Let me make a comment about the "affiliate" part of your question. I talking about the 33 Rule and subscribers above because you first need to focus on building your channel and that means "clicks" because that's where your work begins. You click rate will give you an idea of how good your thumbnails and titles are working. Are the SEO optimized "because a majority of your visits should be coming from YouTube Search when starting out because you're not going to show up on anyone's home page or suggested until YouTube knows a little more about your videos and how users are responding to it.
But affiliates, selling products, having merch, etc is where you REALLY are going to make your money "for the most part." There are niches that are solely driven by ad revenue but that's another topic. Take my Blender channel. It's a channel on the 3D modeling and animation software called Blender. It is totally FREE to download and use and if modeling, animating, etc is just a pastime for you or you're a 3D artist that's fine. BUT if you plan on creating 3D models, scenes, art, etc and selling it the "TIME" does matter; because, the longer it takes you to create your model, or scene, the more $$$ you're going to have to make to break even. Blender has an addon market "well two actually" where you can sell your addons and products. Both offer affiliate programs, but you have to be approved by the creator before you can be excepted as an affiliate. There are some affiliate networks that do the same thing. Because they want to at least see you are putting in the time and have something to show for it before approving someone. After all someone that doesn't work or produce any content or any way to actually try and sell the product then it's just wasting their time in creating an account for you, etc when nothing is going to come from it anyway because you're not motivated enough to make money.
Even though my channel is still growing it is at a steady rate. I'm averaging 7.5 subscribers per 1,000 views so a creator can see that I'm producing content, I'm using their product so much more able to sell it, etc. And for that, I have already passed the $100+ mark in affiliate sales and only started using affiliate links about two months ago. And I'm a long way from being qualified as a YouTube partner but the channel is making money. By the time I get my 4,000 hours and 1,000 subscribers, I'll probably have made at least over $1,000 by then. So yes affiliate is where it's at. But this also requires work, knowing your audience, getting the most out of your marketing efforts etc.
If you see my affiliate links you'll see I use a service called GeniusLink "which is a URL shortener" but also allows you to track your links and have analytics on them. Because if you get into selling on Amazon you're going to have people clicking on your links to purchase products that are from another country and that will screw up your commission. But Genius allows you to sign up as an Amazon affiliate in almost all Europe countries and will convert ALL links to the proper country and give you the commission on your sale.
This is what other's here mean when they tell beginners, coming to the forums for the first time, eager to grow quickly "like RIGHT NOW" and the world doesn't work that way. You have to work for it and it's a process. There is much much to learn about making money online whether that be a YouTube channel, travel blog, membership course, etc.
EVERYTHING TAKES TIME!!!
Lonnie.
