For small bloggers though, there is either a lot of overhead in managing affiliate network accounts and using the right offers or you trade that for smaller commissions with a service that abstracts that from you.
I would love to be pointed to some counter examples of small bloggers for who the affiliate model is working well. For my previous (mostly dead now) startup Affclicks (an analytics tool for affiliate marketers) we considered those type of bloggers as possible niche to target but didn't actually find a lot of them. (granted we didn't push hard on the marketing side)
Another ad network based on keywords...pssshhh....that'll never get anywhere.
A file storage service to allow you to share files between computers? Ugghh...been there...done that.
You can see where I am going.
Entering a crowded space with no perceivable differentiators means one of two things:
1. You intend to grind it out on volume and compete on price.
2. You intend to differentiate yourself in a meaningful way that the vast majority of the world does not understand yet.
I put forward that option 1 is much more likely than option 2.
An idea can be smart all day, if the market doesn't need it - it's just an idea. It will never be a successful product.
It's that simple.
Turns out, the hard thing...is not coming up with "ideas"...it is building successful products.
And it's not hard to see why. You need to sell about $2mm worth of stuff on Amazon to pay for a single engineer (estimating with a 5% payout). It gets even worse when you add in all the complicating factors that surround sending someone off your property to convert. And in your case I believe you were sharing a portion back with the customer, so it's even a smaller slice of a small slice.
I think affiliate models are perfect for part-time bloggers and the like, but to build a big venture-backed business on the model is an incredible challenge.