Ok... I'm gonna throw my 2 cents in here 'cuase I feel your pain, know your pain... the only difference between u and me is I never for a second considered myself a good player....

So, a couple of comments....

1) Absolutely true. I don't give a flying sh!t how good you think you are. If you can't beat the smaller stakes, u need to get better. So read, learn, post, re-read, re-learn, post again, learn some more, crack your sh!t straight up dinky until u can consistently beat these stakes. Then move to the next. Poker's like sales. I don't care how "good" you say you are. Your numbers will tell the story...
2) Don't waste a penny on anything but Poker Tracker which, BTW, you can get for free if you finagle the right site. And that's just so u got an extra learning tool. Otherwise, between the books and the guys on this site u got everything u need for as far up as I've gone. Which ain't very far... but at least to $25NL and I'm sure beyond...
3) I've got 55,000 1/2 limit games under my belt, and it took me another 30,000 micro-stakes NL games to figure out 10NL. I've bugged these guys to death with dumb-@ss questions (which they've answered every one...) and I just cleared 8K hands at $10NL clearing 9BB/100 WITHOUT bonus or rakeback. Check out the videos.... BigSpenda's are dope for our limits... I can't explain how these dudes are willing to answer the same freakin questions over and over... but they do... and you aren't finding another site that u can pay for that's gonna give you better guidance...

So that's my two cents.... I finally figure some light bulbs have gone off and I'm showing some results. Another 50K hands and maybe I'll dabble in $25NL.... or maybe not... either way, I know I'll learn a sh!t pot in the process.

Best of luck