While AdSense is probably one of the best money making machines if you have quality content and a lot of traffic, there are lots of other AdSense alternatives out there. Some of them are only suitable for sites with 100,000+ monthly page impressions and more, others can be used by sites with low traffic. The key to understand is that when you are looking for an AdSense alternative, you should try several solutions, one at a time and seeing what works the best. No general advice can tell you the best solution for you. The best results are achieved through a trial-and-error method.
The following table provides a listing of programs, which can be used as an alternative to AdSense (and AdSense too), if for some reason you can't use AdSense. Also notice that some of the these programs can be combined with AdSense, without breaking Google's TOS.