monetizing a humor blog

I was motivated by Lordsenf's tumblr journey and began one of my own on November 7th. Since then I've got my own domain, built up about 7k followers on Tumblr and am slowly accumulating followers on IG and Pinterest as well to drive traffic to the blog. Everything has been done white hat, no backlinking, no bots, just my time and methods learned from lurking here for a while. I hit PR3 with this last update though I guess that just means I'm getting backlinks and thats about it.

My issue is I've no good idea how to monetize the site. I am banned from adsense, and am trying to keep the site clean so staying away from porn. I get about 5k uniques a month, 2/3 from the US, mostly men surfing from home and between the ages of 18-24. I've tried affiliate ads promoting video game cards for the Xbox, games from Amazon, dating, yet the clicks aren't there. I was getting good clicks through adsense but got banned right before payment time, adbrite worked ok but paid pennies before they went down on February 1st, and chikita doesn't seem to be working out. Kind of at a loss on what to try next. Am I just out of touch with what young men are into nowadays? When I was 18-24 I was into women, drinking, and gaming but those don't seem to be converting or gaining any interest. Still motivated to do this, but at a loss as to what to try next.

Any advice?

Edit: using mylikes and making like $1.25 every 2 weeks. My other project is generating 1.50 daily through PPM and is funding this and other stuff. I'm not trying to become rich, this is a hobby and learning experience and my goal was just $0.50 a day through the first few months and then up to $1-$2 a day which I thought would be pretty reasonable for someone new at this.

You have catch the attention of your users. You can't slap CPA offers and expect them to convert.

So, instead of just having a "get a $100 amazon voucher for free" ad on your pages do this.

Option 1:You say you have a humor blog with pics/ articles. After every post, write in big letters

Was this funny and add two big Yes or No images. Write below this in normal text. "Vote for a chance to win a $100 Amazon voucher"

When they click, they should be redirected to the CPA offer. You have their attention. It will convert better.

Option 2

Its a humor blog with guys b/w 18-24 years. So, find some characters from comedy shows and add a poll like

Which is your fav comedy show
1. Big Bang theory
2. How I met your mother
3. Modern Family

And then redirect them to the CPA offer. I am sure you can think of many polls like this. For best results, use characters that ppl are passionate about. Like Do you think Barney Stinson Sucks?

If you get good clicks but less conversion, change the offer. If you dont get good number of clicks, change the poll as the current one is not getting enough attention.

Well, this is the best advice I can come up with. Do update me on the results.

As usual, my noobness shows through. I'll give it a try tonight. I don't want Tumblr to ban the blog so may try it as a banner ad on top of my blog instead of posting it in every blog post and then do it randomly through blog posts as well.

I don't know what it's called, but you neeed to use the misleading thumbnall ads, where its like '10 funniest fails in new harry potter movie'. I see them all the time on humour sites.

This is a tough nut to crack. Maybe you should consider selling/affiliating t-shirts.

IN any case, selling your inventory will almost never be worth the effort.

not sure if there are a lot of offers related to jokes or humors out there. I know there are a lot of pages or sites of doing entertainment or jokes, so you should go out and see what and how they promote ads on their sites.