I've found it just a bit wierd that I make money by attracting people to my site to get them to leave.

Poor writing skills are the key to success.

I mean; Pour ritin skils r tha kee 2 suckcess.

yearh... ai deeg wot u sayin' dood....

I know what you are talking about
My highest CTR channel is of a section that both me & my visitors hate!

But remember, it is the compelling content that got you visitors, links and good serps in the first place, so don't go overboard with low quality and work for low paying pages & visitors, but lots of them.

Our experience is the better your content, the better you do by not showing any ads above the fold. We only show ads at the end of our pages with Adsense, and when the targetting is good, the click through is excellent. When the targetting is bad or if the eCPM is low, we don't display Adsense. However people feel about advertising and ad blindness, I'm convinced from our experience that pages without Adsense are just more likely to bring organic growth, so it's imprtant to have a balance on content sites. It might be a different story of forums or interactive sites.

One thing I have picked up on (but sadly have not implimented) is NOT to give complete information in your articles. Leave them still hungry for more and they are more likely to click on an ad offering more information.

Wish I had done that way back when my big site was a 'work in progress' :(

Ann