Selling other people's stuff is an easy and mostly maintenance-free way to monetize your homepage. Whether you already run a website or plan starting one, beneath Google Adsense, affiliate program providers and networks are the way to go in terms of monetization. There are lots of affiliate programs, with the highest payouts in sectors like Webhosting, Insurances or Loans, sometimes up to (and exceeding) $100 per sale!
Sorry, but no. Most webmasters never get out of their "peanuts phase", which means they make some bucks a month, but would not be able to live from their web earnings. 99% of all publishers (those who run websites are called publishers in the affiliate business) mix up "Internet" with "easy money". That's totally wrong. Only those who are willing to work hard and constantly improve their knowledge and skills, might one day make it. Quitting their job and concentrating 100% on their business finally makes some of them rich. But hey - it's not as bad as it may sound.
I'm serious about that. No matter where you live, how old, experienced or educated you are, there are easy and free ways to start websites, and lots of free sources of information for your first internet steps. Investing some weeks of hard work will bring you a constant stream of visitors, sent from the search engines, and depending on the quality of your content, they might come back. Your Site gains trust and with every piece of work, your brand value will grow, and people will listen to what you say and the things or services you recommend. Remember: You can have all of that for free, and all you need to invest is your time. In a matter of months it will make sence to start monetizing your site with per-click-campaigns like Adsense and per-lead or per-sale campaigns = Affiliate Programs. You might be able to make 10-100$ per month in the beginning, and that will motivate you to go further. If you really work hard, you definitely WILL make 3000-5000$ per month after 1-2 years. After that, the sky is the limit, as you have enough money to hire staff and let others work for you. Believe me: that's what ANYBODY could do, but no one does, as most people fear hard work.
That depends on your knowledge, skills and experience. If you have never done anything in the internet, it may be a good idea to start a free website at blogger.com or wordpress.com. That way, you will be able to build a readership and experiment with different topics and techniques - for free. Just concentrate on something that you like, for example your hobby, or something that you are experienced in, like your job. You can watch your readers and their behavior in a statistic tool like Google Analytics or Clicky. Once you achieved a certain status and visitor numbers, start affiliate partnerships.
You will get custom link codes that can be used as text or banner links. A user that clicks on a banner or text with your link code will get to the website of the affiliate provider and will automatically be flagged as "your" customer, once he fills out a form or buys something. You will get a certain percentage per sale or lead. You can join those programs directly (for example justhost.com or amazon.com) or via a network like zanox or affili.net that provides lots of different programs.
First of all, the program must fit your sites topic. It doesn't make any sence to have affiliate banners for webhosting companies on a site that deals with pets or knitting. Your visitors will not know about and will never need a webhost. It's right that payouts for webhosting plans are very high, but a super rate multiplied with zero buyers still makes zero. Try finding suitable affiliate providers and banners.
Don't only use banners! Use your credibility to recommend affiliate products. The more returning visitors you have, the better this will work. Just don't recommend anything you wouldn't buy yourself.
Check your stats and optimize the performance of your partnerships. There are many ways of filtering out users that just don't generate any leads or sales, and concentrate on those that do. There's an important term in affiliate marketing, called "conversion rate". It's the number of buyers in relation to the number of visitors or people who click on your links. Growing your readership and raising your conversion rate will finally make you a sucessful affiliate marketer. Good luck to you!