Personally I think there are 2 main classes of revenue seekers online. The part-timers, doing for fun and for pocker money; and the business minded, doing it with the intention to turn it into a fulltime business and main source of income.

For the former, Adsense is perfectly fine and good.

For the latter, they has to consider how the business will develop and how their income will be impacted if they solely depend on Adsense. It is risk management just like any other business.

I do not see what is so bad about running a sweat shop for someone if by doing so I am using the most of my ability and resources.

Take for example a real sweatshop producing t-shirt for Nike. As the owner, I leverage on my resources and make money from Nike. I can try to move up the value chain adn create product and brand myself, but then I have to consider if my resources can support that.

Yes there is definately money to be made elsewhere…but we’re talking about a different revenue model all together. If up to this point, your someone who’s developed content sites that drive your advertising revenue, you might find the transition to product development difficult. It can be done though.

As far as I’m concerned, deciding to use adsense or create products is not the question. One can create a very effective product sales site while harnessing adsense or another advertising platform. IMHO, the key is not developing your product site to look like the typical “From the desk of” site.

In fact this is exactly what I’m trying to accomplish on of of my sites: http://www.itsmyjourney.com

For what it’s worth, I just added a free guide called: The How to Make Money Online Primer. One of the topics covered is content driven ad websites… Adsense is discussed as the main platform, but I do mention a few other platforms.