Yes - on my main site, I have paid $40 or therabouts, and made $500 or so so far. I am decently happy with that!
That's great. I've been doing this now for over 12 years and have no clue. It's strange, because so many ventures paid off, and yet......
Since none of what I do costs me except for my time.. then no I have not made one penny nor do I have a real job at the moment (wish I did)... Then again if I put a price on my time these past couple of years, if at this time it was not free, I would be in the hole about $100,000...
Well, you can try presell pages. Good money there. Also, I am assuming that the link in your sig is your main site - I would have chosen a less crowded niche. Either way, I'm sure you will find your place! One way to make money off of a site relatively easily is to sell links via a broker. For instance, if you click the 'Monetize your Site' link in my sig, it will take you to Text Link Ads, a link broker who will sell links for you, splitting the revenue 50%. On one of my sites, which has little to no traffic, but a decent PR, they generally sell 8-10 links every month, yielding $80-$120 in extra revenue. Full Disclosure: The link I recommended (Monetize Your Site) is an affiliate link. Nevertheless, they do a decent job of selling your links. I recommend them here, because I use them myself! Good luck!
Also, post your site in the Search Engines->Google->Adsense->Reviews and Placements forum, and get some feedback on the ad placement. I am not qualified myself to tell you much about how to improve it, but I do think it could use a touch more work...
Factchecker. I read the below quote, and assumed that he/she had a site, and was not having great results with it yet. So, I was making some suggestions to perhaps help a bit.
No, the site I have advertised is not my main site. That is just a frame of a click bank affiliate. That site is gross, but, it has earned me a lot of money this week because it is such a good product. I feel embarassed that you would think that was my design.
Yes, I did, I'm in net profit and this makes me happy though I've put lots of work there and I don't know if I could have done better spending my time in another activity but..who cares!
I'm up to 250$ CAN for hosting (2 years) + 5 domains over 1 year (so that'll be another 35$ next year). So far, I haven't made enough money out of adsense (well, it's been only a month since I've purchased the hosting + 4 domains, putted adsense on those websites about a week ago). I hope it pays of soon, so that way I'll be happy to have spent some of my money on such project.
Quite possibly although I covered some costs on a CC and that is still being paid back. I would have to grab my paper work and check If I havent then it's close.
When reading in this thread I started counting, and hmm . . . I can tell you that I have invested a lot more than I have made so far and I have been doing this for about 7 years. The past years I have been making more money then I spend, that was one of the first goals I set up, and have now reached.