Let me put it a different way. The most established affiliate program online is Amazon’s. Amazon has an affiliate program, which up until a couple of days ago would pay 4% to 15%, right around there, of the total purchase price of everything, of every person, every buyer you sent them. If you were recommending a book, let’s say, let’s say you’re recommending a book on Facebook and you dropped your affiliate link in.
The “matchmaking” service–offering access to a pool of merchants–is the role of a network that likely comes to mind first. But the administrative workload handled by networks can’t be overlooked; they handle all the tracking, reporting, and payment processing that arises.

DreamHost offers a 30-Day cookie life to its affiliates. So, if the user you referred purchases in this period, the sale is credited to you.
If you’re not sure what to do next or where your focus should be just do one thing. Focus on creating more high quality, trustworthy content that adds value to the Internet instead of just cluttering it up. If that’s your main focus, and you take massive action to continue doing that, you’re not going to be disappointed with the results.