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Once you do that it's likely you can get accepted into AdSense. (Once you're in, read ALL the rules and do not ever break or bend them. Consider yourself warned.)
There's way too much to go into here, but you can get books and software to make web design easy. Web hosting is quite straightforward if you get the simplest type of account.
The one thing you HAVE to do is keep your Tripod site alive and make sure that all visitors and spiders are redirected to the new site. Don't let it die. You should also get as many inbound links as possible changed to point to your new website.