Affiliate Marketing; Is this real or just another scam

I believe that I first heard about Affiliate Marketing about a year and 3-5 months ago but I never really looked into it until about a month ago. So i started looking at all these different programs, courses and postings about how they only wanted an extra $700 a month to help with bills but now they are clearing 7k a month. So i spent all of $29 and purchased a course bundle which had a lot of good marketing courses and I started the first one, how to make a passive income from Amazon Affiliate. I don't know if it's just me or if I'm being a jerk when i say, I think I could have created a better course than 2 or 3 of these within the bundle. Has anyone within Steemit actually made a living on affiliate marketing?