I'm not being snarky but if A and B are your experience, you're doing it wrong. Let's say Popular Website A can give you 100,000 views and charges I dunno $35

I'm not being snarky but if A and B are your experience, you're doing it wrong. Let's say Popular Website A can give you 100,000 views and charges I dunno $35 CPM. Less Popular Sites B, C and D may only be charging $10 CPM, and you can get the same number of ad views in aggregate by placing ads across all of them. You'll have to work harder to find them, but I generally assume people who have no money have a lot of time when it comes to marketing. As an example, I know of a site for wedding photographers with good numbers that will give you an entire year of sidebar ad placement for $275. (Drop me a mail on my contact form, I'll send you a link.) To answer your other questions, don't worry about the dogfood at all. And no, affiliate prgrams are really hard to sell to individual site owners; they're generally not setup for it, don't understand it, and don't think it will work. The sales cycle on your part is way too long.