‘Forget Adsense, Bloggers are better served creating custom partnerships or sponsorships with advertisers. In arrangements of this nature, a blog with niche-specific content, that is straddled with low traffic, has the opportunity to earn much more by converting less.’ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/07/11/should-bloggers-forget-adsense/
Personal preferance. I'd tend to agree that you could make more with links or something, but if you're lazy, or you have a high-paying keyword that your blog is about, or you have amazing placements that are unheard of... AdSense may just work for you.
I find that Adsense offers a decent revenue stream for bloggers, but niche marketing will always pay more. many bloggers do not have the time to seek out the niche advertisers, though.
I find directory pages get the click throughs. My blog page doesn't - even though it generates many times more ad impressions. Depends on whether people come looking for sites to visit or info to read. If I'm in reading mode I don't even notice ads. If I'm in search mode I do. I have adsense on my blog, but more from a 'keep google aware' point of view. I don't expect clicks (which is why I've downgraded my ads to tiny ones) Sarah
I tend to agree. You need a large mass to make any real money from AdSense. I'd definately go down the sponsorship path - but the only problem I see is the blurring between editorial/advertisement. Let's say you blog about a niche topic - say PDA's. And lets say you can get PalmOne as a sponsor. Will you ever blog the same way again? Pushing PalmOne will get you caught out ...