Advice on where to play. (a little long)

I tried searching for this but couldn't find much on what I was looking for.

I was wondering how you guys got to mid stakes holdem? I've been playing small stakes(Party) for a little while and posting some on that forum. The basic advice there is start at a low limit like 2/4. Play 10-20k hands and if you're beating the game, move up to 3/6 and repeat. Is this how most of you worked your way up or did you just jump in and see how you did?

I'll tell you my story and maybe some people can give me advice on what to do. Or if it's too much to read, maybe just comment on how you made it where you're playing today.

I was a winning SSNL player for a while before I moved to limit. I just did it for a change because NL was boring me. I've played a lot of limit in the past, so I didn't have a big learning curve. I started playing 3/6 and I noticed there seemed to be a lot more bad players in limit. I decided to stick with it and I did decent while making the full adjustment and relearning some old concepts I had forgotten.

3 days ago I decided to give 5/10 a shot because I was getting pretty stagnant at 3/6, and it just felt like a good idea. I just played one table and focused on all the players, trying to isolate the weaker ones. I hit a good run and was playing good, so I went up $400 that night.

The next day was HUGE for me. I decided to keep playing 5/10 with my same strategy and it was working again. I went up another $400 after only a couple hours. There was one really bad player at the table I added to my buddy list, who left before she busted. I searched for her and found her playing 15/30. I decided to take a shot and see what I could do. I was pretty nervous thinking all the other players at the table might be sharks. When I got to the table I found another bad 5/10 player from yesterday there too. So I bought in really short for $300 so my bankroll wouldn't take too big of a hit if I got destroyed there. I quickly noticed that several other players at the table weren't good either. One guy was making the girl I followed look like Doyle Brunson he was playing so bad. His stats were around 80/20/1.5. My good run continued and when the table broke up a little over an hour later, I was up $900. I bounced around 5/10 and 10/20 for the rest of the day and finished up $1900. Which is huge for someone who was playing 3/6 a couple days earlier. Today and yesterday have been more of me playing 5/10 and taking shots at 15/30 when I can get a seat to a fish's left. I've gone up about another $1k, mostly from the 15/30 tables.

I used to think these games were sooooo much harder to beat than the small stakes games and there were hardly any bad players at this level. But now it seems not so much. I think this might be a misconception a lot of small stakes players have. If this even is a misconception, I don't exactly have a lot of experience in mid stakes either.

The 2 things I've changed recently is playing only 1 or 2 tables instead of multitabling and really working hard on my table selection. I take a fair amount of time trying to sit at the weakest table I can find. I had heard how important table selection was, but I'd never really grasped the concept until recently. I'm now realizing it first hand.

So now my plan is to play 5/10 and only jump up to 15/30 when the game looks really good. I'm not bankrolled enough for 15/30. I'm not even really properly bankrolled for 5/10. I plan on working up my bankroll a few hundred dollars inbetween each cash out.

Is this a good idea? Or do you think grinding out the small stakes and slowly but surely moving up is a better idea? Or maybe you have another idea all together.