Timing of implementing your monetization strategy into your website?

My small niche site was Hit hard by penguin update recently (1000 monthly unique ip to less than 100) and I am considering moving to another domain. But now I have the question of when to add affiliate links to my website. There are two ways.

1. Add content and do SEO first for several months, and add affiliate links after getting enough visitors. This may look good in Google's eyes but I will loose some $$$ in the start.

2. Adding content and affiliate links at the same time. I will loose no money, but this may seem bad in Google's eyes and have potential danger of lowering my ranking.

How do you guys think of this? Thanks.

I'm not an expert myself, but I believe it's safer to wait until your site gets a decent in SERPs and has some traffic going in before placing the affiliate links.