Before I sold it, it ranked on first page for many of these keywords. I never payed anything to google. All I focused on was link building and optimizing the front page to get the best results in page speed insights. After a little year it ranked on first page, from 1-5 in positions. And I never monteized it, now its bloated however.
I'm not sure how the structure is now, but just inspect it and you see the footer element, it's probably running an older version than you which I'm not up to date on. I customized the whole front page, using existing elements from the "upload" page, admin dashboard and default front-page. Other than that I did a lot of custom CSS to get it more imgur alike in the listing viewer (which is now looking much better in v4 imo)
Before I sold it, it ranked on first page for many of these keywords. I never payed anything to google. All I focused on was link building and optimizing the front page to get the best results in page speed insights. After a little year it ranked on first page, from 1-5 in positions. And I never monteized it, now its bloated however.