Basic IM newbie plan + questions (please rip apart!) + entry costs + WP review sites (worth it?)??

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much for the help so far, I've been reading intendtly. I have a website up and live now which I want to work on promoting, (it is an affiliate site selling products). It's only been up for a week or two, but as far as I understand it the basic premise wih this stuff is to keep adding articles (both on my site, and select ones on good article sites, then digg/ reddit / tweet them) + product info, linking (eg content, affiliate stuff to push, and backlinks, therefore creating compelling content + google rank, and then turning visitors into buyers)

The basic formula is say, best x things and then a page with info on x (for seo and credibility etc) then products shown one after another with some bullet points showing off their qualities, that when you click go straight to the affiliate site - I notice people always say big call to action buttons - perhaps I should devote a product page to each product? rather than having say 4 products on one page? That would just take even longer haha...

Basic premise correct? ^ (and then tweak the site to maximise sales / website optimiser etc) Then rinse and repeat...

Currently I have no backlinks and consequently no traffic, but I'm going to work on the content side (articles + site content) over the next month or so, then work on backlinks after that...

Slight sidetrack there - because of the background above, I intend to create 'lots' of sites in this same simple vein in different niches. (in that I'll set them up, spend a couple months or so doing content / articles for them, then do backlinks and see what happens.) Obv not running before I walk but this is the long term plan - however, the most time consuming part of it all is to write the content and doing the HTML for the boxes showing the products (lots of manual cut and pasting etc.) So, I'm looking at spending some cash to speed me up. (Investment!)

Therefore, I've narrowed down that I'm considering (and I have done some research but it's so hard to wade through everything sometimes)...

Wordpress review sites:
Has anyone used or can recommend those Wordpress review site systems? How do they convert in terms of pushing the sale? From the few I've considered they seem like a surefire way to save time when putting in products etc, a lot of what I read on here is people doing things very quickly and my main issue is lack of time! (my one site has taken so long, I feel this type of software would really help.)

Backlink Submitters/programs: Adding links manually to link directories takes. just forever. auto 2000 link submitter kinda things are obv not great for google. So I was going to get invovled with one of those link programs that helps you along the way. Backlinking is by far the worst thing in the world so I'll def put some money the way of the guys on here that do backlinking!

Those are my main two areas ^ Does what I've said sound like a useful way of considering things?! Please rip apart things that are wrong, because I don't really want to pour blood sweat n tears into something that's not on the right lines! There's not much money to spend but if in the long run it'll help and save me considerable time that is most important to me right now.

Oh final area, email marketing - assuming all the sites are on wordpress (simple, quick theme + set up etc) is there a good client that i can get that will work with wordpress? I want to build my own database email list that I can start emailing. I don't mind running this seperately from Wordpress, but my tech knowledge isn't great (the fact that wordpress is hard for me should tell you that!)

OHHHHHHH and what the frick is spinning / spunn articles? That concept just went straight over my head!

I'm not that technie so all this stuff on people feeding their affiliate feeds directly into databases and stuff just doesn't work for me
In fact, saying all that, the deals lots of the forum warriors put up (like complete web sites for $20 or whatever) look much better value in money vs time than me spending a couple of weeks to put something together... Anyone had any success with these?

Thank you for just being here in terms of a forum, I've read and learnt so much already. (for the record, I'm happy to take abuse/questions on my ideas, this is just my understanding, my IRL job is online marketing for a b2b company.. and yes I like to spell things out in obvious ways haha).

Thanks!!! ANY comments I gladly appreciate! And sorry for the long post!