I wonder if people join AAP and use the review format to generate sales. If so, wouldn't there be a conflict of interest? Would you trust a site if you KNEW that whoever owns the site will get paid if you bought based on their recommendations?

I've sold a fair amount of physical product via the associates program over the past few years. It was the first way I made any real money and I still get some nice cheques.

If I was going to do it over again, I'd still probably go with Amazon, but I'd only develop 3 or 4 really big, well-designed, sites with lots of content related to the niche, not just 'product x review', 'product y review'.

I'd concentrate more on building a really nice site, and not try and game google to rank 40 crappy little sites.

Used to do it in the digital filming niche (DSLRs). Even with such a high price tag for most of the products associated with the niche, the commissions weren't that rewarding enough for me to stick around.