walrus, you hit the nail on the head. I have seen the numbers from some of these mainstream blogs, and man, they ain't making shit.
http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/...-pro-for-sale/
These are the numbers for blogging pro - alexa rank around 26k, but only turning $200 revenue a month. That is really, really painful thing to see and shows that they are not turning their traffic into revenue in the slightest. It is not a good situation.
An adult site ranking 26k in alexa would be turning some fairly decent money.
Merely trading around traffic and being nice doesn't make you very much money at all. $200 a month to run a site ranked that high is beer money.
Alex