google ads/Kontera Adwords (pay-per-click) are the most common.

Affiliate programs are commission based and paid when someone buys as long as they were directed by the affiliate site.

About a month ago I set up a deal with AutoWeek which displays on the portal and legacy content.

Overall, I have some of all three setup.

Success is based on volume of traffic. Volume of traffic is based on content.

Within the past 24 hours, 4x4wire has cracked the 100,000 barrier. As such, 4x4wire ranks in the top 100,000 websites world-wide against all topics.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/4x4wire.com

4x4wire has content and volume.