Lots of actual good advice in this thread
My additions:
- If you can't generate traffic, your site won't make sales. Affiliates will not help you. Tube channels could work if you know what you're doing, but only a few sites have mastered this and they have a lot of good content.
- "Clever angles" will not help you.
- Like CurrentlySober said, it's easier to learn to run a paysite if you acquire content as cheaply as possible... I used to pay models $100/hr and shoot 5-10 clips for a bunch of niches. The ROI on softcore was much higher.