Newbie Looking for Some List Building Help

Hi everyone, my name is Eric and I've been dabbling in IM for a while now. It wasn't till recently that I decided to get serious and found a subject/subjects that I really enjoy writing about. I have had my blog up for several months now and have around 40 posts.

I am not getting a large amount of traffic yet, but would like to start creating a list out of the little traffic I do have. After reading numerous posts on this site, I signed up for Aweber last night. I have a couple page ebook/document that I wrote myself that I think will benefit my users. However, I have a couple questions.

1. Would you recommend setting up an Aweber list capture box on my website which would allow them to download my informational ebook once they signup? Or, I have seen another technique where my info would be split up into a type of 7 day e-course that would send out emails each day pointing back to a page on my site (only reachable through that direct link) containing the info split up over 7 days?

2. Also, are there any beginner techniques I should be using to get traffic? I currently try to post helpful replies on blogs and yahoo answers linking to my site. I have several pages ranked highly in google, but none of them drive that much traffic to my site.

3. I would like to build up a loyal reader base and am not really looking for the one hit sale. I want my users to learn from my site and if I can recommend a pay product occasionally that I think will help them, that would be a bonus. I have set up links in some of my posts to affiliate products I either use or feel strongly about, but they aren't doing that well. How much traffic should I expect before I can tell if this is not a product my readers are interested in or if it is just a lack of numbers seeing the links at this point?

Thanks to all who read this. I am learning a lot in this forum. I tried searching for the above answers, but I become overwhelmed soon as I use ebook as one of the terms.