Frankly... In 2017 I played around a little with all kinds of stuff in the crypto-realm. Thankfully never on the level of affiliation-marketing. I was lucky tho. Besides the fact that most of these more shady investments underperformed compared to Bitcoin price movements in 2017 I havn't lost any $ value. What was a goner was just the "free money" I accumulated in these things once I had my initial investment out again. I learned that most of the time these things only work good if you are willing to shill and make money from affiliation links and so on. I didn't want to pull others into my gambling with these things and I'm happy that I didn't do that. For me it's all about constant growth without harming anyone. So I do the - to some boring - but still IMHO very effective DCAthing. Like clockwork I DCA into Bitcoin every week and I will power up in STEEM every now and then. All the other things you mentioned thankfully didn't happen to me... so far.