In the old days you bought and exact match domain, threw in a couple of blog posts and most probably your website ranked. Today you need to build content for an audience, that means you need to build something that has real purpose, readers, engagement. Trying to "game" Google to do Adsense or make money out of affiliate links would probably last for 2 or maybe 3 weeks and then your website will erode away.

So the first thing you need to is focus on your customer and how you want to serve them. In the purpose of not being "etheral" and without knowing what your product or service is do the following.
1. Keyword research: a tool like Market Samurai is great because it lets you grasp who your competitors are and how tough would it be to beat them.
2.Technology: if you are not tech savvy, go with something like wordpress where most content will be indexed by google
3.Develop a content strategy: define what and how often you will publish content to your site.
4.Link building is still a great ranking factor but it has to be done so you wont get a penalty and it looks natural under the eyes of search engines.

All of the above can be done by a single individual. I have built and sold more than 300 niche websites, happy to jump on a call if you require advice :)