You are on the right track because you have a decent plan.
But at the end of the day, you need to focus on a competitive strategy.
What is going to make your blog different from your competitors?
How are you going to approach keywords that they are targeting so that you get a competitive advantage?
Put simply, how can you turn what would otherwise be another generic blog put up by yet another online publisher into something that can be branded?
Maybe you can build up your blog into a media property.
This is not a fairy tail nor is it wishful thinking.
One of the most powerful examples of the growth and site evolution that I just described is the website Copyblogger.
It started out as a blog on helping people write better copy for the Internet, but it has blossomed into its own media company.
While it's great that you are putting up a journey and you seem to have a clear plan, I think you should aim for something higher.
Aim to create a brand, and this requires really heavy lifting as far as research, planning, and analysis go.
This is not necessarily a bad thing.
You have to understand that if your backlink network appears uniform to Google, that can be a sign of trouble later on.
You have to understand that Google is looking for "natural backlink patterns."
Natural means random anchors from a wide range of sites.
Of course, you can't go overboard and just come up with just a totally random collection of backlink sources along with anchors.
You still have to have enough links using your target keywords as anchors as niche-specific sites.
But I can't emphasize the importance of a "natural link pattern".
This is where nontopical backlinks come in handy.
But the key here is to avoid overdoing it.
Another way your network can appear unnatural to Google is if it just appears like you click a button and all these links appeared.
But generally speaking, it's not a kiss of death that you have few nontopical links pointing to your target pages.