Owning your own domain and paying for web hosting is the way to go. Google trusts sites that are owned over free sites, and paid for hosting is faster than subdomain free hosting. Having more trust with Google will help you potentially generate more traffic, and having a faster website through paid hosting will also give you a bump up with Google.

But new sites take time to generate traffic... be prepared to give affiliate marketing some time. Work and effort will get you there, but it takes time. I tell people to be prepared to not see much in the way of results until three or six months down the road. It all depends how much time you put into your site, and how much content you have.

The training here is great!

Best of luck!
TD