1. In my experience Blogs do get ranked quicker than websites, search engines LOVE blogs, and they are really hot right now, especially Googles blog service Blogger. Also remember the main difference of blogs and websites is that blogs are vibrant constantly being updated with fresh content (which Google loves) while websites are static. So if you are planning a niche or how to site where you will be adding fresh content, updates and entries on a regular basis then a blog is a good idea, BUT if you are planning something like a store then a website would probably be better.
ALSO If you are planning a long term biz you should not use a free service like Blogger, it is better to buy a domain and use a blog creation software like WORDPRESS, BECAUSE if you use a free bloging service like BLOGGER you do NOT OWN that site OR the design and if you are planning a long term business you should OWN the domain and the site's design. Otherwise it's like renting a house and renovating it even though it's not yours.
2. I think you are referring to subdomains, which means you register (pay) for your main domain for example: yourdomain.com and then you can add subdomains to it from your hosting company cpanel. A subdomain would be like help.yourdomain.com or dogs.yourdomain.com or whatever.yourdomain.com. You don't pay for the subdomains you only pay for the MAIN domain.
3. Forget frontpage! that is way too complicated. There is enough to learn with affil marketing without having to deal with that techie headache.
COFFEECUP VISUAL SITE DESIGNER is the GREATEST and EASIEST web builder software. If you can use WORD you can use COFFEECUP. TOTALLY user-friendly. Beautiful templates, NO HTML required, wysiwig, drop and drag features, and FTP upload.
It is very user friendly. I used it and built a site in 2 hours start to finish. It's 49.95
BUT they give you a free trial and you can build your site and use the service as long as you want for FREE (the only catch is you will have a link on your site to them at the bottom of the page, but if you buy it then that link goes away) Also their customer support is the greatest, they ACTUALLY answer the phone WITHOUT holding and you can get help if you get stuck. coffeecup.com is their website. HERE IS THE LINK:
CoffeeCup - HTML Editor, Flash & Web Design Software
There is also Webeasy 7 Pro. Another good software BUT Coffeecup is better more user friendly. You can get a free trial BUT just to see how it works you cannot publish a site with the free trial like you can with Coffeecup. HERE IS THE LINK:
Web Easy Professional 7
It is not a good idea to use the web builders that come with Hosting: Mainly because if you ever want to switch hosts YOU will not be able to edit your site, you will have to find a host that uses the SAME web builder and that is hard to do because they usually use different ones.
Also those builders are NOT the greatest design wise and they are hard to work with because you don't download the builder to your computer you have to use it on their server and that means you don't really get a full screen view you view and design it in your browser, which sucks!
Hope this helps--I asked the SAME THREE QUESTIONS when I first started out, some things I learned the hard way, paid for hosting with site builder which sucked and I lost money.