Search beat out directories as a primary means of navigation due to scalability and
efficiency of the search business model. Directories are nowhere near as efficient
at monetizing traffic and generally are not as relevant as search engines.
In addition to search, there are also other forces killing the margins of directories:
• Social news sites. Bottoms-up news sites [...]

Sometimes it is worth it to spend a little money to help build your site up. Many
people can find college students or people from Craigslist and pay them about $10-
$12 an hour to create content for their sites.
Find a copywriter for hire at a site such as Elance or have a more expensive
copywriter ghost write [...]

Same Old Stuff
Creating an extremely useful web-based tool, or paying a programmer to create one
for you, is one of the most effective ways to build content, which will, in turn, help
you build natural linkage data. Writing articles will also help you build up your link
popularity.
Many websites blindly add large sums of free content to their [...]