Honestly, my ultimate goal is to get out of my mundane office job. I just started my website a little over a week ago and haven't made a dime so the goal is starting off slow. haha. I'm not going to give you the exact figures on how much I make at my day job, but lets just say if I can make $500 a week then I'd be a happy camper. I know that ain't that much, but that would be perfect for me. Anything bigger than that is just a plus. I've been reading alot of posts here and this is my first post so I'm happy I could contribute on my first one. Cheers!!
My long term goal with adsense would be to generate 500-1k income with it and learn how to promote my site to PR4-5.
in your funny pics site .. I have just clicked/viewd a few pics and see that you have omitted any SEO so far. tip if you give each pic a title, use that title also in meta-tag <title> and as page title for each new funny-pic vew page displayed then you may get totally differend adsense ads for EACH picture and hence more CTR by viewers as well as MORE organic TRAFFIC from all major SE since you will get more UNIQUE entries in SE. of course it may take some real additional work - and also you may really have permission to publish each and every of the pictures displayed or be the original photographer ELSE your entire site might get removed by your host quiet fast as soon as he would receive a single copyright infringement complaint from an original photo owner but I safely assume that you have received written permission to use / and paid for use for each of the pics in your funny pictures site.