Affiliate Marketing Secrets

cheapest niches and keywords, ?

I’ve just completed my first Clickbanks.net Affiliate Campaign using Google Adwords, and I’d like to share my results and ask for advice from more experienced marketers.
I’m using the campaign management methods outlined in Michael Tandiono Affiliate Blueprint 1.0, using Affiliate Prophet for tracking and also Google Adwords Editor, Market Samurai & Speed PPC. I’ve also started using Affiliate Espionage to research my next campaigns.
My first campaign currently with an increasing gravity of 511, commission of $33 and 6.8% refund rate. I monitored the ads for a week or so prior to starting my campaign and found several which had been running for over 7 days. I bid on approx 90 keywords, average position 2-4.
After 17 days I’ve had –
* 18 Net sales of $580
* Average of 60-100 clicks per day costing $750
* So I’m down about $170
I’m uncertain about what conclusions to draw…

Is it possible to promote a affiliate links without creating a webpage or landing page using google adwords nowadays.

m just going along a particular method of finding Niche’s and it seems that I’m checking off all of the boxes for a profitable niche yet there is something nagging me about the method I’m doing. Here are the stats and I’ll explain further.
Google Adwords: 2400 local monthly and 9900 Globally
Google Search plain keywords: 13,200,000 results
Google Search with “keywords”: 19’800 results
Google Search with inurl:”keywords”:1900
Google search with inurl+intitle”keywords”:600
SEO quake also shows that most websites are rather unoptimized with the average PR around 0 and few SEO links(that are in the specific searches). Yet, what is bothering me is the huge volume of normal “plain” searches. I see that I might be able to help myself optimize a site to beat the odd 600 websites but 13’200’000. I just feel something doesn’t add up with the method. The keywords are in the mental health/disorder territory. Also, the top result for the keywords I choose is the affiliate product I will be promoting but it only shows up in a plain search.

I’m curious, is there anyone out there making decent money on affiliate marketing? I know the basics as to what it is, what keywords are, hoplinks from clickbank, and adwords but will I really be able to make an income? Is affiliate marketing just something I spend my days working out some sort of miniscule passive income or is it really legit enough to spend a lot of time?
Who here can speak from personal experience about affiliate marketing?

I’ve just been looking at Clickbank Integrated Sales repoting and I can’t quite suss out if it works for affiliates or if it’s just for vendors. In the help center on clickbanks.net it mentions it in the Affiliate section under ‘Tracking Your Promotions’, so you’d assume it does work for affiliates, However when trying to follow the instructions for using it with Google Analyitics it says you need the product Thankyou page URL, which affiliates don’t have access to, so now I’m not sure.
To set it up for Goole Adwords you don’t seem to need the Thankyou page URL.
Now I’m confused and can’t seem to find much information other than what is on clickbank’s help center.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to use Integrated Sales Reporting with Google Analytics as an affiliate, and if so has anyone got any experience doing so.
Any help would be much appreciated.