Gotta love the Strongbad...
Personally Limey, I think that yes, you would need to sell things in order to make a decent income off of a webpage. Getting traffic cost money (advertising), and you arent going to get many advertisers on your site (and those rarely pay that much) until you have enough traffic. Remember, those people advertising on your site are doing so because they think that enough visitors to your site will click on the ad and buy something from them.