Majority of people started their online business adopting affiliate marketing as the core model, just like myself. It is indeed a great strategy to kick start your online business because the only thing you need is to find a converting offer and start driving traffic to it. Simple and straight-forward.
You could start a blog to review products or build a squeeze page to promote the affiliate offers and tap into traffic techniques like content marketing or paid traffic with PPC, PPV, banner, etc…However, the bottom line is you will only get a cut in the commission.
If you are driving paid traffic, you will need to make sure your return of investment (ROI) is positive, i.e. for every $1 you pay for traffic, you will need to generate at least $1.1 to have an earning of $0.1.
If you are doing content marketing like video marketing, article marketing, blogging, etc…to promote the products, you will need to make sure the profit you generate from the commission can cover the time you spent generating the content. Ultimately, your time is equal to money, no matter how much you price your hourly rate.