Alright, I've been in the same boat as you. I'm just fortunate enough to only waste little measly dollars on investments so far. I use to do IM awhile back, like 2008-2010 and made good money from it. These were just from creative ideas and basically putting twists to ideas I seen people marketing. IF there doing it, most likely it is still working.
For example on loss investments so far, I paid for a domain + hosting and a micro niche site. I didnt get anywhere with that... why? Not to sure.... bad SEO maybe? Plus, i didnt have any passion in the website that was created for me. Since I had bought the micro niche website. Only about a $80 loss. Which is way better than what you hear about being scammed out of.
Now I just plan and experiment. I created a porn tube website, uploaded some vids with watermarks, I get traffic but not enough conversions to make anything. I think I jumped into this market a little too late. Plus, my tube software I'm using isnt really the greatest.
I have 2 websites that are currently being designed in a good customized wordpress theme. Amazon will be the monetization method on one site and the other website.... 3 or 4 cpa offers. Just writing my own content will hopefully do good. 1 website is hard competition, the other is easy. I am passionate about these 2 subjects too, which im assuming will help me in the long run. I wont be a millionaire from these 2 ideas or anything, but it will be more of a fun "hobby" and hopefully help me pay my bills so my part time job can be my actual spending money. Plus, I'll learn more from it.
Also, I teamed up with an SEO service firm for commissions. I learned a lot just by reading forums, magazines, and etc., so I can talk up a good game and just let the SEO service people do the work ;-). It's funny that a lot of the SEO services on google don't even SEO for themselves. I have good creative campaigns that I come up with randomly, so this should be interesting.
Investments as of now is just hosting + domains + design. If you know how to design, you can cut that off. I'm about to invest in GSA, ahrefs, and market samurai. Why? Well because, I've been researching and researching and realizing how these tools will help me out. Since I now know the terminology of how these types of software will benefit my IM journey.