Well, to answer many of your questions, Steve, and many people here, recommend
Site Build It. They will take care of the "hows it work" behind the scenes, and you just tell them what to do. It's an annual subscription for $200, but I hear it's a wonderful program, and they have a money back guarantee as well!
Note, however, I that I do NOT have any personal experience from them.
As far as ads go, I have no real experience with them, but it seems that it's a small amount of people who actually click on ads, and on average, you may a couple cents per person that visits your site (that's including people who don't click). This is using pay-per-click ads, like Google Adsense, but there are others.
Perhaps someone more experienced will come along to help you out.