What is the easiest blog platform to set up and eventually monetize?

I'm using Weebly. Absolutely simple to use, no skills required. You can purchase or register your own domain name with them.

Yes, you can also embed anything such as a code for ads.

Whatever you choose, make sure you don't rely on ads only. Diversify everything and start building a list of people who want to read your blog.

Newsletter service like Mailchimp is great for this because it doesn't cost anything until you have 2000 subscribers. When you have that many, the service can pay for itself easily.

​Hope this helps.