Your email list is where your sales come from and you must know when to send a newsletter and when to send an auto-responder email message. Which is where your own website comes in because that proves to your audience that you are professional. You share your own website in your Newsletters and never affiliate links or call to actions. Your auto-responder will contain the sales messages, which should offer the products you promote on your own website. On your website you will have a web form which is how you will gain more subscribers to your list.
Your own website is crucial to your success. This is where you will select your domain, get your website builder access and even an email address for each individual domain. Your website is complimented by your own blog where you share valuable information and inspire your audience by offering proven solutions. Your Blog and Website must be pinged and submitted to search engines on a daily basis to get indexed and ranked.
You will need an Autopilot traffic machine which you can assemble with completely free tactics like blogging and social posting with comments. Posting on Social Profiles like Facebook and Google will require you to have Facebook and Google pages, where you can access the free scheduling tools. Most blogging platforms offer you these free post scheduling tools so there's no real need to pay for auto posting software. You can really do that, flying solo.
A proven sequence in which this should be assembled is that your website get shared on every blog post signature. The website contains the affiliate products you wish to promote, with relevant content that inspires your visitor to sign up to your list via the web form on your home page. This way you not only generate sales with your website, but also gain new subscribers.
This is but the tip of an impressively large ice burg, but the basics that you should concentrate on and build from there. Remember, making money online is an Art and not a Contest.