design vs profit

Hi,

I'm building a new site (white hat). I want to run this for a long time and I'm also after a very good design. I have reduced this to having 1 ad in my sidebar about 225x225 pixels.

So, all attention will be now focused on this 1 ad so I want to try and make the most money from it as possible.

I will be running adsense at the top of my blog as well as text affilate links throughout my site. But I was wondering the best way of using this one ad, affilate links? Or setup some kind of targeted ad that is based around categories of the page?

Most profitable sites are most profitable because of their content and design, not because they are overrun with ads. So if you ask me (and I am not an experienced internet marketer) a simple ad layout will get you further. Take a look at most profitable sites, they are all content based websites with excellent design.

the question is wrong. the design is part of the profit..

yeh. that's right..