I made money off of a 2 day old directory, and I wasn't trying to sell any links. The thing is is that there are so many cookie cutter directories out there, if yours is another one of them, the only thing you can do is deal with the junk until you have some standings. The other thing you could do is get rid of the cookie cutter script and come up with a unique idea (or I'll sell you mine for $25,000..
)that will attract people to the concept of the directory instead of its PR rank.