Didn't take time to read everyone elses post so sorry if they said this already.
18-36 backlinks isn't much. If you got page 2 in google then it may be a fairly easy niche to rank for. Toss in the urls of the sites on the first page to a pagerank and backlink checker. Also check your site, and compare. I recommend working on getting your pagerank up and more backlinks.
the keyword you ranked page 2 for, use that when linking to your site. Go to other sites, wordpress blogs are perfect for this if they are do follow. Use your name as your anchor text (keyword phrase) and website obviously. Dont be spammy in your comment, just be on topic to their post. remember you arent trying to get traffic off this comment so dont advertise your site or anything, just post a comment like everyone else. the purpose is for the backlink with your anchor text not to get traffic from their site.
I recommend getting about 1,000 backlinks. Using an app to get these fast may get your site sand boxed. So do little spurts of 50 or 100 at a time, maybe every few days. Simply email and ask other sites in your niche to write a review of your site, and link to your site with your anchor text. A few of them may actually.. The ones that say no, it may be worth paying them 10 bucks. I wouldnt go over that, there are plenty of other sites to get free ones, but if the site has a good PR and links to it and traffic, then it may be worth some cash.
Host a contest or something. Be crafty and get them to link to your site using your anchor text. Host the contest, and in the rules say they must be linking to your site with this phrase as the link. And when you pick the winner, they must show where that link is on their site. IF they cant then they dont win and it goes to the runner up.
Pay to have a review done on a huge site. This is just an example, but JohnChow gets tons of traffic! Though he charges like $500 for a review. (I am sure you can find sites with tons of traffic that are cheaper) But spend a 100-200 bucks on a review or two on POPULAR sites. Their followers will come to your site, giving you traffic. And the bloggers on their site may follow suite and write about your site.. Also their content probably gets scraped often, meaning tons more link backs..
There are tons of ways, just have to get creative and use the leverage of the big timers if you have to.