I don't know how much a newbie's advice is worth, but here goes anyway:
Get out canvassing and aim to earn from day 1 or 2.
Don't spend too much time thinking. It's called analysis paralysis. You keep on thinking up new ideas and forseeing problems.
Just get out there and do it. Then do it some more. It's a learning process and no-one knows it all. What works for one won't always work for another. What works in one street will bomb in another.
* Find out what works very well and do more of it.
* Find out what works quite well and improve it so it works very well.
* Find out what doesn't work and stop doing it.
I bought a trolley and then spent almost a month planning and thinking. A whole bl**dy month wasted when I should have been out there getting the job done.
Now I'm out every day doing it, I'm making loads of mistakes and getting in a right mess, but it's better every single day.
(One day, I left my Caution sign at one house, left my broom at another house and my hard hat at a third house. Now I have a check list taped to the inside of the van door. Not left anything behind since.)
As you're starting from scratch, there should be no question about trad or WFP. You choose and you'll get the customers. For myself, it's wfp or nothing. Prospect likes what you offer? Becomes a customer. Prospect doesn't like it? Don't sweat it, just go on to the next prospect.
Don't think of it as canvassing - think of it as prospecting. You've got to shift a whole load of base rock to find those few nuggets. The faster you shift the base, the faster you'll get to the gold.