You'll find no easy answers here. This is not a push button scheme. When everyone else is out partying and blowing their money on the weed and the booze (not that it's not fun) you have to be writing content, creating long tail niches, writing content, doing SEO work, building authority, buying domains and expanding.Did I mention content? The potential is real. Nobody would waste their time with forums such as this one if there wasn't potential. I built my first website 3 years ago. It was a steaming pile of you know what. I still made about 30-50 a month of of that stupid site that had 10 articles. The niche was very good and I had done my homework. I've learned so much since then that only comes with experience and mistakes and i'm STILL a complete newbie by the standards of many many many MANY people on this forum. All I'm trying to say is, read the money making sections (there are highlights) and just crank out a website. You'll never know until you try and you never learn until you fail your way to success! Best of luck to you OP! We're all here to make some damn money.
*edited for grammar