Affiliate sites. Do they make profit?

Is anybody here that have an affiliate site? Do you know if it is possible in these days to make profit from a site like this?

For those who don't understand I am meaning a site which is like an e-store but when you are going to the checkout process it sends you to the affiliate's site

To be honest I have never made a site the way you describe it.

I will tell you my thoughts on this.

I think that this could work only with a very very good SEO campaign which is propably impossible.

If you want to be realistic you must think as a visitor. If the visitor is looking to buy a book, he/she will visit amazon.com. he/she is not about to search in google because  knows that amazon sells books and they are a reliable company with good prices etc.

So if you want to be affiliate of a product like this you should have a site that will convince the visitor to buy. I mean that the visitor is coming to your site for information, not to buy something.

For example if you have a blog about php, a php programmer will visit your site to get information about his favourite programming language.

Let's say that you have a tutorial in your site about the xml specifications. You have some information about this topic there, plus a link to a very good book (in this topic ofcourse) in amazon.

This way it is more possible to get the visitor to buy.

I will agree with Nicolas.

It is better to create a site with real content.

Also affiliate sites seems to get banned from directories, and some times from search engines too, so it seems to be really tough to promote such a site.

i was going to set up a site like that, but i got advised not to.

what would you all say