financial independence

I have had another attempt at trying to make money from affiliate schemes, and to be honest I am very dissapointed with the results.
I have tried making cash from affiliate programs before and wrote about my affiliate failures in the post called Easy ways to make money online, since I started taking an interest in blogging I have been reading and hearing a lot about people like Shoemoney who've gotten quite rich selling other peoples stuff.
So I thought I'd have another go at affiliate marketing on these pages below
Big list of free stuff
Sites That Pay
Whilst the clicks have been quite high I've zero conversions:( Could anyone please give me some pointers?
So far the only things that I've made any cash from are selling ad space privately, sponsored reviews, google but I still haven't got the $100 level yet and bucks 4 banners a link to which is below.
Buck's for banners Which is like a CPM ad network they paid me $15 this month:)