Most of us are thinking/searching for ways to make money. I hope most of us now realise that there isn't a quick, overnight way of making it. With millions of websites competing for customers, members, advertising revenue; what chances does your website or service have? What are you doing to make yourself stand out from the massive crowd of blogs, e-commerce, clickbank, adsense, hosting, forums and whatever other website you can think of? Without a massive amount of money to throw at it for advertising/promotion, what are you going to do, how are you going to do it? The only way is to "think outside the box" - think of a different way of making your service or website stand out from the rest. Offer something different, offer something extra. What are you doing to be the one website or service that people want to use, because YOU are different to the rest? Why should I click on your affiliate link? Why should I buy from your site? Let's face it, everything has already been done before, right?
I agree that it is a much more sound strategy to find something that is working and try to add a differentiator to the working model to carve yourself out your own niche in the marketplace. Much safer to go with a proven a product/service and try to build from that. However, I disagree with the above statement. Everything has been done before until the next great, new creative thing comes out. 100 years ago people were saying that everything that could be done had been done. That is because they did not know what they did not know. We are in exactly the same boat. The next Google, or Facebook, or Tesla, or Segway, etc., is being worked on as I write this and when it comes out of hiding, it will be new and exciting and never done before.
I learned over the years in sales that people really don't buy products, they buy people. So it all comes down to one's personality. If you can make your character stand out then you'll surely make it in any industry.