This post's purpose is to give a general overview of what is required and expected to succeed. Persistence and Testing are the key points in any website endeavor. 

A few points:

• A  new webmaster has to research, research, and research and test even more.  You must realize that what works for one person will not be guaranteed to work for you.
• You must expect to see one answer to your question one day and an entirely different answer on another day.
• You will find many ways to advertise your site, but don't expect too much free help. You pay $5 for a pair of pants, you get a $5 pair of pants). Apply that to free help and realize what you are getting.
• Don't believe the great sell with the expensive price, either (e.g., SEO your site for $1000-Get Google PR10 in a week, 1 million visitors a month for $500, yada yada yada--sometimes these things are worse than the free things). 
• Realize patience is a MUST. If you don't have it, DON"T GET IN OR GET OUT NOW! You must have this before you can ever have a great site with great traffic.
• Don't believe everything you read unless you keep seeing it over and over and over again--then you still have to test it to see if it works for you. 
• Don't put all your efforts on one single thing (e.g., PPC, RSS feeds, etc).
• Do realize content (original, great, targeted) is your greatest asset. 
• Do realize you have to be actively involved in your site. It is work, but it's also fun if you love what you are doing. There's nothing wrong with a hardworking hobby coupled with the fringe benefits of monetary gain.
• Track everything because everything is important, from how many visitors (day of week, time of day), where they click (how long it took, where they came from), the stickiness of your site (how long they stayed, what they were doing), you get the idea. 
  
• Promote as much as you can. There are probably billions of sites--you have a never-ending battle to promote!
• Be careful with everything that concerns websites (e.g., domain names, domain ages, hosting companies, software, etc).  Research and test.

There is so much more, but my intent is to point you down a road to success with at least a map of some sort--a foundation or, as mountain climbers would say, a BASE CAMP. 

Good Luck!