Hey!
Unlike common belief, it is very hard to create a for-profit website from scratch. Times had past when you can put together a site and expect to generate income from advertising. One reason for this are the web giants that came to dominate the internet world. The other is the ever-changing advertising market. You are no longer paid just for displaying a banner on your site or the number of impressions it gets (like you did in mid 1990s)... webmasters are paid now on a hard-core sales they bring to the client.
Another thing before creating a site is that you should be aware of whats already up there. Large giants are now in control of a very large majority of internet traffic and are rendered dominant by popular search engines such as google. New sites (unless they are very exclussive in content) have a stiff fight over internet placement. You cannot just create a site and hope for the best, you have to build a "network" between other sites if you want for it to be moving upwards. Now large brothers network together and direct traffic between themselves for $$ reasons. Some argue that the only real profit-making markets out there are adult, casino, and hard-core marketers (like me included). One expert estimates that over 80 percent of all websites fail to show up on any search engines, making them virtually impossible to find, and the situation may only get worse.
There is an uphill battle and if you think you can fight it,.. go ahead. Amateur sites cost almost nothing now a days.. it is your personal time and investment that is your major cost. Its hard to get traffic,.. So far I am getting about 5,000 new people everyday (~2-3 million hits/month) to my domains and it took years to establish that. Yahaoo gets about 15 million per day.. in comparison to Google GOD that grosses over 175.