The trick is diversity and search engine marketing. And by marketing, I don’t mean PPC. The best ad conversion sites I’ve seen (and run myself) are sites with a wide variety that also have excellent SERPs (even just long tail SERPs). Search engine traffic is by far the best, because those users are actually looking for something. When they hit your website there’s a good chance that either your content — and hopefully your ads — have what they’re looking for.

Bottom line, if you’re wanting to make money off of advertising like AdSense, keep the content diverse and make sure your layout code is optimized for search engines to help improve your SERPs. Using this tool is a good start for the latter: http://www.sitening.com/tools/seo-analyzer/

I consciously try NOT to click on the ’supported links’ when doing searches directly from my Google tool bar. I would much rather have somebody like me earn the commission than forego it to the Google Bottom Line I’m just like that! I mean someone is paying for the ad anyway .. someone else may as well earn the commission, I figure.