incrediBILL - 5:49 am on Jul 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

bragging loudly to the stranger seated beside him that he was making ten thousand dollars per month from AdSense

Back in the day, and possibly still the case, that's peanuts. If you have a killer concept that can bring tons of traffic, like PlentyOfFish, you can make millions.

The issue has always been search engine ranking/placement and not AdSense itself IMO, and I was able to prove that over and over with a few sites, but nothing that ever scored like PlentyOfFish.

Then I got sick and all bets were off while I've been festering for the last few years but I'm better now and planning my next step.

What was really sick was when I couldn't really manage the situation I had a site with millions of visitors a month drop to 1/3 of that traffic which is thanks to my niche being in Google's crosshairs but caca occurs.

My point?

SAVE YOUR MONEY WHEN YOU MAKE IT!

I know people that are house poor, car poor, etc. because they buy like idiots on the way up, don't pay off their bills, and never see the possibility of being back to ground zero. I paid off all the debts, bought cars with cash, reduced the mortgage to half the local rents and banked as much as possible including SEP IRAs.

When AdSense pays, you keep as much as possible and siphon it off for a rainy day.

When AdSense sucks, you buy a beer and smile :)

Good luck OP and perhaps one day Webmaster Welfare will shine on you again.