By the sound of it, you are in the same boat as myself, and plenty of others I know of here on Itch.
It sounds like you have already got some good advice from helpful people, but I think I add a few things.
Here has been my strategy and philosophical approach to starting up as an Indie Developer.
* Make friends with other developers, and be genuinely kind to them, helping them with there projects and providing feedback without a demand for them to do the same. This kind of behavior invites real relationships, not transactions. I've found that having a slowly building web of Developers that can help each other is quite valuable for all people involved. You learn about new websites, what has worked and not worked for others. Making this thread was a good starting point for this.
* Set the price quite low to begin with, and expect no profit from your first, second and third games. As others have said, its so hard to download a game from someone who has no reputation, especially if they have to pay for it or endure ads. At the moment, I have experimented with setting my game to $2 here on itch, and selling it on steam for $3 (on 40% off sale to start tho). I just want to get my feet in the water and see what its like, I expect that this will bring in little to no money, the point is to learn from the experience and have a better understanding from the start for development of my next game.
* Treat Indie game Development as a long term venture. I don't see a problem with working a part time job and living frugally to make ends meet. I have no expectation to make a decent amount of money from game development for at least a decade. Sounds grim right? Well, there isn't even then there is no grantee you will ever make good money from this, if your not doing it because you love it, find another job. If you mentally prepare for this to be the case, you can't be disappointed, only pleasantly surprised or completely prepared for what happens.
This is just my 2 cents, take it with a grain of salt, I'm still new to this just like you mate :)
Be patient, as Dark Dimension said, most successful programmers have plenty of failures along the way. This is just the nature of the beast!
Enjoy the process friend!
Link me one of your games if you want some feedback! :)