one thing you will learn is that scared money attracts more sharks than the Brody family - learn what that means
also you dont really have to wait until your roll is bigger from freerolls to play cash - if you are a good player you will be ok
since you had $9 you could have played .01/.02 game with 18 buy ins - which is plenty for a beginner
or you could have played 5 $1.65 sngs on BCP - if you cash in 2nd and 3rd in two of them your only down like 2.25 and played 5 tournaments - and if you were to win one outright out of those five then your in the black