CPA Networks, affiliate products, your own product, building your list to promote others or sell solo ads.
There's a lot of opportunity out there that doesn't require you to use adsense. In fact, everything I see posted about Adsense is pretty negative. Seems to only be worth it for those that have a LOT of traffic.
There's a guy that has a blog in almost the same niche as mine... he makes about 10% in comparison to my blog, but has about 400% more in traffic. He relies mostly on Adsense, I don't use adsense.