Not really sure what you mean by freesite; a static small page or a bigger dynamic one with galleries and portal? I assume the last option.
First, your design is not that important to a certain degree, neither the amount of traffic isolated. Its more what your site do and offer.
I think its realistic to say you can make $10K/month with daily traffic of somewhere between 50-100K visitors, if you do this, :
Don't skim but use quality trades in same niche, spotlink 30-40 of your best converting sponsors and spend one hour analyzing them each week and more often later, stay updated with and link new paysites, handpick carefully your free content (not mass import) and let it stay more than few days so new visitors also get to see it (you can still use scripts for it).
First you need patience and time (some months or more) and focus on the traffic. Choose trades that match your size and when you grow then trade with bigger sites. When you reached a certain amount, you can focus more on your website.
If you feel its hard to grow more at a certain point, and you have the time, you can build another website or several websites. In other niches too maybe. This also spread the "risk"....
2 x 5K vs. 1 x 10K , its the same
