SilverSpirit - 3:54 am on Apr 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

Ever since I started displaying AdSense on my sites 7 years ago, I have always been looking for additional ways to monetize them, and potential revenue replacement methods in case AdSense fails.

With the exception of one encyclopedia-style site, all my sites are so-called 'micro-sites'. Some of them enjoy good traffic - up to 2000 uniques per day. However that is not quite enough to make any kind of income with PPM; and I have not found any serious PPC networks outside of Google.

That leaves me with one solution: affiliate networks. I registered with a dozen of the best affiliate networks. They offer quality ads, and even sometimes add some content enhancing my sites. So, I have placed travel-related affiliate links and banners on my travel sites, car-related affiliate links and banners on my car sites, etc.

However, that does not seem to generate any income. At this stage, after a 2-month experiment, I have served 3 million impressions, 1,200 clicktrus... and no commission whatsoever!

Maybe the commission-based scheme requires more patience than PPC? Maybe I should wait longer? Or have I waited long enough, and is it time to dump all affiliate / commission links and banners, and accept that Google AdSense is the only ad network out there... no matter how precarious that is!

Opinions?