What are reasonable earnings for a hardcore tech site?

Hey Guys,
I’m new here, I recently ran across the forums while searching for various stuff online.
I run a fairly niche technology site that specializes in low level hardware (microprocessors). We have an excellent technology oriented audience…I did a demographics survey and about 95% are programmers and employed in industry.
We get around 1-2K uniques, and maybe 7-15K views/day (not a whole lot). We’re having a bit of trouble really getting good ad rates though. We maybe make $500/month using folks like Tribal, Blue Lithium and Adsense.
I feel that we are doing poorly, but I really don’t have a good sense of what other folks make. A lot of our views (around 50%) are in forums, which are somewhat harder to monetize than regular content views.
We have pagerank 6, and a huge library of older content, with maybe a new article every month (but each article is probably […]

Original post by Alpha8