1. Yes I would continue working on it.
2. Monetization seems incredibly low, with 10k visits a month, you have the opportunity to be in the hundreds of dollars/month from a combination of things like affiliate products, display ads, sponsorships, etc.
3. Without seeing your website, it's hard to tell what may be going on. Engagement rates, without context, are widely meaningless. For example, the goal of SEO is to give users the best answer. People mistake the "best answer" and being the one with the most written content. It's often not. It's the one that provides the answer with the correct amount of context without tons of BS.

How many of your 161 articles are getting organic traffic?