Being a newcomer to the biz is certainly a steep learning curve

I have a general idea of what I want to do, provide content, and possibly have a paysite to my content at some point in time. I am just starting out so be a little easy with me on this stuff

There seem to be a ton of different ways to drive traffic, become affliated with other sites, link exchanges etc...

With all that in mind, whats a reasonable way to get things rolling?

I was thinking of getting a badpuppy hosted site, put some content there, and possibly a link to my regular site, which will have mostly original content, and a few galleries of regular purchased content just to get it started up. My content will be mostly amateur stills and some video later on. I am getting slightly confused by all the different toplists etc... It seems like the whole industry is just one big interconnected mess. It's hard to make sense of it all

Is a free badpuppy site, with a link to my regular site a sound strategy to just get some hits and see what the reaction is?

It will be quite a while before things really hit there stride, as I have tons of learning to do. I am drowning in a sea of printed material on site construction, mysql, php , macromedia studio etc... LOL