"Growing out" and looking for advice

Hi everybody,

I have a blog on blogger and have been using adsense to get money from it, so far I've gotten about 200eur, mostly trough manual traffic exchange. Which I know is dangerous, boring and very bannable. Nonetheless it was a good way to familiarize myself with the whole "scene".

Now I wanna make a serious blog with quality content and monetize it again with adsense and without the painstaking process of manual traffic exchange. As I understand it right now, the steps are

1. Make blog (Should I go for wordpress or blogger?. Also, I've read in different threads that wordpress is the "best" and that you have two possibilities with it, host the blog somewhere (paying $$) or hosting it in wordpress (for free), is that correct?
2. Find a niche. (Is there any advice/tool to find niches?)
3. Make content.
4. Backling. Twitter, forums, google+, facebook, etc.
5. More content.
6. More links
ad nauseum

Do I have the right "big picture" here?

Would really appreciate any advice or input you guys could give. Experiences are also welcomed

Yep. You have the right picture. If you are going to start putting in effort buy some hosting and use a wordpress theme.

I think the first thing you should do is invest in ur own hosting account, own domain. Use wordpress as ur CMS as it's easy to setup and 100000's of templates available as well as tons of plugins to help with ur SEO. The main reason I say that u need to get ur own hosting account and domains is bcos if you are going to derive an income from your site then the last thing u want is to give ownership of ur site and all ur hard work to someone else..like blogger for example, if you looking at building a long term income generator then it's best that u own the domain and it's hosted on ur own hosting account. Other than that ur above mentioned strategy is more or less exactly what you need to do.... I would place a strong emphasis on keyword and niche research though. Hope this helps

Alright, what host would you recommend?. Also, if I may ask, how do you find niches/keywords, etc?

And if anyone could share his/her experiences with adsense, I'd really appreciate it.

Hosting you could use hostgator.

Finding a niche and keyword research is a bit more complicated...hmmm depends alot on how much you do already know and what tools u have at ur disposal. eg: keyword *****, traffic traffic, SEO powersuite etc.... apart from adsense you may want to consider CPA offers or other affiliate products as well... hit up on skype and I will see if I can point u in the right direction.. skype details are in my sig

Yep, that sounds about right to me! Persistance is key!

1. WordPress ofcourse, and only on your own hosting! WordPress is a powerful CMS - like Deez said there are many of plugins/themes and widgets. For hosting i advice Hostgator too!
2. Your blog will be for money-making purposes/as a hobby? For money i think you should hit for the long-tail keywords.
3. Make quality content!
4. Yea, but dont over-use this technique too, and remember about link diversity.
5. As soon as you will get some money give a job to few freelancers to get more high-quality content.
6. FOR THE WIN!