What do I have to fully understand to get into Wholesaling?

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After doing more and more research about REI, I have decided a good starting point for someone in my situation is wholesaling. I have been reading this site, and articles for a few days now, but there are some things that remain cloudy to me.

1) The base concept of wholesaling is simple - find a good deal for another investor to fix up, and mark up the price to make a small profit. My problem is how this actually gets done without any money I have to spend involved in the transaction for me, the wholesaler. Assuming I have a list of prospective buyers lined up, when I manage to find a good deal, how do I tell the seller that I am willing to purchase their property even though I plan on simply handing a contract over to someone else? Am I taking over the sellers mortgage, only to hand it over further to another? Or am I taking out my own loan only to pay it off in full as soon as I give the contract to the investor? OR am I not taking any financial responsibilities at all and only acting as a middleman for a transaction between the seller and buyer? Haha I need help :)

2) The contract itself: How does this work? Is there a default contract that everyone has to sign when transferring ownership of a house, or is this a specific contract designed for wholesaling by me? Obviously I have no experience in the buying or selling of property, and this is a topic that not many people explaining wholesaling go over because they assume that I have knowledge of how a transaction works. Maybe I just need to read about the process of a normal property being sold, but I would like to know how this differs from a wholesale.

3) Are the main targets for a wholesaler Forclosures or HUDs? How do you beat a realtor to a "normal" property? It seems to me the wholesaler is basically an unliscenced realtor who is focused on selling to an investor rather than a potential homeowner. Is this a fair assessment?

I'm sure I have millions of other questions, but I want to start with these 3 basic ones first.