How I Create Money Online

Before I got into SEO services I sold lingerie and sex toys online, I have no interest in these products before you ask, I needed a business that was online because I’m disabled (had to drop out of University in the final year on medical grounds) and through research found adult products have a

GREAT markup.
After learning the basics of SEO (learnt on the job so to speak) I took a new site adultlingerieuk.com (now an Amazon affiliate store) from zero visitors to around 8,000 visitors a day, but used blackhat SEO techniques (comment SPAMMING, got the home page to PR7) that eventually got the site penalised. Still in the year or so it did well I sold over £80,000 in stock and the profit for that year (which was all mine) was just under £25K (~$50,000).

Since most businesses make a loss in the first two years and at the time I had less than £1,000 to spend on setting up a business (actually spent about £300 to set the business up) that was really good.
Had I not used blackhat techniques I’d have made less money in that time, but the site would still be working for me today and would almost certainly be making more than £80K is sales a year by now (the site sells nothing now).
Based on how I’ve helped similar online businesses with whitehat SEO techniques if I had to guess how that site would be doing today I’d say if it was running well it would make me around £120K a year which is more than I make right now from my SEO business and other income (I prefer doing SEO to selling adult products, think soiled returns!!!!!!!!!!!!! so no regrets).
With all this in mind IF I didn’t own a SEO business or I was starting from scratch (like I did 10 years ago) I would not go into affiliate/AdSense type sites to make a living. That’s not to say I wouldn’t use AdSense/affiliate products, but like now they wouldn’t be my main focus because you can make far more selling your own products/services online than you can make from AdSense/affiliate sales.
Think about it, AdSense/affiliate sales you make a small percentage of the revenue the affiliate and Google AdWords makes. With most affiliate type programs your lucky to make over 10%, which means to make an OK living you need to sell $500,000 of other peoples products/services! And to have a good living you need to sell $1,000,000 worth of other peoples products/services.
There’s not many people who can sell a cool million dollars worth of stuff every year!
And that’s just to have a good living, not a GREAT living.
On the other hand if you sell your own service/product you can potentially make 90%+ of the money you make (all depends on what you sell). This means you don’t have to make anywhere near as many sales as with affiliate products. And with how Google has changed over the years it’s far easier to sell your own products/services than it is to sell affiliate products/services.