Ive set everything up but traffic is dismal

New here pls have mercy

I have been on many sites from Linkedin to here looking for the best "how to" with zero finances available to get traffic to my website(political in nature with very unique content). I have taken a lot of advice along the way most recently adding a blog to the site. I was told all my facebook posts were direct links to others not beneiftting me. Thing is if people join my FB page then they know about the website if you follow me. IMM makes no sense as I feel I am reposting info already posted but whatever I do it and post everything to my blog that then goes to FB. I have Facebook Fan Page and twitter connected so anything posted feeds into twitter. I also have a youtube channel for some vids I have put together. I think at this point I have the basic social media structure in place.

It seems that most of the advice out there is what to do once you get visitors, not on how to get them. Thus the social media framework. I even asked a guy with a successful fitness business to take a look and he said my content is negative. Well it is and isnt.... it is b/c I ID the problems going on giving solutions on what to do. (this is another story in itself my stats say he didnt really put any time into the site)

Regardless of content how do I get ppl to the site to make that determination in the first place!!?? I have been posting comments with links back to my site but that equates to approx 4-6 pages a week of comments. I have been doing that well over a year half and Im pretty close to burnout. I go on some forums with link back signature but again writers burnout on the content. I have also emailed several sites requesting link exchanges, only few responded. I see from many sites on traffic building to submit articles to article databases... is it worth it?

I know there is a market for what Im preaching. I do get traffic 100-200 on avg to the site(depends on how much commenting I do) but nothing to the level I need to spread my message; and yes sorry to say to generate an income via sales of novelties with my logo on them and from adsense. Yes I have sold "product" so I know what I am doing has a market.

Outside of buying ads what more can I do? Clearly I am missing something in generating traffic to make this abusiness for myself. I have another in the bullpen but need everything hammered down with this one before I launch the other. Please help!