Step 1. Keyword Research - I cannot stress enough how important this is. If you do not know how to do keyword research, I suggest you get my free WSO at justballing.com. It's free, and I wrote down the method that I used for research.
Step 2. You should now have a domain name and a set of keywords picked from the above tutorial. Now, go ahead and put some UNIQUE articles, don't use spinned crap. Take time to write it or pay someone to do it if you are lazy. Having your articles bring interest to your visitors is the most important thing. Don't put together a bunch of gibberish and expect you will make money from it.
Step 3. Plugins - I use StatPress SEO for live analytics, All-In-One-SEO pack, SEOpressor (to have keyword rich content). For the theme, I use Socrates. All of this is also explained in the ebook above.
Step 4. Scrapebox - I've heard this many times before but this definitely was the best $57 I've ever spent in my life. Absolutely recommended, and will cost you less to buy it than pay for people to blast your sites.
You can also use a tool such as magic submitter to submit articles to web2.0 properties, bookmarking sites, rss feeds, etc... this helps too.
Step 5. Mindset - That's right. Your mind is the one that controls your actions. If you are reading all day about new methods, you will get information overload and not be able to decide which method is best for you. The only way to know is to take action and try them.
My personal finding is that perseverance is key. You need to NEVER GIVE UP and always keep on trying. If it doesn't work, adjust it, if it gets no traffic, keep working on it, if it brings no money, it WILL if you keep working on it.
Stay positive! Keep the positive vibrations flowing and you will receive positive in your life. This goes for IM, and anything else that you have in your life.