Help for a somewhat Newbie?

Hi there, I’m new here and to the whole Website marketing thing and have a few questions i’m hoping someone can help me with.
I’ve read up quite a bit about PPC stuff and CPM things though and heres what i’ve gathered I have to do .
1. Create a website about a particular subject (For Example , tips on Working from Home)
2. Register with Adsense / MIVA or Adbrite as Publisher
3. Place ads on my website that relate to the content of my site.
Then get paid each time someone clicks on one? But to get traffic to go to the site I need to setup an account with Google Adwords/Yahoo Search Marketing and pay them to advertise my site.
This all seems a bit too simple, does this process work? Can anyone help me out here?
Also , does anyone have a full and frank explanations as to how "Keywords" work […]

Original post by BrianGilmour