The only niche I know that pays lower than that is wrestling. I've never understood that, wrestling is a multi-million dollar industry.
It is because of the quality of the traffic you are sending, that probably doens´t purchase a lot of products. Make articles that incentive your reader to purchase something, the ads will be relates to the article. Another reason might be the CTR. 100K with only 1000 clicks?! Get a better CTR now!
it is smart price,it happened to me too(still - 5.000 clicks=117 Dollar) After 3 months later it is a little better now (each click about 4-5 cents) but still too less!!!
Try to use Google CPC or Adbrite (pay like 10 cents better then 1 cent) in the high CTR places and keep google banners (CPM banners) in the low ctr areas
If your account was smart priced take the google ads off for a few weeks and use adbrite for those two weeks. Then place the google code back up and see if for the first day you get a higher ppc. If you do then you know you were smart priced. It will probably happen again because of your content, traffic source or niche. Adbrite / Widget bucks and Kontera sound like good options for your site because of the high traffic you are getting.