I'm done with Adsense...for NOW

NO MORE AD-SENSE, NO MORE AD-SENSE!!!

So after making a few hundred $$ I decided to give Google ad sense a break....... for now.
Why you ask? I realized that in the long run, not having ad-sense will actually be better for me.
I currently have 3 sites that I am putting most of my efforts on right now. I am leaving Ad-sense on one of the sites until I can find some good affiliate products for that niche.

So Why Leave Ad-sense?

Most people have abandoned Ad-sense because they feel that it turns away the more "motivated" visitors. I must say (at this point) I have to agree with that.
If someone is interested enough to stick around on my site, and further motivated enough to click on some links...I would want that link to be an affiliate link that could earn me one time (or recurring) commissions of $20 or more, as opposed to $1.75 and I never see or hear from that visitor again.

The other NEWBIES are making $$$$, What About me???

I recently noticed more than a few blogs by some newbies saying they got their first sale by reading the "earn your First $50" training module from Kyle.
I decided to check this module out....even though I have been with WA since Nov 2011 and encourage everyone to check out the WAbinars and training modules. I know I know, shame on me for not practicing what I preach.
After going through the training and following up on the notes I realized that I already had several referrals (6) that had done the initial signup and 4 that had actually went as far as creating profile information. 3 of those 4 referrals have over 65 followers here in WA!

I actually Do Well With Referrals and Signups

On one of my websites I also have a referral link to the online survey website cashcrate. To date I have 51 signups and 21 active members.
I never gave all this much thought until I went through the earn your First $50 training. But I realize that 57 (cashcrate and WA combined) people found my content valuable enough to signup. It is truly a good feeling to know that I helped others.
I can't help thinking about how many potential subscribers may have ended up on another site through an ad-sense ad.
If I had just 21 referrals on WA that would be a recurring income of $472 per month. With just 4 active members that would be $90 per month. Honestly, it would take a lot of ad-sense clicks to match those amounts.

You Need MASSIVE Amounts of Traffic to make Good Ad-Sense Money

I pulled up a screenshot (see below) of someone's ad-sense earnings reports. To realistically make $40,000 this person had to get almost 250 million impressions and 171,675 clicks.

To make even 10% of that ($3,900) you would still need over 8million impressions in a month.....no wonder people give up.
Google does not allow you to publish your impressions and clicks and now I can see why. You need A LOT of traffic to make serious $$$, and google closes down accounts all the time.
With the google slaps galore I am a long way from getting THAT kind of traffic.
So for now....I'm going to focus on referrals, writing good content, and getting more people to willingly signup for my products as opposed to "hoping" they click on my ads.
Curious to know what everyone's thoughts are on using Ad-sense?