Hi Trudy
I started affiliate marketing myself last year, and at some point I also got sucked into buying all those products that are supposed to make you rich but then I paused, took a step back and reassessed. What I found out was that many affiliate marketers actually make their money by teaching people how to make money.. it's ridiculous. My advice is to unsubscribe from most if not all lists of "super" affiliate marketers except for those who are genuine and share good info. Below are some folks that I personally found very insightful (but ignore all their calls to buy products, just read their blogs and get whatever "freebies" they have:
www.jonathanvolk.com
www.johnchow.com
www.dailyconversions.com
As far as affiliate networks, I realized that many are really junk, carrying junk products and frauds. The best I've found was Commission Junction at www.cj.com they carry mainstream products.
To make money in affiliate marketing you need traffic, and people get traffic in many ways. Below is at least my way of doing things and drawing traffic, if it can be of help:
1- Pick a product that has a relatively high EPC, and high payout.
2- Look on google adwords (traffic estimator) to get a pulse of the amount of monthly searches for keywords related to this product. Initially pick products that have relatively high searches, but low competition
3- Get a free simple wordpress theme (tons around if you google), build content on it around that product (ie you can create a review page)
4- While building the page make sure you follow SEO guidelines because your end goal is to get as much "free" traffic to it from search engines
5- Do link building. Go on different related websites/blogs, and contribute genuine comments in their blogs with a link back to your site. Go to social sites, PR sites, article sites, and submit content with links back to your page. You need to create as many links + keywords as possible for SEO
6- let it run.. make sure you have google analytics on it so you can understand the traffic flows
Another thing you could do, is to look for your own skills. What are you good at? Which of the skills you have you feel comfortable teaching to someone? build a blog around it, and write regularly so you can build a following. Once you establish a relationship of trust with your audience, you can then market to them related products and they will buy from you.
Unfortunately affiliate marketing isn't a get rich quick. You need to have a good understanding of internet marketing including search engines, search engines optimizations, wordpress, mailing lists, and social networking. It is a process my friend, but make sure you don't buy any more stuff.. there is tons of free material online.
If you have more questions feel free to contact me at info@loyalmarkets.com