Wow, super interesting thread. I'm an uber newb who has only been at the affiliate game for about 3 weeks, but have been close to the ad industry for a couple years. So far I've basically only tried 2 campaigns (not counting a couple offers on FB I gave up on after <$50 invested), one of which probably lost 1 or 2 hundreds bucks, while I've seen $600-700 profit with the other, so I guess I'm ahead (though my profitable campaign got Google slapped today!).
I'm optimistic I'll be able to, at the very least, quit my day job and support myself from AM by day 90.