Affiliate Marketing Secrets

I have a web business with about a half dozen monthly customers who pay an average of about $20 a month for retail sites I set up for them. They could have signed up online and used the online tools I made a vailable to create the sites themselves, but chose for me to do it instead. I want to attract people to sign up for my web hosting business online, and create their own sites without my direct help, which would save them money, but I question whether people are reluctant to do this, considering there are other tools out there that are cheaper. I have a niche market I want to target, and this market is typically not technical-savvy.
How can you achieve a scalable operation without spamming your friends and family into thinking you are a crude self-promoter?
Do people really want to pay to host their own websites when there are free tools out there?
How much of a market is out there, and in what niches?
Do Google adwords really get results you can measure or do you just have to accept that they have to be part of your marketing matrix, a part you can’t measure results from?
Are there other tools out there – technical or other?