soccer niche is one of the popular niche that able to process a good CTR. I doubt the low click rate is due to the ads size and placement. Try to play around with your ads size and placement, if possible, try use big size ads By the way, you cant expect much on the CPC because soccer niche generally provide low CPC ads
You need not quit Google and still can try new things. Affiliate programs / Commission junction may be one of them. Find some advertisers in your niche area and try promote their products on which commission is good.
These type of site are hard to get clicks as people want the football news and then are off your site within 30 seconds. I had a football site with 40,000 uniques per day (UK main traffic) and the money was very poor from it and i had a 300x250 right in the content etc, tried alot of different ways. If your looking to make money from adsense go after the big payers like gambling, credit cards etc harder to get it but worth the time once your in.
What is the bounce rate of your site? It explains a lot of things. If your visitors does not stay for a few seconds then its very hard to increase your earnings. Site usability and user engagement needs to be increased. When a user stays on the site for some time only then he is more likely to click on ads
I have question for my website. Some changes i have did on my website. Before some changes I got good result from my website. But now on my website traffic fall down and also adsense. How i get the good traffic and increase the Adsense revenue. My website is astrochap.com
+1 I work with the football niche myself, the money doesn't come from display advertising. Drop me a PM with your url if you want, I'll take a look at your setup & see if I can offer any recommendations.
Target your visitors to US, UK, and Canada. You can earn more with 1000 visitors from those countries