Forum Moderators: skibum
My application was rejected by several of the popular PPC programs (CJ, Tribal Fusion come to mind) who have "no guestbook/chatroom/forum" policies. They do mean what they say.
Kanoodle/BrightAds let me in but their commissions were 1/3 to 1/4 of what Google/AdSense pays (my best results thus far). Yet still, with around 5K page impressions per day my daily AdSense earnings can't even buy me a sandwich for lunch, and it's a good day when my CTR is over 1.0% and eCPM is over a buck.
I was most recently accepted at ShareASale (despite their no forum sites policy) but didn't find anything relevant and lucrative amongst their available campaigns.
My next try is Amazon but I applied 10+ days ago for their aff program and haven't heard anything.
I'll pass on this gem: I discovered that I was getting very handsome rates for my directly sold ad space. Early on, I displaced a direct advertiser on our home page because his renewal was due and I was just about to start with AdSense. This direct advertiser was paying me $100/month for the banner, so nudging him aside for a few more AdSense clicks was foolish. Fortunately I got him back and have a new policy on only running aff/PPC ads in unused space and below direct advertisers ads. Since our site is highly sticky, vertical position doesn't seem to matter all that much since people are scrolling to read the posts anyway.