Currently I play 2NL at poker stars and I'll give a quick summary of my online poker career. I use to play pokerstars for play money and left the account to rot after i realized play money tables were stupid. Then one day i got an email from pokerstars saying they gave me $5 real money to play with. I opened up two 2NL tables and started carefully grinding it out and currently am sitting on $28 in less than 3k hands.

1. How many hands will I expect to have played before moving up to 5NL? Would it be around 9k hands since I'm suppose to have a $75 bankroll?
2. Should I ever increase my buyin at .01-.02 instead of moving straight to 5NL? What are the advantages/disadvantages of increasing the buyin amount?
3. What is a good # of tables to multi table? I found 6 to be a relatively comfortable number but I don't get dealt hands fast enough. With 8 tables they get dealt fast enough, but sometimes I can't follow the action
4. How many hands is considered a good sample size of my progress?

As always, thanks in advance