Hi there,
Welcome aboard.
I'm only a couple days old, but here's some of what I've gathered.
There's free hosting out there, but most of the TGP sites I've looked at have banned or are banning sites hosted on free hosting.
I've noticed some sponsors offer free hosting where you can promote their content. I've signed up with a couple of the through-my-sponsor hosts, but have had signup/login/upload/ difficulties with all of them, so I'm staying away from it for the time being.
I don't know about AVS, though it interests me, so I hope you'll get some good responses. Regarding money, I've had my site up for about a week and made $35 when someone signed up with one of my sponsors, so it IS possible.
Here's my What I've Learned in 2 Days thread, where some of us newbies tossed in some lessons learned. You may want to check it out.