Hi Tanya,
You're on the right track. It's best to publish quality content first while you are building a readership and getting inbound links to your site. I assume you have social media accounts set up for this site, specifically? If not, that's next on the list:
http://www.clicknewz.com/3038/how-to-use-social-media/
Once you have some solid content on the site, and some quality inbound links, you can start applying to affiliate programs and monetizing in other ways.
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