For the perps bagging on Italiandude saying that it's a stupid question because they don't know enough about him to answer the question, is not what he is asking. Simply put he is asking where would "You" start, what he knows is irrelevant.
With that said... I started out doing the blogging thing because I stumbled onto a thread on SBC that Allan Gardyne started showcasing a 17-year old boy pulling in 50k annually from a single blog (mobiletracker.net for those who are wondering). Upon visiting the site I was immediately dumb struck how that site was capable of pulling that kind of money... I mean it was regurgitated news with ZERO personality.
I've always had the if he can do it I can do it too mentality, so I set out to make my own site with the start up cost of $95, that includes hosting and domain name. Before I go fourth with my long story, I started out with Movable Type as my blogging platform, but I suggest you stay away from it because at the time I was naive and have learned my lesson since then, Wordpress all the way.
Lets skip 4 years ahead to today, since then I've realized that the reason mobiletracker.net with its horrendous design and boring content was able to pull 50k annually possibly more now was because he had the numbers... At the time he was generating approximately 10k visitors a day... again possibly more now. But since then I've stopped doing content sites because it just wasn't for me, reasons being:
1.) Writing... I absolutely detest having to have a regular post frequency everyday, at the time I was writing 10 posts a day, and I started to develop carpal tunnel syndrome at the ripe old age of 19.
2.) Traffic was growing, but at a snail's pace... I think I managed to get it around 1k after 3-4 months.
3.) Writing...
4.) Time, I graduated HS in 2003 and was set to go to a prestigious art college in Michigan ranked in the top 10 actually possibly the third or second best in the country. After the first semester I was sick of drawing and pursuing 3D-animation and dropped out of college, I was at a lost of what to do because parents can have that pressure on you where you just want to jump off a bridge, or a 10 story building... anyhoot, I was pressed for time to find something that will bring in cash because my savings was dwindling fast.
5.) Writing
Ok, it wasn't the most comprehensive list, but as you can see writing was the thing I hated most, contradictory to this long ass post.
The website I started just fizzled away because I just stopped cold turkey, and I got a decent amount of "Dude where are you?" e-mails from my loyal fans, I simply did not respond or make a formal announcement which I regret today, because that was an assholish thing to do.
Some would think a success story should be injected right about now... I mean I dropped out of college en route to my dream career, I stopped developing a growing site, what next? Absolutely nothing... I mooched off my girl friend for the next 2 years, no joke either, it's a wonder why she is still with me. I literally was just living off her for 2 years and it started to eat me inside, she was paying for food, housing, and even my damn clothes...
I swear I'm almost done... I jumped onto affiliate marketing early 2006, borrowing $200 bucks from the gf... lol, I laugh because that was a sad thing to do. Used my credit card which my mom was paying for and bought a new hosting plan. I only had 200 bucks for adwords so I didn't have a lot of room for error, I especially did not have room for losing 5k in 2 months, so what did I do? I read and read and read and read and read x 1,000,000. I actually didn't get my first campaign running till around the mid of 2006.
When I finally got my first campaign running I managed to be in the plus at the end of the week, I basically just applied what worked over and over on a small scale because I had limited funds until I was able to collect my commission from cj. I actually pulled my campaigns until I had cashed the check because I wanted to make sure cj's check came through before spending anymore money. The rest as they say is history. In terms of how much I make I like to keep that private, I'm mostly a wallflower here anyways, but I felt compelled to help this person out because it was a question I could genuinely answer. In terms of what information you need there is a wealth of information on this forum alone, combine that with dp, and sp, even allan gardyne's forum you should have all the information you need.
Regrets?
I just have one... I regret not keeping up with my original site, because even though the adsense numbers were dismal, it was a perfect site for ads...
Funny thing is I just built a site for my gf because she likes to write and now she is focusing on growing a site... She is basically reaping the fruits of my labor... I kid I kid...
Breakdown:
Your obviously going to need a site, so lets cut that $300 down to $200. The next step is up to you really, building a content site is going to take a while, I especially suggest that its something you like to write about because even if its something you like to write about keeping a good post frequency up daily is tiresome. If your going down the route of PPC I suggest you do a lot of research, because with <strike>$300</strike> $200 dollars, you can't really afford to make costly mistakes.
I know this was more a story than anything, but I hope it gives you a general idea of what is needed, and I hope yours is an easier path.
you will make millions! buy rubber and paint it silver or someting 
