Affiliate marketing is an emotional roller coaster, not just in the sense that the money goes up and down so much. It is evertything, constantly watching traffic and analytics is very draining. It becomes almost impossible to go on vacation when things are bad. Almost worse wehn things are going good because all you are worried about doing is scaling.
Like a few other people in this thread, I've been out of the game for a while. I still have a few profitable campaigns that I am lucky enough to have nailed down to the point where I'll dominate as long as the niche is alive. I stopped innovating and testing new things because the industry is so god damn shady. Not just the CPA offers, I've had affiliate managers steal my campaign creative ideas, networks continually not pay me out and so many people fk me over.
Part of me thinks I would still be in the hustle if I didn't get married and have a kid, but for me it isn't something you can do if you want to responsibly sustain a household.
For anyone looking to get into this: pick a product (CPA, CPS) that you can get behind mentally. Can I promote this? Do I know how to sell this? Do I know how to write creative ads that will be better than the next guys?