My deeper question is: "of the 10 things you have to learn/do to be successful, which is the most difficult for newbies"?
So is it hardest to find the best cards and know they're the best?
No, that's probably the easy part due to all the lists of cards on this site and all the blogs.
If so, where do the people from FT and boarding area find those deals?
There is a thread here with all the latest deals. It is a stickie and is updated. Every blog that pushes credit cards also has lists of latest and greatest deals.
Would it be helpful if there was one centralized location for all (or almost all) the CC deals?
There already is.
Or is the hardest thing planning the trip for the first time? Stuff like that
I would say the hardest part is knowing what you can do with the points after you get them. Learning about the airline alliances. Learning about booking award tickets, how to search the award ticket inventory and all that. Lots of info on this site and the blogs but I think it takes a long time to digest it for a newbie.
I'm looking to create some kind of resource to tackle the biggest hurdle for newbies?
Write a blog on how to use the airline software to search award ticket inventory. What the various options are. How it all works. Walk through examples of booking award tickets.
What is that hurdle?
The amount of info you need to learn.