You'll probably find the people getting good PPC results, use their own keywords, no applications etc. :P
I am reading every day by the way
Keep going man, you seem to be doing well! At least your making money, even if it's small amounts, lets say you invest $10, you come out with $15, so you made $5, if you invested $100, you'd made $50, invested $1,000, you'd make $500, invested $10,000, you'd make $5000.
The real money comes in when you scale everything up, so you have to remember PPC takes time to get right and once it's right, scale it up and rinse in the money!