Just wondering if you'd had success if your site wasn't about your affiliates products. For example do you need to have a site about Beauty supplies to be successful at making money with a beauty supply affiliate? Or can your site just be a site that would appeal to women with good content and you can still do well? Which performs better?
I think it's obvious that actually selling your affiliate products is the best way to go. You can still use affiliate links as an alternative to PPC programs like adsense though and still make a lot of money. The best part about it is that there is no restrictions on how or where you paste your ad links, and you have control over what ads go where. I've seen many people who make good money this way. Granted you'll need 5,000+ daily uniques to make a full time income, but you'll be more likely to get that because your site has good original content.
Stricksurfer I think it is important to get your site SEO for search engines for the long run. You can go PPC but what if you don't have that type of money in the short term? Organic traffic will get you customers to your site which is key. If you are selling an affiliate product and have no content that match on your site, then your site will suffer organically. The sites I promote have content and products that go together and compliment each other. I get great traffic for the keywords I target. I'm number 1 in Google and 1 Yahoo for a few keywords in my niche. So to answer your question: Yes, you should have content matching with your products. imo...