Tips needed - building an authority site

Hi, after much thought and reading, I decided I will try to build an authority site, basically because I want to invest my time and efforts in something that has possibilities to stick around, and not get crushed in the next 'panda' update from Google.

I've read xfactor's Adsense Master course,I've also read creating fat content course, many of my ideas and strategy come from those 2 sources.

I would love if you could give me some advise, there are LOTS of things that are still hard for me to understand, and I just hope that my efforts won't go to waste...

Let me tell you my plans:

1 - Find a niche I am at least familiar with or feel comfortable and capable to write about
2 - Buy a domain (dunno if keyword rich or just a cool name related to niche)
3 - Put in the site an 'opening soon notice
4 - Create a site with xsitepro or wordpress (I don't quite understand siloing still, but for what I understood, maybe xsitepro could be easier to implement a siloing structure). The site don't have to be great looking, but later on it would be worthy to pay a designer to make it better.
5 - Create several articles as 'main' article of each category (I will start with 4-5 categories). Create a couple or 3 articles for each category. All articles 800 word, original (written by me), themed after researching more common words and phrases used in the top sites of niche.
- Put the site online (notice I don't put it online until I have at least 10-12 themed, big articles).
6 - Keep adding content regulary, start with SEO.
7 - After a month or when I see I start to get a tiny bit of organic traffic, apply for an adsense account (I dont have one).
8 - Put adsense
9 - Keep doing seo and adding content, adding more categories.
10 - Profit, and start thinking of another ways to profit besides adsense

I have a lot of concerns, especially regarding SEO. I keep reading people telling that a lot of sites are created each day, there's tough competition, and many many people are using a lot of automated stuff like senukeX and tools like that. I am willing to make as much manual seo as possible, but of course, if there a tool or a way to use a tool that could help me get results and keep the backlinks looking normal and under the radar, I would love to know.

What I do know is, there's no use in doing something too 'unnatural', because google will eventually ban and deindex you. So, how to create backlinks in a natural way, and not lose the race against BlueFarters?

Anyway, I am at the very beginning, still haven't even picked a niche, ut I will start acting soon, and given that this forum is the best regarding helpful people, I would really appreciate if you could give me tips, warnings, ideas and point me in the right direction, to create a website that will eventually make some money (I dont dream on 100k a year or crazy stuff) and will not be banned.

THANK YOU