Paid for attention versus paid for a sale
Clipping is paid on the reach of what you post — the views a clip earns. Affiliate marketing is paid a step further down the funnel: you only earn when a viewer clicks your link and completes a purchase, which means you carry the conversion risk on top of the attention risk.
That extra step cuts both ways. It makes affiliate income harder to trigger, but a single piece of content ranking in search can pay commissions for years with no further work — genuinely passive in a way clipping rarely is.
Where affiliate marketing genuinely wins
If you can produce content that ranks and recommends products people buy, affiliate marketing has real passive-income potential and a ceiling tied to the value of what you sell, not just the views you get. High-value niches can pay substantial commissions per sale.
The costs are patience and dependence: affiliate programs set the terms, can cut rates, and reward content that takes months to rank. Clipping's earnings depend on the views your clips receive, but you are not also betting on someone else's checkout.