SEO and Growth- Opinions?

Hey guys,

So basically a friend and I started a website that provides a simple online service which is in dire need. Sure there is competition but this website/business is always in need and the market for this kind of site is not saturated. Anyways to the point I am not new to the online business world however I am still a f*in nub at it. My first business an online box subscription barely broke even and we had that for about a year. I wouldn't mind stating the new website on here but I don't know if its against the terms or not or whatever. But here is the question:

1. How the hell do people suddenly experience that massive flux of traffic? (we have noticed competitors go through phases where they have zero to none and after 3-4 months they are hitting 12k uniques a day)
2. Should we solely invest in SEO/backlinking for higher amounts of organic+ unique visits?
3. Is paid advertising worth it for a service that is free to sign up for?
4. We have been around for about 2 months and have a good 300-400 people using our site quite actively. Many of these people were aquired from leadimpact and facebook but the Cost per aquisition was way too much for what we are getting in return.

Any help would be appreciated.

Sadly these are questions you need to research and answer for yourself. You haven't given enough info to truly answer these questions. Further, you're basically talking about an entire online marketing plan. I wouldn't trust that to random forum members.

laubster,

Yeah makes sense, I am just wondering if SEO is something worth investing in and how long it takes to see traffic from SEO if keywords are researched correctly (this part I got down)

If you talking about seo then yes its worth investing.
Say if your keywords searched on google for 100000 times and you are on the first page for that keyword then you can get much traffic that you will never get by advertising also.