depends on your business model. if you just want a passive go for adsense if you have a commercial site wher you actually sell aproduct then adsense will take away potential customers. a lot will depend on the traffic you receive too if you do not mind some traffic going away then go ahead with adsense
This has been an interesting thread and I appreciate all the response, I have learned a ton, keep the comments coming!
That's Bull. That's like saying only noobs who don't know anything about Internet Marketing would jump through the hoops for adsense, since it is the lowest paying program with the most rules that change all the time, and the most inconsistent payouts. Some people just don't like it. Every site is not a good fit for adsense, and you can certainly get paid better using other programs if you have targeted traffic. Not to mention..they look like crap on a nice looking site. I have some sites that have an adsense block on it while I'm getting around to complete development, but i would never use it on a site that I actually cared about, or one that I am actually trying to build a community or readership. I have even seen people put adsense on their company websites...that really looks stupid and desperate. Not professional at all. Adsense definitely makes your site an advertising billboard for other peoples businesses, and sends your traffic to someone else, making them look like the reliable, seasoned pro's and you the noob. Sad thing is, so many adsense publishers are sending traffic to people who are simply running an affiliate program and making 10x the money in the same niche....using your site and your hard work to optimize for a certain niche to send traffic to them to make the sale, instead of making the sale your self and making all the money. Adsense is the one program that I have the least amount of love and respect for. I don't care how advanced their algorithms get, Google will never be able to use math, to tell what sells best on my site. The best they can do is come close, and if they are wrong, they penalize the publisher ! It's like an abusive relationship that people keep jumping through hoops for.