I'm not trying to spam my blog, but I feel in too many cases, the role of an Affiliate Marketer is reduced to nothing, partially because of methods at times, and inexperience. I strongly disagree having been in this biz for several years, and when someone is treating us like crap, remember, if you were not there, they would suffer financially. Incidentally, I don't make a ton of money at this business, but a decent living. My blog is http://websnoogie.com, and it will be addressing some of these issues, and my personal workarounds when dealing with clients, and merchants.
Sometimes it's a company and other times its an individual who created a product on click bank or on a CPA network. Generally it's a product sold by another individual on a network. You can make some very good money if you promote other people's products correctly, for example social networking. That's right you can sell people's products through social networking channels such as facebook; I know people who are generating at least 20k permonth through creating causes on face book. I know this method and it's very simple to setup, and not hard to manage.
Affiliate marketing is essentially a way for the general public to help our a business and get a referral from that business if they make a sale. So if you promote your affiliate link on various blogs and websites, or PPC, you will hopefully make some money and become an official affiliate marketer