I've only joined this world in the past few months, I work full time and put another 30 hours a week into researching and learning everything I can, so far I've made $0, actually made a big loss, buying domains, hosting, tools, courses, methods, weeding out the crap information from the good information.
What I have learnt is there is no Easy Money, if it seems to good to be true then it is, people selling you get rich quick schemes are probably broke.
We are in a new ERA where Good Content, Domain Age, Social Media, and lot's of Hard Work are the only way to survive, markets/niches are saturated, single keywords are near impossible, long tail keywords are insane hard to rank for.
Two Groups of Survivers I see:
1) Those who play the "LONG GAME", those who have been in the industry years, full White Hats will millions of man hours behind them already dominating markets and niches.
2) Those who have a keen eye for Trends, future predictions, the next big thing.*
*The trouble with the second point is it's going to be very hit and miss. Example Microsoft XBOX 360 is huge they sold millions of hardware, software, then online gaming, more hardware, and never ending games. BILLIONS of Dollars out there, everyone had a slice...
Soon they will bring out a new Xbox, it could be in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, the Name of the new Xbox has been rumored to be xbox 720, xbox infinity, xbox 8... check out those domains, keywords, people have brought them all up, already fighting for keywords like Xbox 720 Games, or Xbox Infinity Online... Some of these could end up being HUGE money spinners whilst others fall to the ground after having wasted both precious time and money... Do you feel Risky?
Personally I'm not giving up though, I'm finding myself studying trends more now though, looking at stats more and seeing what the next big thing could be with hopes of getting in a niche before it goes viral and fully saturated... I'm going to keep swinging my bat in the dark and hope I connect with at least one home run!