about how many approved directories does it take before you could see an increase in your pr? im new to submitting and i need as much help.. i need to know what it takes to increase pr, like a rough amount of directories daily or total. appreciate it.
There are many factors that affect this. Among other things, whether the directory page where link is listed is indexed or not would matter. Directory's PR or listing page's PR would matter and number of outgoing links on the page will also affect this. Usually 1000 directory submissions with a 40-50% approval rate is good enough to get PR1/2, but it doesn't work always.
I would not rely on directories alone to increase your PR. I always recommend directory submission as one part of a link building strategy.
Yes it is, see this post for a list of directory submission services http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1351600 . They can do it for you and some of them do a good job at selecting the most appropriate ones to submit to.
dont focus on directory submissions only , there are lot of things like these listed below Social Bookmarking Article Submission Blogging and more
try doing a competitive analysis.. check why ur competitors coming up for the keywords and not you.. make changes to your meta titles and descriptions if required... submit sitemap to Google.... and ofcourse do link building, free dir submissions, social bookmarking, blog n forum participation etc etc...