Hi headrascal,
Welcome to 5 Star. Love the name, especially since you did day care.
Hope your recovery is going OK. Hugs!
How to start and how much $ and how much time. Those are all such hard questions. There is really no standard because there are WAY too many variables. You could get lucky and make money quickly or you could work 80 hours a week doing it all wrong, picking bad markets, bad merchants and not make a dime.
I think that on average most affiliates only make around 100-500. The ones that just throw up some banners and do nothing else make 0.
I have carpal so can't type much more in this post. Need to go get some work done. I would read through some of the other threads about getting started here. Lots of others have asked similar questions plus hopefully some of our affiliates will weigh in with their 2 cents.
More later...