I'm at the point where I'm still "adding" to my list of traffic generating sources, and not "cutting".   If something looks even remotely legitimate, I am not afraid of throwing some money and effort in that direction.   My goal for this year is to spend upwards of $5000 joining and testing various ad sites, safe-lists, traffic exchanges, lead generators, and so on and so forth.   As August is just over half way through, I have spent a bit over $3500 this year on a wide variety of income generating tools, so I still have a bit of money left in my overall ad budget to continue testing.   This style of marketing may not offer the highest cost/benefit ratio right away, but what I am doing is gaining a wealth of knowledge as I continue on in my journey.   What have I learned so far?  A lot actually lol.  Some ad sites deliver and some don't.  It's usually not that cut and dry however.  Usually what I find is there is SOME value in everything I try, but not necessarily enough to continue paying on a monthly subscription for example.