First of all if your only getting 5 or 10 cents per click, your in the wrong niche pick something else. Mortgage seems to always have a pretty descent click rate, nothing under .50/click. Placement is key. If you place your ads right above your opening paragraph your gonna get WAY more clicks than you did before. This is what I do, and I have been doing it for years now and google has never said a word to me because its not against their TOS. Place your title, adsense then body just like this. (Title)Want a new car or truck? Look below for some hot info and great deals. Place one or 2 blocks of adsense here the large rectangle of 336X280 is your best bet. MAKE SURE YOU BLEND IT IN WITH YOUR BACKGROUND. If your background is black so should your ads. Make the whole ad black except for your title, web address and wording. This will make it look more like a site index or part of your website. If your ad blends in and it is the first thing that people see when they go to your site your gonna get clicks. If you are in a high paying niche, BANK! I make about 2k a month from adsense. You can use Search Engine Optimization, social bookmarking, or even posting to forums such as this and classified sites! Its actually pretty easy. Here is an example of what I am talking about. P.S. I am not doing this for promotion, I am only doing this for an example of what I am talking about.
Great.. now we'll have 1-million more new webmasters shitting-out krap-worthless MFA websites for Mortgages (or Metho, or whatever).. I suggest you stick with whatever keywords/niche you know.. Create a quality website, do all the other right things and traffic and Adsense earnings will follow..