ggrot - 5:33 am on Mar 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

Nothing wrong with affiliating, but I would suggest that you stay away from the big boys. If you advertise for amazon, they are getting more branding from you usually than sales. One of my most successful sites is 100% affiliate profit driven. It is designed like a regular website storefront, but the purchase links go to the affiliate's site. I started just advertising products from 1 company, but after about a year, I am getting contacted by other companies wanting private affiliate contracts and offering 2x the commission with better conversion as well. The money from that site pays rent with some left over for this lowly college boy. But multiple income streams is definitely the way to go if you ask me. I have two sites in mind waiting for a break from CS projects, one is 100% affiliate driven, the other is 100% my own niche product. Both should do very well. I go at new sites as an experiment. I am willing to lose a few hundred here and there on poor advertising choices, if and only if I'm set up to be able to track the results and get a good handle on how well they are working - an evolving learning process. Almost every aspect of online revenue generation still works. You just have to play with it and learn the game the hard way (loss).