It should only take a couple of hours a week to keep a ring in good shape after you start it up, but problems arise that could take more time. One example is exchanging emails with a novice webmaster to help him put the code properly on his site.

There many good reasons why you should build a ring.

• Ringmasters have a great advantage over members on getting traffic from the ring. This is because the ring's homepage could be on your site. People exploring your ring would eventually wind up on your site. Also, you could have 2 places on your site for your ring: the ring's homepage and your general webring page where you keep other rings.
• You can promote your webring along side your site. Essentially, you'll have dual promotions going on, with traffic coming to the same site, just different pages.
• One of the primary reasons to build your own ring is to create a little community of sites of a topic that interests you. You'll be helping promote that topic as well as your own site.
• A well promoted ring will bring traffic to your member sites. This something to remember: you can help other webmasters get traffic through your efforts. It is extremely rewarding to see another site succeed and know that you helped in some little way.
• Running a webring is part of an overall effort to promote your site. Most people think of submitting to directories, joining banner exchanges and top site lists, and joining webrings. A well-rounded promotion will include it's own webring. As a matter of fact, PaxLamprey recommends that you build a ring for each site you run.
• You choose how challenging your ring is to run. You can use the ring host's hub page, and not bother with a home page on your site, and use the default code. Or you can go all the way, creating a customized code, with a full featured home page and graphics.