Thanks for sharing your experience "taxivantha"
SEO takes a lot of time and is expensive in terms of the time your spend on it.
You should be willing to spend at least 1 hour each day, writing content, building links, checking competition and other
SEO stuff daily, and you should see some light at the end of the tunnel.
First things first, Read all you can about
SEO, if you plan to do it yourself. And discuss things here that are not clear or if there is any confusion.