Having a blog is a platform. It's an unknown platform at the moment, so it's not very valuable yet.

Traffic is the name of the game: you want eyeballs on that blog that are connected to brains that are already interested in your topic.

Find influencers who are respected in the field you're blogging about, and get them to say something about you and your blog. That will do more for you than anything right now, while you're unable to pay for traffic.

On your site, you want to have relevant offers.

Leverage the traffic by getting interested prospects to sign up to your autoresponder list. That way, you can continue to market to them...qualify them further...and sell them. Multiple times.

Do not allow visitors to escape without the opportunity to opt-in to your list. You fought hard to get them there: make sure you can continue to market to them.

After you get the basics of a funnel set up (Traffic >> Opt-In >> Sequence), consider the concept of Laddering. This is where you have increasingly valuable offers for people to buy. A huge mistake I've seen many beginner marketers make over the years is to have only one product or service to sell. Once the buyer gets that...what else is there to buy? Remember that there will always be some people who will buy literally everything you put out there.

Make sure the solutions you provide work. And once you are confident in their quality, be happy to sell them to people. (Sounds weird, but a lot of people get bent out of shape at the idea of selling something.)

Finally, keep in mind that if you create and own the product, your margins are much higher than if you're an affiliate. That means more revenue to you, and more cash to make choices with.