Help, I spent 2+ years building a site and can't make it profitable!

Sorry for the click baity title, but I'm in serious need for some guidance.

Context: My background is in web dev, I have 0 xp in marketing and promoting a website, I've watched "a lot" of youtube videos to try to understand the basics, but have 0 pratical experience promoting myself.

What I offer:

t's a platform with audio book summaries, it's subscription based, inspired on existing products, like blinkist, shortform, headway, etc... So I know it's a product with market value, these companies are pretty big... All content is original, I have a catalog of 3500+ books, including original summaries, original book covers and original audio recordings of all books.

The website is built entirely by me, using Golang (Go fiber), vanilla JS, html + tailwindcss (So it's pretty performative!)

Current stats:
- Traffic: ~15 organic visitors/day
-Revenue: $50, 2 yearly subs (few trial signups)

What I've tried:
- Lower prices than competition
- Built a fast website
- Multiple pages with what I call "Super Shorts", basically a summary of a summary, to have a lot of SEO friendly pages
- Do Social media comments with smm paid likes

What I haven't tried (because I'm not sure it makes sense):
- SEO services, to create backlinks, I've seen some mixed feelings about that online
- No ads, I kinda wanted to try to have some sales before putting more money into the business
- No social media real content, like videos, posts, etc...
- No mail campaigns, since I don't have a mail list yet
- No affiliate marketing, I thought about it, but from my research, it doesn't seam so easy, first it's not easy to reach to promoters, second how to deal with payouts.

My goal, is to either try and grow the business myself, or eventually sell the business.

I really appreciate all advice given!
Best regards!

You should've shared your performance stats instead of your business plan. What decides the fate of your business is demand, competition, profits, pitfalls, etc. So, it's difficult to say anything without knowing impressions and average position. If people are not searching for the keywords, then it's a pointless goal. You need to consider all these aspects.

First of all, respect for actually building and launching something. Most people stay in “idea mode” forever.
From what you described, this doesn’t look like a tech problem. It looks like a distribution problem. Competing with Blinkist-type companies isn’t about speed or lower pricing, it’s about attention and positioning.
15 organic visitors/day usually means either the keywords are very competitive, or Google doesn’t see a strong reason to rank the content yet.
Before spending money on SEO services, I’d probably test focus. Instead of 3,500 books, maybe dominate one niche first (e.g., productivity, finance, self-improvement) and build authority there. It’s easier to market something specific than something broad.
Also, social content might matter more than backlinks in your case. Short-form insights from the summaries could work better than just hoping for organic traffic.
You didn’t waste 2 years. You built an asset. Now it’s about learning distribution <3
And if you ever decide to sell, traction and growth trend will matter more than catalog size. I'd focus there first.

Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback, I think you're right, I need to have some way to create short-form content to advertise my platform.

Thanks again

if you manage to grow it, you can eventually resell it in the future, however for that you need to get results first because no one will buy a dead website

as for backlinks they used to be very advantageous back then, nowadays whenever I buy backlinks I don't see any benefits but maybe people that are more experienced than I am with backlinks are going to give you a few tips.

i've made a lot of money with affiliate marketing but without traffic your site is useless so that's not a solution for now.

But if you have been able to stay consistent for 2 years you can certainly make it im sure.

You can't be an expert in everything. Outsource marketing to someone who can work for a small fixed fee + commission for sign ups.