Ok, Tom thanks for answering my last concern. I now have a new question. What is the process to adding downloadable White Papers and Free Reports to my side panels? Do I put the content on a page that I dont make public or do i do something all together different? And how do I collect the email addresses? Do I have pay for a service to do that? Thanks for dealing with my lack of knowledge on these subjects.
I would use a service like MailChimp to handle your newsletter. You can then set it up so you can provide a file to people who sign up and confirm their email with you.
MailChimp provide an embeddable form which you can paste into a Text widget in your sidebar. They have lots of instructions how to do this step by step on their site.