Actually, those stats are not horrible.

If you dig around online (sorry, can't find the link right now), you'll find people reporting conversion numbers for SaaS free trials --> paid accounts at:

  10% convert to a free account
  15% of free accounts convert to a monthly subscription
  ------------------------------
  0.015% overal conversion rate

To put it loosely in perspective with your numbers:

  2,200 wait list signups
  9 people signed up and used it
  ------------------------------
  0.004% conversion (a quarter of the way there)

I didn't read your follow up, but my first thought would be to carve out a hyper targeted sub-niche of users.

For example, programmers who work at a < 10 person startup, located in San Francisco, who can be found listed on Twitter/Facebook/Etc..., have purchased monthly subscriptions for software tools in the past and wear yellow t-shirts :)

Market to them with a very personalized message (easy since it's a very targeted sub-niche) and see if you can get closer to that 0.015% mark with that targeted messaging.

But you may already have done this or something similar detailed in your follow up post :)

Just my two cents...