Affiliate Programs -- Do They Work?

I am trying a new experiment on my personal blog. I have added an airfares dialogue to the sidebar. How do I expect to do? Not sure. Yesterday when I was testing I recorded 21 click throughs, reported in real time. When I checked this morning -- I had the 21 click throughs and no more. I did have some traffic to Q's Wire... overnight. I also, have no click throughs for the current day's activities (real time). It appears I am the only one testing or curious about airline fares.

My one year anniversary is coming up since joining the affiliate program -- and I have never sold anything. My personal blog is one of my high traffic areas, so I am hoping to change that statistic.

How do people earn a living using affiliate programs? I am going to make it my business to find out what works and what doesn't. So far nothing I have done -- works.

I am going to document my findings, because I feel there are a lot of people curious about what works in this area. You can search for "Affiliate Programs" with the search tool on the sidebar, using "This Blog" as the pull menu option -- to read about my findings.