James - I only made a few cents in november. I don’t get many clicks at all on ads. My main driver for ads is my blog, I have a ‘button’ in my side bar, and a ‘banner’ in the footer. I also moved the banner up above the comments on the single posts.
It’s ok, maybe you just don’t want to earn with adsense. I can understand that if you have a job and not time to spend in front of the computer. You know as you have them now you’d be better off removing adsense altogether it would make your blog ad-free which is quite rare nowadays.
If one day you want to earn money with adsense you need to concentrate on 1. traffic and 2. ad placement
Of course content is what will generate good traffic, but ad placement is important in order to optimize the earnings from your traffic.
If you want a quick advice, let’s take your blog as an example. Imagine you want to advertize on your blog about some product you want to sell. Where would you put the ad for your product if you could show it anywhere on your blog and several times? It’s certainly not at the bottom of your right column or at the bottom of your content column. So you have your answer as to where to put your adsense if you want to make the most of your traffic, you don’t need any advice, just put yourself in the shoes of an advertizer and you’ll know where the ads should be.
My Account is still new … Modest € 0,20
James, I am a student, so any extra funds would help. I would love to make a few dollars extra a month. I figured two ads a page would not be too in your face.
As for your question: it depends on the ad block given. I would put it above the first black line of the first post OR the first item of the side bar. Correct.
For sure the way you have it now even three ads would not be too in your face.
Stop joking, seriously. 
Ads have to be visible when you come to the site, without scrolling down the page and they are best located where the eye goes, so near post title, near header navigation bar, near the logo, within the article content, etc.
With adsense you really have to make a choice between making money and not making money and then assume that choice. It doesn’t matter if the ads are too in your face, because your content is what will make visitors come to your site via search engine. Once they are here your content will play a vital role so it need to answer what they were looking for, be of a certain level of quality. But at the same time, relevant ads such as adsense are PART of your page content, they add value to your blog. See them that way and not shamefully, and you’ll have made a step towards better earnings.
James thanks for your posts! I have ot taken Adsense seriously because I never really saw anyone making money with it…I do less than .15 cents a day on average…but have a small block in a not so great location…will have to change that today!
allmost 1.5 USD from 3 sites
I think maybe you should try to get about $5 a day from each of these sites by increasing traffic and the number of pages per site and then get more sites up
I know it sounds really simple but it’s the basic things that work
Update to my daily averages:
May 09: $96.5
June 09: $128.8
July 09: $125.8
August 09: $144.3
September 09: $153.9
October 09: $194.8
November 09: $304.2
December 09: $513.05
ARound $3