Affiliate programs can work, you just need to find a niche you know about and set up a good site. It's no use asking what programmes can make money - if you don't know anything about the niche then you won't convert very well.
The best thing to do is to look into the affiliate marketing / programs forum. There you will find alot of tips. With alot of affiliate programs online you can make money. It depends on how you do it. If no one could make money from affiliate programs then no companies / merchants would have an affiliate program. Affiliate Programs definately help them to make sales and is infact one of the ways alot of these sites that sells things get most of their sales.
Yes, it works. You do not need to have a website or hosting. You can get affiliate links from CJ and Clickbank.
Yep,you must be having a good web site first,develop it and update it everydays.you could do something until your site get a pretty traffic.Put cpc(Cost per clicks,like google adsense and Yahoo publisher network) in your site or try to join in the affilite program(CPL=Cost per Lead,CPS=Cost per sale)Like CJ and Clickbank or as the same them's program.Lead someone to buy your products,you'll get your commission for it. For another ways,the web site is not required,join in the email site(like donkeymails.com) and read email ads or complete offer,but it's so hard ways for make money,you must spend much time to do it,but the redound upon is not very pretty. Sorry for my bad english.But i think my saying above is clear.lol