I think you are heading the wrong direction... You should decide on what type and content of your site before you begin to think about monetizing
Directory submission will give you back links but won't do much for traffic. Many site owners are doing adsense arbitrage, getting traffic from Yahoo and hopefully these visitors click on the adsense ads on your site and you make the difference between what you pay Yahoo and what Google pay you. Sorry if that was a mouthful. Personally I believe Adsense should only be a secondary income source, affiliate marketing and selling own products should be the basis for long term online success.
No dont even bother...there are over 1 million different directories online. No one browses them unless its very popular. You will not earn much from them.
Directories wont get you much traffic. But they will get your Pagerank up as they provide backlinks. The higher your pagerank the more easier you will be able to sell regular links on your site. For traffic try to buy some links on large sites. In fact I can help you with that, contact me if interested
What I prefer are photoshop tutorial sites > not only are they in high demand but photoshop tutorial directories can be used to promote your site (and they are all highly used with high traffic).
hehehe. Funny you should mention that, I just finished watching a photoshop tutorial for fixing redeye about 5 minutes ago. tutorials are great for bringing people in.
I agree that you got to pick something that has a built in following already or that would develop a fast following. Look up trends off of other sites like eBay and what not. See what other people are already spending money on. I believe Lycos and Excite have information on popularity and trends. You definitely then need to make sure you can provide valuable content to keep your visitors coming back for more AND that will attract the search engines bringing you more traffic. Good luck.
Well, I would think that the best option is to really start a website with contents which you have deep conviction in and/or are good at. Don't start something you have no clue about because sooner or later you get bored and lose interests. Sites would take a while to get known then be able to monetize so do it for the interests then in time, the money should come in.