I have never had any luck with CJ am I using the right ads and placing them in the right place? www.dragonstardesign.com www.dragonstardesign.net
I looked at your 2 sites in your links. The second link (the forum) only has the 1 ad that I saw for an advertising company. That ad did not seem to match the target audience for that forum. The first link had a yahoo banner and some adsense (all I saw). Banners of any kind are not the best at converting. Text links do better. Also, the yahoo tool bar banner (although not incompatable with your site) did not seem like the best fit for your audience. As far as adsense, you cannot completely control the content. However, some placement works better than others. Look at the Google heat map. This is were google says their ads work the best.
I suggest that you review a product without sounding like you're selling it. Place your affiliate link when you mention the product or service. Optimize the post and wait for the traffic. Banner ads may not be effective to some.
No matter where you will put your banner - better to place some text link in sidebar, and you will get 70% more customers ! Try it Peoples don't like splashing advertising .. They want to see some sentence with good info, not picture with naked woman !
Speak for yourself..! Joking apart, I agree totally. I don't think I have ever clicked on a banner-type ad, especially not of naked women (well... not that I recall) and though I am reasonably web-savvy it's a fact that the general click-through rate for banner ads is pretty poor. Web users like to click on hyperlinks, i.e. text, end of story!