Welding for the first time - need advice

Bueno, love it when it's an easy fix.

Those three tacks look real good. You might try turning the wire speed up just a smidge and see what happens.

The third, fifth through eight look OK. 3 and 5 appear to be the best. 6-7-8 are OK. Look on the backside to see how the metal fused there.

If you are blowing through on tap 2, use more stickout to ween off some voltage. The further away from material (more stickout), the more voltage required to melt your wire, base metal. When you have a tapped voltage machine, you need to find ways around the limitations.