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I hate to say this in an encouragement thread, but it's very, very hard to make a lot of money as a self-publisher.
That said, there are things you can do. Keep rereading your work, and editing, making it better. Try reading it aloud; you can often catch things that you wouldn't see just looking at the page, especially dialogue that sounds false. Get that boy/girlfriend or parent who bought your book to give you honest feedback, and thank them when they savage your literary baby! Join a local writer's group, which can provide feedback for your work. And keep writing. Malcolm Gladwell has written that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become really good at something, and I think it definitely applies to writing. I started writing in grad school, about 15 years ago. I wrote five novels then, and every now and then I go back to them, trying to see if there's anything there I can polish up to sell. Each time I realize they just weren't very good. It's a very difficult thing to admit because like everyone here I tend to fall in love with my own work. But they helped me improve my craft.
It took me many months to start getting steady sales for my books. I'm not in it for the money, but I still check my sales reports almost every day. While it's hard to make a living at it, there are many, many readers out there, especially with the traditional publishers shooting themselves in the foot with the agency pricing model. Keep writing, keep editing, keep improving, and you will make sales.
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