High quality content doesn't mean much (hell, low quality content from already highly ranked sites gets the first picks)
Stop thinking of yourself as a "small-time blogger" and think of yourself as a journalist, a reporter, someone who has a story to tell. Write content that people want to read. Uncover something that people care about. Write something controversial. Use 'social' to get people to see what you write.
I've been in your shoes: I was a 'small-time blogger' and just kept uncovering stuff that people care about, articles that people want read, and after hundreds of posts I finally started getting traffic regularly. Then I uncovered something that lots of people cared about and that post of mine hit the home page of HN and Reddit all at the same time. I didn't think my server could keep up with all the traffic.
Sure, make sure your site is "optimized" based on SEO best practices. But don't obsess over rankings.
Otherwise, I get a nice amount of traffic from various sources (people that linked to my site, social media, HN, and Reddit) but those sources aren't "long-term" like organic traffic is. (you hit top once and then you're gone the next day so to speak).
There are now many services that exist just to advertise content: Taboola, Outbrain, Stumbleupon's ad product, CoPromote, and more. You can build a following over Wordpress or Tumblr. The rates are lower than conventional PPC and display because the ad networks who offer it regulate what can be promoted.
Other opportunities include syndicating your content on popular sites, which, if you follow Google's guidelines, can be great for improving search ranking.
It has always costed something to rank. Ranking on Google for a valuable term is now more expensive than ever. If your budget doesn't allow you to rank for your target terms, there are lower cost options to build qualified traffic. You can use those lower cost options to build up your site quality and authority to the point to which you can compete.
And what do you mean "syndicating your content"? I've actually not heard of doing this.
For SEO purposes it's a little different and not always easy to manage. This is a good article that I've found that talks about some of the practical issues that can pop up: http://smepals.com/small-business-seo/how-content-syndicatio...?
Yeah, title is a little negative, but it's still got some useful details on how to manage it intelligently.
Not everyone who will syndicate or scrape your stuff will be willing to follow the rules. A lot of people will not even understand what you're asking them to do, so you'll have to spell it out for them as didactically as possible.
If you can get them to follow the rules, it can be an effective way to 'borrow' the traffic and link equity for a certain page or post.
More on rel=canonical from Google: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/5-common-...
And a Moz discussion: http://moz.com/community/q/syndication-link-back-vs-rel-cano...
Thanks for the tip!
Commenting won't cut it, blogrolls won't cut it, site-wide footer links (e.g. "Wordpress Theme by MyBlog.com") won't cut it. You need someone that writes regularly for a premier or second tier site to create an editorial link to your post with relevant anchor text.
It's hard to get those authors to notice you - really hard - but it does happen. Keep writing good quality content and engage the right people often. Do something nice for them, offer a free tool that's perfect for their niche or help them out with technical stuff. Be a good guy - good guys get good links, given enough time.
When you have a few high authority links into your pages, you can link to yourself and distribute that page rank around your site. And when your site moves up the rankings, don't forget to link out to the other struggling good guys out there.