I am looking to build a website with content (technical articles,
tutorials, links to articles) that mostly software developers working
on Microsoft technologies would be interested in. 

What is the potential of such sites (http://www.developer.com/,
www.devx.com) as far as revenue generation based on advertising from
Google Ads etc. is concerned (assuming reasonable popularity)? Any
links to studies, white papers, peoples experiences etc. on revenue
generation potential for free technical content based sites would be
great.

As the creator of www.theofficeexperts.com and www.vbaexpress.com, I
can tell you that you will never "make money" off of such a site
unless and until it becomes extremely popular, which can take several
years. I have been closely involved with http://forums.techguy.org for
many years and can tell you that, even with over 100,000 members, it
is a losing prospect as a money maker. You must be extremely dedicated
to make it successful and to continue its success. I know many other
tech sites that lost their flavor after they become popular because
the *owner* no longer cares--it's become a moneypit.
www.experts-exchange.com is only now getting (as I understand it) out
of the whole and, as I understand it, they had big investors.

What you can do is use such a site as advertising for your OWN
consulting work. I currently spend about $200 per year to run
www.vbaexpress.com (hosting and the leasing of the forum software). We
also have a knowledgebase that was custom developed in PHP by a very
good friend of mine. It would have cost thousands.

Perhaps, if you're interested, you should pop over and just join us instead?

That's supposed to be funny. But maybe it's not all THAT funny. You
are certainly welcome to check out the site, and I'll answer any and
all questions I can about it. We don't advertise anything but
ourselves (members), which I'm hoping will:

a) bring members, which
b) bring jobs, which
c) bring donations

I hope this information is enlightening and doesn't get removed! :)

I apologize. I should have mentioned this in my previous post. Do you
know who owns www.developer.com?

Go here and enter the domain to find out:
http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index.jhtml

You'll be surprised who's behind these sites.
They OWN them, so they don't have to *pay* for advertising...

Thank you for your useful comments. I appreciate your taking time to
share your experiences.

I am still interested in getting the answers (even if it is generic or
not encouraging). A more general question perhaps is: What advertising
based technical sites on the internet are generating decent revenues
and how much?