Hi
I make a good living (1000's not 10,000's) from AS. It is easy to implement and can have good CTR because of the large number of businesses worldwide who use Adwords and the contextual nature of the ads.
For AS to work on a site you need to make sure that each page is well focussed on a topic so that you get the most relevant ads. There are other ways to try to manipulate the ads served (these are pretty well documented on the web). Visitors from a search usually get ads that are extra targetted based on their search terms. So it is a great system.
Obviously, to make it pay really well you need high traffic and good
SEO. And a bit on experience of high paying formats and positions goes a long way.
I would also point you to the "channels" , particularly to test high performing positions on a site.
I assume that you are not going to put AS on your web design site. I have often used AS on business websites to mop up all the non converting traffic from abroad, but your site at the moment would benefit from some tweaking to make AS work at the moment.
HTH