re: For those of you with a successful website, how did you "break through" to get traffic?

Don't buy ads...yet. Spend the first year or two developing a content marketing plan and rolling it out on all platforms, every week. Create short shows for Tik Tok, Insta, YouTube. Write guest blogs posts with backlinks (or hire someone.oj Fiverr to write for you). Contribute on Reddit. Engage in related topics on Twitter. DM influencers on IG and offer them free stuff to mention you. Drive folks to your site by spreading meaningful content across social networks and related blogs. Tighten up SEO too. It's a long slog and eventually you'll sort out what doesn't work and leave those things behind. But at first try all platforms and create meaningful content.