I think that making any money with Google ads is very difficult. I had a website for a few years that got about 500 to 600 visitors a day, and the revenue I made from Google ads was less than the $5 a month hosting fee for the website. Plus they only pay once you have accumulated $100 of revenue.
I actually will be making some (?) money with another, much older website that I had, but it's such a fluke that I'm not sure if anyone can benefit from the idea, but I guess it can be a reason to put something out there and have some hope. Together with a friend, we wrote a "book" about the experiences we had working with some political organizing groups, and we put our writing up on a website. Several years later, a publisher emailed us to ask if we wanted to do some more work on the book and they would publish it. This is a small, independent, but very reputable publisher. We revised the book (if it had not been a collaborative effort I'm not sure I could have done the work on my own) and it was published a few months ago. It's now available on Amazon and even on some international booksellers' websites. I still haven't received any royalty checks and I have no idea how much I will get. I know it's not going to be any great amount, but everything counts in my low-budget life. (My worry right now is that it will put me over the limit for my health insurance.)