Does Affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing means learning from the mistakes made and making better decisions

There are a lot of people who feel that affiliate marketing is a dead end and that people should walk away from this form of “business model”. I have heard such things as
“Well it was a good revenue model, but its old school now and a total waste of time”
or
“You may build a temporary and fleeting income, but come on, you will never have that long term “financial” freedom when you focus all your efforts on small affiliate pages…get a life!” ( exact words by the way)
I wonder at their reasoning..could it be that

These people want you to buy their next new and shiny thing?
These people never took the time and effort to learn how affiliate marketing works?
These people gave up far too soon and became disgruntled and then went to number one..lets try that next new and shiny thing?

The fact is affiliate marketing does indeed work and it works very well BUT a lot of people keep making the same mistakes over and over again. I guess that Jennifer Ledbetter, must have been thinking the same thing when she wrote an epic post 7 Big Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers Make, where she goes into a lot of detail about the mistakes people make and ones that she could relate to …such things as selling rather than helping, falling into the trap of every affiliate program that she saw or not comparing products ( a really good point by the way) and so on.
The fact is for many affiliate marketers, learning comes from making the mistakes and lets face it hindsight truly is a great teacher, but lets not put down affiliate marketing, just because you have not learned how to approach affiliate marketing properly…lets look at affiliate marketing with eyes wide open and learn how to do it right!