Have you or someone you know started making >$40/day within the first month of their website going live? What type of niche was it? Where was the bulk of the income coming from? (product, affiliate, subscription, etc) How did you get your traffic so high so fast?
That is not likely at all. Someone who doesn't know anything and doesn't own anything, would make $40/daily? No no.
It depends on what you call a newb. New to online or new to business in general? If they had great skill in converting sales, then it would be possible with medium quality traffic. If they're totally new to everything, then it all depends on if they can find a working sales model.
You would have to be very lucky out the gate with some knockout affiliate offer. There are ways to do that working for others online (for example, writing for someone like Demand Media, or taking various online surveys, etc....). Building traffic through a number of methods takes time, and there are a lot of other factors involved.