[Princeton]

Adsense is great. You can't get any better. They just have a bigger pool of advertisers. The bigger the pool the higher the auction bids. The better return you will get.

The problem with so many sites is that they go overboard with ads. On many sites I've seen adsense, viglinks, and chitika ads all on one page!!

Having so many different ad types on a page harms your bottom line:

1. Google penalizes sites for too many ads on page.
2. Too many different types of ads will slow your site down.
3. Too many ads on page can turn people away.

Don't listen to people that tell you to place 2 large rectangle ads (side by side) above the content. It will kill your traffic, time on site, brand, and word-of-mouth. You need to think long term.

I highly recommend testing year round.

If you don't have Google Analytics installed get it now. It will provide Adsense statistics alongside page statistics for comparison.

Remember that with Adsense you get 60% and Google gets 40% (something like that) for each click. If you hire a 3rd-party service to take care of ads for you they will take a chunk out of the 60% - meaning you will end up with as little as 30%-40% return.

Good luck.