What is best today?

Stay away from review sites. Building silo content sites around micro niches can be very productive. Also youtube and other venues can be very lucrative as well.

By silo content sites, do you mean information type sites based on keyword research?

I think that you must choose a topic you like. More, you should ensure that the topic/niche you are selecting have enough people interested in it, and if you have products to sell as an affiliate. If the products you write about can't be sold easily then why would someone buy related ads ?

These days adsense pays very low and you can't rely on it.

Build the website, provide quality content and then you can see which is better. Put some ads, if they do not work at all, put some affiliate links within your content, and you can write reviews too.

Having only reviews is also bad.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, the best approach that you can take is to create a content site that gives REAL value through quality content. A site that not only educates but also compels your visitors to take action. No I'm not talking about getting them to click on a bunch of ads - but rather something more constructive. Such as getting them to join your email list.

If you want to make BIG money with affiliate marketing then you have to focus on building a targeted email list. A list that you can build a relationship with and recommend relevant affiliate products to from time to time. Yes it takes time, effort and patience - but in the end, it's ALL gonna be worth it.

So instead of trying to build small review sites and dreaming of hitting a homerun - work on building an email list. Because when you have a list, you have an asset that you can leverage any time.

The bisque d'homard is excellent, but frankly I wouldn't touch the roast guinea-fowl, if I were you, Sir.

For me, it's better to build content sites with a prominently incentivized opt-in at the top of the home page, so that I can earn money by marketing products (as an affiliate, in my case) to the people who'll give me their email addresses. There's not much point in my trying to sell them through clickable links/banners/pictures/ads on my pages: plenty of people will click, but almost nobody clicks and buys. And of course I have far more credibility as a "trusted information-source" without having advertising all over the place (this is really one of the key concepts of affiliate marketing).

There may still be some people making some money from "review sites", but I wouldn't touch one, myself.

This is true, because you shouldn't rely on anything that's Google-dependent. And even more importantly, perhaps, be aware that AdSense is a business model which pays you (a little) when people leave your site, not when they stay there - so it's pretty difficult to combine it with genuine business-building methods!

Here are four threads which may help you ...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7110523 (ignore the fact that it specifically mentions "ClickBank", if you want - that's just an example: it's the underlying principle and the reasons for it that matter)

Is it a good idea to spend some time on building a mailing list ?

Without Building a List, How Consistent is Your Income from Affiliate Marketing

Does anyone even make money online without an email list?