Getting A New Site To Rank

I am currently trying to get a website to rank on the first page for a niche that doesn't have much competition. I bought the domain on 3/25/15 and as of right now my A.S.P. for BIng is 19.1 and for Google is 170. The only "spammy" thing I have done is paid for backlinks for an article I had written for me on iwriter. I do not suggest this method because they claim all sites ar 0-3 PR, but I have came across several that aren't even indexed. Anyway, I have been building a few links by posting comments through disqus, , and I have made sure that every page is optimized for a specific keyword by meeting alll of the requirements of Yoast. It has been almost a month and I am only to 170 on Google, but my site is so new that I am prolly being impatient. I was curious to know what I should be doing at this time? Just keep building links manually, or what? I don't really know how much influence links will have because it's not a competitive sector, and I am 99% sure that I wouldn't need 1000's of links, so I thought there could be better ways to spend my time while waiting on Google. I know you will prolly need more details, but I thought this little write up would at least give you an idea of my progress so far.

I'm having the same issue, would appreciate if anyone post a guidance here

just keep building high authority links your site is still new

A new site may take a while to come into the SERPs especially if it's already not ranking (this goes for all new websites building links for the first time). Make sure your onpage are good and then build links from authority sites (you need to balance power with trust).

I personally am not into blog commenting as most sites are moderated and it's also time consuming. Deleted comments would cause negative link velocity and could decrease your rankings.

If they dont rank for keywords within 3 words. Try ranking for long tail keywords. You might be going through the google sandbox effect. GL

Send 3-5 good quality links per day continuously for several weeks before you see results.

Get on Fiverr and spend 5, 10 or 15 whichever you can afford. You will be using them for the leaverage they can provide especially since you are entering a race that is already moving quickly but so is everything (speed of earth moving through space) So you will be looking for Drip feed SEO Link pyramid creation gigs. Also look for the PDF "Dream-Niches by BECKER and CHASE"

Quality over quantity.

Thanks for the advice guys. I wil check out some of the resources you mentioned. I have been submitting to relevant directories, which may be a bad thing. But, folks with new websites are going to do SOMETHING to get folks to their site, google or not. Directories seem like a logical choice, so that's what I have been doing, but I am ready to move on to other methods now. I think I have enough directory links.