paid membership blog questions

Hello,
Have been reading in the forums for days now and am hoping someone might bring some clearness about what I need for a straightfoward private paid membership blog (on a tight budget!).

I am trying out s2member at the moment, but what I find is that when I try out a plugin, I discover I need another to do all I need to do. I also am still on dial-up so I can’t do most video tutorials, so it is all slow-going.

What I would like to know is:

-Do most membership plugins (s2member in particular) also make profiles for my members-to-be?

-If not, is there a good profile plugin that allow my members to upload gravatar (or use some provided by me) and have a profile page?

-I have discovered that it isn’t easy to make my blog private (which is essential). Do membership plugins handle that or does that take another plugin?

-Would Buddypress help me at all? It is hard for me to figure out if it might help the membership part, even tho’ I won’t want a forum or really much social networking.

My site is going to be simple in the sense that I want the whole blog to be private, I won’t be having membership levels or any free content

Thanks for any advice or experience.