Please help me, I'm new to the IM game yet feel so screwed already

OP, you are wise to survey the landscape ahead for potential landmines before proceeding. I'll give you my thoughts, for what they're worth.

Google does indeed have a well-deserved reputation for pulling the plug on people's businesses without a word of explanation and with no means of recourse. It's happened to me personally on YouTube, a Google property. I had a YouTube account with nearly half a million channel views, featuring perfectly legal, TOS-abiding videos, shut down for "violations of our Community Guidelines and/or claims of copyright infringement" with zero explanation of how I had done any such thing (even THAT quoted information had to be garnered from the defunct account's page on YouTube, as there was no communication from them.)

The contact form provided on their site specifically for this situation returned no response. How's that for a middle finger? And it's not just YouTube, by any means. Many people have had similar problems with other Google platforms like Adsense and Adwords.

Fortunately for me, my business is diverse beyond the point that I would be greatly affected by losing that YouTube account. But, for many people, this kind of behavior by Google is crippling. How anyone within Google could set up such policies - could decide that it's just fine to destroy people's businesses without a word of explanation as to why, never giving them a chance to rectify the situation - is beyond me. And it doesn't help that Google essentially holds a grudge forever. To them, you'll be the same banned account holder twenty years from now that you are today.

And Paypal. Oh, Paypal. This is a company that will leap to freeze your account if their automated system flags you for whatever reason, and then make you jump through a gauntlet of hoops in order to restore it and regain access to your money. We're talking about bank statements, supplier invoices, UPS tracking numbers... it took me a good two days of work to provide them all the information they required when I was flagged. Many people find themselves unable to comply with all of the demands. And it's important to note that even if you complete every requirement, Paypal may still, at their discretion, refuse to allow you back into your account!

They even used to play a game where they would freeze you out of your account but continue allowing people to pay into it, knowing that you were unable to retrieve those payments and process the related orders. Seriously, they used to do that.

To better understand why Paypal operates this way, you have to understand the concept of the "float." All of the money in Paypal's possession earns them interest or returns as they hold onto it or invest it. When they freeze an account, that money is held in their possession - it is added to the "float." Gee, do you think this factors into how they approach flagging and freezing accounts?

Now, I know most people will tell you Google and Paypal probably won't mess with you. And they're right - but it depends on so many factors that there's really no way to know for sure. A few too many competitors flagged your videos on YouTube? You're done. Made too much money through Paypal as a new eBay seller? You're done. Get the idea?

Don't ever make your business dependent on either Google or Paypal. I know that seems like a stretch, but it's really not. There are alternatives to Adsense, there are other ways to advertise besides Adwords, and there are other traffic sources besides Google's SERPs. There are alternatives to Paypal as well, although we could certainly use better ones.

Overall, I commend you for thinking things through before you jump in, and I wish you the best of luck as you continue forward.