You've got the right idea, but it will take more articles than that to accomplish what you want, depending on the keyword you are trying to rank for.
Is this an AdSense site?
For my first project, no it isn't AdSense, it's simply to
a) Improve the ranking of my existing website - it's ranked 6th for my main keyword and I'd like it 1st or 2nd.
b) Target long tailed keywords which relate to my website. So people will find me via finding these articles.
My next project (once I've got the idea of all this), is to then start affiliates, but not quite sure myself how I'll go about it.
From what I am understanding, writing the articles serve 2 purposes:
1) They get ranked high for long tailed keywords, in Google (by having the articles at places such as Squiddo/GoArticles/Ezine etc).
2) Using these highly ranked articles then act in a way, like doorway pages to presell the website. For example - article about the history of widgets > this article then links to widgets.com which sells widgets.
With affiliates am I correct in saying the website is the 'money site' - the site that when people land on it, either go ahead and buy the product from the Merchant, or leave their email address for updates, or leave?
I think the confusing part is that on BHW there isn't just one way to skin a cat - there seems to be many valid ways of getting traffic and marketing a product - so I think where I'm going wrong, is mistakenly mixing a few methods up.