Originally Posted by pocketkangaroo

I agree with this post. One of the first rules in business I learned was that you are ultimately responsible for your success and failures. No one gives too shits about excuses or blame.

With that said, it is almost always the webmasters fault. I see people saying "I'm 1:4000 with this sponsor, they suck". They probably don't, your traffic just doesn't convert with them. And even if they do suck, it's your responsibility to find that out and change sponsors.

I'm astonished how many people don't test sponsors, test click-through-rates on ads, figure out overall ROI on some sponsors who use revshare and their retention rate. I had a pregnant site that was getting a lot of SE traffic. My first sponsor was converting at like 1:250. I tested others and finally found a pregnant sponsor that was a little more hardcore that converted at 1:120. That means I make 2 times as much with this other sponsor.

I guess the point of this ramble is that you are ultimately responsible for the success of your site and traffic. Blaming other factors is just a formula for failure. While you whine about low conversions, the succesful guy is changing his site and trying new sponsors.