Some Beginner SEO Questions

Hey, I've just recently dove into the SEO, and my goal - along with probably everyone else in the forum - is to try to rage my pages rank in google. I've begun with a small niche site that I feel has very little competition and I want to learn some of the basics and whats involved with SEO. So far I've found tons of good information on the forum but I have a few questions that I haven't quite found an answer to in the stickies.

On Page SEO -
Is there anywhere specifically my content needs to be? For example, my home page(the one I want to show up in google) is mainly a catalog directory page with lots of links and images, not so much text. Does not having content on my home page / google "landing" page effect my SEO? Should I be trying to incorporate news articles, blog entries, and that kind of information on my home page? Or will the information being on other places of my site be good enough. I feel like in terms of navigation and ease of use, I would rather not have this type of stuff on my front page.

I've found tons of recommendations to use RSS feeds to supply good information regarding your keyword onto your site, however I'm super un-familiar with anything about RSS feeds, what they are or what they do. IF anyone could give me a brief explanation of RSS feeds or a link to a page that explains its effect and use in terms of SEO and web design that would be awesome.

People also say articles regarding your keyword are important to SEO. I understand that people pay to have articles written and post them on their site as blog posts as well as in article directories as a form of backlinking. My question is, do people use the same articles for both their site and other sites? My understanding is that google doesn't like duplicate content so this doesn't seem like the right thing to do, although buying seperate articles for on page and off page SEO doesn't really feel like the right thing either.

Off Page SEO -
From browsing the forum (and the huge ads at the top of every page) I've noticed tons of services, ranging from special kinds of backlinks, high page rank, facebook fans/likes, article writing, and tons of other stuff that I probably didn't even know existed. Maybe this isn't the best question because I get the impression everyone is going to recommend their own service, but what is the most effective kind of thing to start off with, assuming I am a small niche site with very little backlinking/SEO hoping to go from rank 14 on google to rank 3 or better. So far I've been doing through many free alternatives and I will continue to do so as I understand SEO is a long term marketing strategy, but I am also willing to invest in some services if they will make a significant difference.

That being said, are there any other sort of things should be on my "to-do list" with regards to off-page SEO aside from trying to build links, or is just linkbuilding and working on optimizing my pages for search engines exactly what I should be doing right now?

Also if anyone would like to take a look at my page (first link in my sig) and let me know anything I'm doing blatantly wrong with SEO it would be greatly appreciated, although with some more research I'll figure the stuff out on my own eventually.