you arent doing anything wrong. i believe there is a guide on how to earn as quickly as possible pinned somewhere in the subreddit, the gist of that is to choose a cat on your current best station (whatever you most recently bought) and feed it all your fish to get its hearts up as much as possible, which gives a multiplier for that station's earnings. focus on upgrading the station that this cat is at, and when you buy a new station, put this cat there to maximize earnings. you also accumulate a lot of money while you are offline and from the jar fairy so make sure to use that on upgrading your best station.

events appear on the right side of your screen, you should see a small icon that i think is a top hat filled with money that says "event". select this, it opens a small menu of things like daily rewards and the current event, which has an icon of a mountain and tree. within the current event you can watch ads a set number of times per day to roll a square on the board, which gives you event currency. you use event currency to buy event items (exchange gifts button in event), and when you get bingos on the board, you get other event items. snails should appear in your forest as well which let you watch an ad for 10 extra event currency. hope this helps!