I Need Your Help/Advice To Move Ahead In The New Year...amazon or clickbank?

Hi there,
I`m pretty much appreciative of your time taken to read this post even though it states clearly that I`m needing help not Giving It.

After 3years of wandering here and there over the internet looking for a Gold mine, I finally made some cash (about $88 - small but made me glad) off affiliate marketing on clickbank.com. I made all the money writing articles for human viewers and submitting to ezinearticles.com only.

I`ve gotten admission into the university and I fear there might be no time to write articles when school resumes.

I tried a method of promoting amazon products and tried pushing two of my sites to page 1 of google SERP, It wasnt that easy but the sites have been playing around between pages 1 and 2. I`ve kept these sites for about 2months and only one of them have made any sale ($1.24 on xmas day!).

I find it easier to push amazon sites up the SERPs than sitting down to write articles and I`d need to make some extra cash off the internet to support myself in my education.

Questions

1. Which of the model should I stick to?

2. What could be responsible for my amazon sites not making reasonable money? Could It be my choice of products?

3. Should I continue article marketing with clickbank or is there another way?

4. Is it possible for me to earn residual income from the internet without any distraction from my academics using any of the above named techniques? If "yes" can please you give me tips on how to do this?

Thanks For Your Anticipated Assistance.

Hamzat