Ever since I thought about giving websites/blogs a try after deciding to write for myself rather than others, I have been reading huge amount of various types of strategies that one should implement for a 'successful' website. And I have been doing just that...reading, purchasing books/courses and not doing anything else with the information. I had taken out a two-year hosting plan at hostgator and it was automatically renewed earlier this week with not even a single file being uploaded on the account. Finally decided to sit down and do something about what I had learnt rather than go after the next sureshot course. But the problem is that I have read so much, I am struggling to decide what is the right way to go forward. After trying to sort my mind out I came up with two plans...but I am not sure whether or not they are workable practically.

First to create a mini authority site of 15-20 pages of content. This would be purely for affiliate marketing. Rather than a product, choose a topic (in the health niche) that I may be interested in, build up content and then choose a product/products to be market. Second create a blog on a topic that I am a bit passionate about...tech or sport (as in soccer). For the first site follow the seo strategy as suggested by either forever affiliate or affiliorama (bought both the courses). This will be a long term plan as the site will rely completely on SE traffic and links will have to be built slowly in order to avoid being penalized by Google. For the blog forget about Google and concentrate on pure marketing. This means social bookmarking (Reddit, Digg and Stumbleupon), forum commenting, blog commenting, guest posting, social media etc. I believe I can afford to be a bit aggressive here as there is no Google to worry about. Also try to include ways to ensure that the blog would be eligible for Google news as well so that there will be an additional source of traffic.

Does this seem a sensible plan or should I simply shell out more money and get someone to help me out? Of course it will require lots of hardwork and a good slice of luck as well but I am willing to do the work if there is a possibility that what I am doing may work out in the end.