Starting my first "proper" site - need advice

My site is gemstone, fossil, gold, artifact hunters, so in a way it pertains a tad to travel, adventure, etc. Get yourself a wordpress for your site first off. You're going to want to blog - and do a forum because right now my site is on auto-pilot because of members yacking it up and dropping keywords for relevant searchers all over the place (not stuffed, they just come up in conversation). They also put a LOT of pics in the forum and that seems to boost traffic more than just a tad.

On the WP - do interviews of people who have names in the field. If you have a nice looking site that has quality info on it, they will be glad to drop a few words for you to send to your crowd. Put up some info on gear, but make it secondary -- make the adventure stories and stories about where there are great places to go to participate in different adventures paramount. I have short cut codes for banners to my affiliate products and put one on the bottom of each article I put on my WP. A few intense science articles about your subjects will help put some credibility into your site, too.

Most of all - be interesting, relevant, and have FUN with members as they join your forum. Mine progressed from friendly banter to real world meet ups. There are posters that come and go as anywhere - but I've got a solid core group that is slowly, but steadily growing - that have all met live now, and we continue to meet up, so there is a lot of humor between us that draws new viewers. A lot of people who join remark on how much they like the atmosphere of the place and I get a pretty solid traffic of lurkers even if most never post.

Sounds like fun. Be sure to actually be into adventure and go on tons of outings. Then you can write great content and promote products you use.

One great outing could be 10 awesome blog posts (the outing, equipment used, travel mode, how to, top 10, myths, tutorials, product reviews, location reviews, etc.). Just do this over and over and in time you'll have an awesome blog that covers all kinds of adventures that people will enjoy.

Start an email list from day one. This is a slow-going process. Come up with a freebie to offer in exchange for readers' email. Come up with a freebie people will really want. You may have to test several freebies to see what actually gets people to opt in. Once you find a decently converting offer, you're off to the races.