We have a few domains which would be great either toplists, or niche directories, in the same realm as our production sites. My thought is we could have a "Provided by *name* *anchor text*" non offensive ad on each page, which links to our production/commercial site. We would be submitting our own sites of course. Is this an effective use of such a resource? What else could we do with it? Also, what opensource type software would you use to open up either a toplist or web directory?
Best to use is http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/articlescript/index.php and do mod rewrite to make is seo friendly. I am using this for my niche sports directory.