Bouncing song - too quiet, sounds rough, plain,etc...Should I do something different?

[Mattitude]

Hey everyone,

So my song sounds great played in Pro Tools. All the tracks are there and sound great. I bounce the song either as a .wav, .AIFF, or .MP3 file. I play the song back in something like iTunes and it just sounds really bland, plain, rough and boring. It's never as nice and punchy like it is when played it Pro Tools, before the bounce. Also, when I have bounced the song, it is pretty quiet! I'll listen to a professional recorded song and then play mine to find it is way too quiet! I even have to put all the levels really high up and all the volumes and the master level ends up going way over... and this is definitely not the right way to get it sounding more professional, it just kind of distorts it sometimes. But I just do it to make the track louder when bounced.

Should I be doing something else here? I'm quite confused. Should I bounce the track and then import the single, bounced track into Pro Tools and do something with it? I definitely know the volume bars shouldn't be way over!

Anyway guys i'd really appreciate it if you let me know what I need to do! What do professionals do in studios when using Pro Tools? I mean, Pro Tools is industry standard software so I've got to be able to get it to sound good, like when played in Pro Tools!

Cheers,
Matt.