As an analytics guy I track alot of affiliate programs and affiliate driven industries. The real question is what kind of data are you capturing from your visitors. And what are you doing with that data. Quality Vs. Quantity.
Your peers are correct about needing to be targeted. You also need to weed out the duds and catch the whales. My recommendation is to start by getting you current visitors to give up some personal data, the more specific the better. Your numbers may go down, but the quality of the player is likely to be higher. Of course this will only work if you offer them content that they want or need.
Then develop a solid CRM program. It doesn’t take much to put together a weekly newsletter with some quick tips for your subscribers. Again, this will be much more successful, and virtually risk free, if you get them to offer real demographic info. And only send to those who have, and always be CanSpam compliant. Which really just means put in a physical mailing address and unsubscribe.
Once you capture that data, and as long as you offer solid content, you can begin to market a ton of other products. My first suggestion would be to look at electronics based affiliate programs.