Of course... repeat visitors are important. They are the ones who post links to your site and share it with their friends and partners in crime. That's always in the back of my mind. If I write great content, people will come. If I write A LOT of great content... people will continue to come back.
Incorrect, even the best content in the world needs marketing. For example, you have created the most useful tutorial in the history of the internet, to begin any sort of viral spread you'll need 1000+ targetted visitors, and if you're lucky 5 of those will link to you. How do you plan on getting the initial 1000 visitors without worrying about marketing? When I first started out with adsense my CTR was below 1%, after I got the hang of ad placement I get 8% CTR. So my CPM is more than 10 times what it used to be.
@Webwaster: I think its pretty unnatural to say that you don't focus on making money because of quality content. Why do you want to create quality content ? The ultimate result would be making money out of it directly or indirectly. There is nothing bad in it. I think when you see that you have earned x amount of money, it motivates you. live-cms_com: How did you improve your CTR. I have got a low CTR at this time and am working on improving it. Can you please guide me.
One ad unit, move it from outside of the content to inside the content. The content is where people look. Squarish ad units work well for me since they display 4 very relevant ads. A great placement would be between the first and second paragraph of an article.