I need some direction on where to start with this idea. I've bought the domain name and hosting, and I have a vision of what I want, but that's about as far as I have gotten. Basically, it is going to be an affilliate site (My end goal is to send users to the affilliate site and have them purchase from them) in the clothing and apparel industry. It is targeting a very specific niche/brand. I'd like to have a good mix of content and affiliate product links. Probably blog style, though some articles wouldn't be horrible either. And I want to have a section for shopping, with every product that is offered in my niche. (over 1000 products). On the side of my blog/front page I am going to offer affiliate links to products that are currently the hottest. At first I am going with one exclusive affilliate, though eventually I'm hoping to integrate a "Price Comparison" feel to it where users have multiple options of who to buy from. So where do I start with this? I've been looking at templates on the web and nothing fits my vision for the site. What am I going to need? I'm guessing to start with I need a base template, a blogging software (wordpress probably), a back end SQL database. I don't need a shopping cart or any e-commerce function, because that will be all handled by the site I am sending to. Like I say, I'm overwhelmed, anyone have any advice?
install wordpress and get it running if you know how. If not, hire someone to do it for you. Then get a designer to either modify a template or make you a custom one. You can probably find several people right here on DP. While they're doing that, you start on the content. Content is the thing that takes the most time and it has to be of good quality. Once you have a working site and you're ready to put up content, talk to someone about SEO and how to get traffic to the site. Good luck.
Great suggestions! The wordpress part I can handle, the design stuff I will likely need to pay somebody for if I want it done well. Content will be a whole other animal. I can write decent content, but at some point I'm going to have to get people who are more "specialized" in the niche to write great content.