IM Information overload for newbie. Needs simple plan to drive traffic (create members) for a site

I am a web developer, with a new website. My website does not sell any products (yet) - instead, its purpose is to build a community which provides useful information to members and the public in general (a bit like this site - but in a totally different niche).

I have been reading up on IM for a little while now. There is a lot of information out there, and often, conflicting advice. I have read about SEO, article writing, backlinks, Press releases, squeeze pages etc - and its all become a "jumble" in my head.

I stumbled accross this site yesterday, after hearing it mentioned on a YouTube video. From some of the posts on here, some people clearly "know their stuff". I would like to appeal to the more experienced/knowledgable people out there to help me out (you may consider this help, a minor "loss leader" for future business with you).

I need to form a clear marketing plan (a set of clear practises/procedures) that I can use to:

1. Raise awareness of the site and drive traffic to it
2. Convert visitors to members (membership is free)

I am self funded (bootstrapped), so (for now) I have little money to spend, and am prepared to do all of the initial work myself. I am sure that the steps I need to take are fairly straight forward - I just need someone with practical experience to lay out the general guidelines for me to follow in order to have a working plan that I can put into action in order to implement the steps - and monitor the success (or otherwise) of the implemented steps.

If there are any "gurus" in here who would like to help me get started, I would appreciate your help/advice. Also feel free to tell me about the range of services you offer - so that once I have got a basic/moderate amount of success following your free advice/guidelines, I can then pay for consulting with you, in order to really take the website to the next level.

You may PM me privately, if you feel more comfortable doing that. I look forward to any valuable feedback in helping me get started, and hopefully, becoming a client of one (or more) of the successfull IM on here.