I totally agree with OldWhiteHAt
Host your own blog/site it's cheap and easy to do so without all of the headaches of web 2.0 blogs.
Use the web 2.0/social blogs to push traffic to your money site of course.
As for why you aren't making any or little money, it sounds to me that your niche is too broad and/or you haven't actually targeted well your target market.Thus, any and all banners/offers (at least 75% IMO) need to be geared towards your core visitors.
I don't know what your expectations are when you say "Making money from it is only icing on the cake for me." , but I can tell you for a fact that making $40-$100 a day min. passively is DEFINITELY possible.
I've done that with Tumblr blogs alone.
Here's a few tips.
Bottomline:
1. Fine tune your niche(s) and cater your ads/offers accordingly
2. Get your own site/hosting up
3. DO NOT entertain the idea that it is not possible for YOU to make $ with adult. Think like that and you will not. (between Juicy,PR,CRak , selling adspace on your site/blog there is NO excuse not to make even $25 a day... period)
4. If you dont have vids up on Tubesites, profiles on FB,YT,Twitter,Stumbleupon,Imgur and a host of others. You're not going all out. And course, if you're NOT going all out, what are you doing???
5. Scale! If you can make $25 a day on one site , (just attempting to illustrate a point) duplicate whatever you're doing and scale 10 more and so on.
I started redirecting users to offers from Youtube when i first started (as a TOTAL NOOB) in the first week I went from zero to $500 not even knowing what the hell I was doing and without an actual website. Hell, even when I finally created a 'website' (LOL!) it was the ugliest piece of shit you've ever seen! LOL!
Didn't matter though. You know why?
1. People were interested in what I was offering
2.
I refused to believe I couldn't make money online... period. (*Most important of all)
It's ALL up to you.
MAKE IT HAPPEN!
I checked out all of your suggestions and I don't think any of that would work for my site, although I'm no expert. Right now I have the target links for all of the images (there are a lot) set to go to redtube. I enjoy the passive earning method. I tried Ashley Madison banners, Ifriends banners and even social sex banners, but none of them converted well, if at all. The only thing that seems to work is selling my traffic. I can't use plugrush because it is a blogger blog and juicyads was bizarre. I sent them a bunch of info after they wouldn't allow me to use my landline to verify my account and I haven't heard anything since. I was hoping to connect and network with other adult bloggers and exchange guest posts or create some sort of quid pro quo agreement. Possibly involving twitter as well. I've only recently reengaged my twitter followers on that account that I've had for just as long.
This blog and all of its raunchiness is mostly for my entertainment. Making money from it is only icing on the cake for me. I do appreciate everyone's input though.