It seems to me that there are four topics within this vein:
From what I read in Google Adwords: A Brave New World it sounded like you should really have your SEO, Tools for Webmasters, and GA setup before you start the AdWords Campaign.
If you want to monitor the performance of your campaign and get the most out of your advertising spend, you need to do all of those things before you start with AdWords.
Sign up for Google Analytics for your site so you can track the progress of other efforts.
Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools - you can use them to identify any problems with your site that Google considers important.
Optimize your site (or at least fix everything Webmaster Tools warns you about) - you'll begin reaping the benefits of those efforts immediately, and organic ranking is better than paid ads in many ways.
Sign up for AdWords (and ensure that your campaign links and conversions are tracked in Google Analytics).
Review your Analytics reports and tweak your AdWords campaigns at least once a month to ensure that you are not overspending on keywords which do not convert.
My advice is try to get one of those $50 (50 GBP) vouchers from Google. Then you feel you are playing with Google's house money. This probably reflects my personality, but I would just get stuck in, you will make a lot of mistakes, but it does not matter because nobody will know!
The great thing is you get feedback of what works and what doesn't in a day, or a week max.
SEO and html benefit from structured learning, but AdWords - suck it and see.
