You can make a website from scratch in notepad if you know what you are doing with html/css, or you can use a program like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage which allows you to visually construct a site and preview it in real-time.
Or you can download a template and modify that to your needs, or you can use some kind of website generator (they're not very flexible but at least they are quick)
There's a lot of options. Your best bet would be to download a free template and play around
with it. You can edit html files in any text editor.
If you want a domain name, then you need to register one, pay for the hosting and then learn how to upload your site to the space, and learn how to set-up and integrate a forum into your site. That's the usual drill.
Or if you're not bothered about a name, you can probably get one for free as a subdomain (e,g: xxxx.domain.com)
As for generating cash, you don't actually get paid for having lots of views. You only get paid if you put ads on your site, and people click on them (you get a teeny tiny amount every time). Or you can sign up for something called an Affiliate Scheme where you advertise some company's product/service and you get paid a percentage or a larger fixed sum of money if they get a lead/sale from your referral. You can have both on your site if you want, but in all cases its not really worth doing unless you are getting a lot of hits.
Out of honesty, if you just want a forum and nothing else, and you don't care about the domain name then you can get free hosted ones from several places. Try
www.proboards.comThey're quite popular. Or you could try
www.createforum.com
