Built a product and its getting some traction, at last check it had over 11000 page views, but with google adsense we only got like 10 clicks.<p>Clearly this method is not working very well, what other options do we have?
My suggestion would be to re-orient your focus.<p>Think about other groups of people that would find value in your product, that such added value would be worth paying for. Maybe your main focus is consumers, but the people who would find your product (or something made with your product) worth paying for are the B2B type customers. Maybe the opposite is true. Maybe you're leaving out a demographic that isn't the first thought, but they're the ones who will go bonkers and become the evangelists for your product.<p>Go back to the drawing board and think about new ways to use your product, new ways to market your product, new groups of people to market it to, etc. Don't turn the initial letdown of Adsense failing into a failure for the whole project.
While you can get a lot out of "optimizing" your Adsense placement, it usually requires having at least <i>some</i> traction. I'm guessing your audience is pretty geek oriented with this clickthrough rate. I had success going beyond 10-20% CTR on general search traffic but with geeks? Hideous CTRs :-)<p>An option might be affiliate schemes. Not necessarily just Amazon, but specific products related to your topic area. I've had quite a bit of success with this in the Ruby space (though there are hardly any products to promote - the biggest problem). Job ads can also be a big deal if you can provide the traffic and the right demographic. I've made both of these areas work well.
Trying to generate any serious revenue from 11k page views is nearly impossible using ad networks. Even with the best possible eCPMs (which you won't get) you're talking about a couple hundred dollars.<p>The best shot for a low traffic site to make money with advertising is selling direct "sponsorship" style ads. Get some relevant companies to pay you $500-$1000/mo each to have an ad on your site.