Hi Steve, 

Good luck with your goals! And welcome to TPE!

My advice for online poker: start playing micro’s 9-man single-table SNG’s; regular speed preferable. The fields are soft, the rake is lower compered to cash, the variance is lower compered to large fields tourneys, 6-max or HU and is a good start to learn tournaments strategy. I don’t know how the volume is in America at those, but it should give you a start. Play those until you have a decent BR to start playing tournaments. 

You don’t need a rakeback program to build your BR, so don’t bother about it. Yes, as you said, the sample is small, but play them tight and aggressive and you will beat them.

Be careful on bubble and last 3 people, when you are ITM. Take decisions based on ICM. When you are chipleader on the bubble or in the last 3 people, take advantage of the table. Abuse them preflop with wide raises. When you are middle stack, let the short stack bust first and make the money or second place. Don’t get involved unless you have big hands. If the shortest stack has below 4bb, try to avoid questionable plays. Sometimes is best just to play only KK+ if the shortest stack has 4bb or less. It’s just not worth the price to risk to bust out. Oh, yes, if the shortstack is first to act and folds, biggest stack is on the BU and it folds, and you have let’s say 20BB and big blind has 15BB, yeah, it’s worth it to push on him pretty wide. He will fold most of his range if he is not a complete monkey. When you have the shortest stack, try to abuse the middle stacks by pushing into them. They won’t call you until they have a hand. Try to avoid to push into biggest stack if he’s in the BB. He will call you most of the time and you don’t want to create variance. 

On the HU just do your thing. If you think your opponent has an edge on you, just play push or fold with 25big’s or less. 

And that’s about it. I build my BR first time by playing those low stakes SNG’s mostly in that manner. 

Hope this will help you!

LLTPE! (Long Live TPE)