Tuxedo or Bust

I'm being told that someone near to me will need to spend hundreds of dollars to obtain a tuxedo for a child who is taking orchestra in high school, or they may be failed. Can that simply be another broken California thing or is it something Americans are experiencing? Perhaps since CA is a blue state he'll be able to find some billion dollar government "no tuxedo left behind" program that subsidizes this distraction from focusing on the skills needed to teach a child to play an instrument.

Any suggestions are most welcome for a good place to get a reasonably priced tuxedo, for the duration of the school year, until the child grows out of it, or until the program is cut or the teacher laid off in this robust economy.

Amazon for affiliates, does anyone make any money?

Funny story, I've been participating in the Amazon affiliate program for... a very, very long time. (I want to say somewhere around 10 years, but it's probably not quite that long.) I continue to receive their marketing and messaging regarding my account only to become excited to log in and finally see that I've made some money. So, can you guess how much money I've made in all these years of working with Amazon as an affiliate? I've actually received one payment of around $10. Of course given the stocks in my portfolio, I guess I could be getting a worse ROI.

So, you say, "well sure, you aren't trying very hard". Ok, what does it mean to "try hard"? Should I quit my full time job and "get rich" with Amazon? I'm not willing to do that, after all I need to feed, cloth, house, and educate my children--and that doesn't happen without income, a trust fund, or a goverment hand out like AIG got.

Actually, I've been an active affiliate for various affiliate markets and have accumulated a bit of experience that would probably be helpful to others anticipating getting into affiliate marketing more heavily.

My advice, don't quit your day job. And, learn when to give certain affiliate programs the finger--don't fall for the BS that passes as "information" in those channels...while these folks weren't clever enough to invent gaming, they certainly engage in it.

...see, I told you it was a funny story. You know what else is funny, watching people get hurt on America's Funniest Home Videos, right?