I say that if you intend to put ads on the site at some point, that point should be when the site goes live.

If you don't already have an AdSense account that might not be possible, because you'd need to submit the site for approval, and you can't do that before the site is live.

But you can always put an "advertise here" place holder on the pages. A sort of "honesty in advertising".

The argument for waiting is that you might get some links from sites that object to ads.

Do you really need or want those links? I think not.

I'd rather have links from sites that don't object to my making a living.

One good thing to think about is the target of your website. It is nice to have some content that fits with the target so that you will get more targeted ads.

I first finish the site, put some content and then work on getting traffic via SEs and links. After a while (variable) when I have enough traffic in my opinion, then I add the Adsense code. I don't think a site with less than 30 good content pages could do anything good on anything.

I have nothing against Adsense, in fact is working fine with my sites, but honestly I don't work on a site with the only purpose of adding Adsense. I work on a site with a goal in mind, then I consider adding Adsense. Is actually a very good approach as you might see others being frustrated on how their sites "do not earn money", but is because they are only working for Adsense purposes (MFA 1.0 or 2.0).

Not that is bad you know, is just one must have a good purpose, only those projects tend to evolve.

Thank you all, my brand new website has just been approved for adsense, in fact approved way sooner than expected (took 1 day only)!, my site is not even ready for placing ads yet and i need at least another week to make some SEO and getting some traffic for this new domain ...
I hope it is okay to let my account stay in-active or un-used for a week or so, do you know if there is any problem for not using an adsense account for a certain period of time?

The way to generate money with Adsense is to have a long term view and strategy. If your site is very young with little content, what's the point of making 50 cents a day? Make your site known to the world and when the traffic is decent enough, put Adsense. In the meanwhile, there's something fishy with a 5 pages site with ads plastered all over and I certainly wouldn't link to it.

there's something fishy with a 5 pages site with ads plastered all over

Who said anything about plastering "ads all over" a new site?

A single 125x125 ad would clearly indicate the webmaster's intent to monetize the site at least partly via ads.

I wonder how many webmasters that wouldn't link to a new site with ads on it, have ads on their own site(s)? Oh, "that's different", I guess.

:)

I wonder how many webmasters that wouldn't link to a new site with ads on it, have ads on their own site(s)? Oh, "that's different", I guess.

In fact yes, is a total different universe.

I exchange links, but since Adsense I get absurd requests to exchange links to sites with little or no content at all. Those are MFA, In case this term is new for you it means Made For Adsense... I don't exchange links with sites that are pure ads with no content (or stolen content). Stealing is bad...

Many sites might have ads but that doesn't mean anything related to their strategies, "code of honor", original content or so.

I wonder how many webmasters that wouldn't link to a new site with ads on it

Because if someone is in such a hurry to put ads when the site is new and just have a few pages, then I can conclude the person is mostly trying to make money quickly, not build a site with great potential.

I don't know if you noticed but there's a big culture of get rich quick with certain publishers and they rarely do anything worthwhile in the long run. They sometimes also use black hat strategies that could hurt my site linking to it. They very often steal content.

If a site resemble anything of that sort, out of habit, I won't even start reading their content.

I'll go along with being skeptical about ANY site (old or new) that has pages that are overloaded with ads.

But the risk we run in a forum like this is lumping ALL new sites with ads in with ALL MFA sites.

That may not be fair to folks who have the best of intentions and come here to ask for advice from more experienced webmasters/publishers who use AdSense.