How to Promote Your Adsense Sites

Ok, this is a blatent call for help.

Having posted that adsense/niche sites are not as prevalent as may be thought, I still have a problem that is bothering me and would like thoughts of any active adsensers - particularly the regular blogger on the adsense challenge.

So, I know it will work - I have the ability to crank out plenty of sites, be they total scrapers (quicker and easier to produce) or rehashed articles (may have a little more staying power, depending on the amount of arcticles out there and the changes made to the articles).

Why arent I churning out several sites a night? Well, just aint too sure of the best way of promoting them. In fact, I have been spending my evenings trying to establish a way of interling them.

What, would you say is the best way of gaining that all important search engine ranking?

Methods I know of are:-

1. The straight forward site map - Sure it gets google googling but does it get you listed?
2. Article sites - The impression I get, is like search engines, there are plenty you would like to be listed with and would feed you plenty of traffic but are not that easy to get into. And then there are plenty of sites crying out for your articles, but have little or no status in the SEO game. Plus, lets face it, writing unique articles is a pain in the bum - If I wanted to do that, I would create a unique content site!
3. Your own network of sites - This is what I have been working at. But, again, it is proving to be alot of work and if you have no web presence to start with, its going to be a long and slow process to build/establish any kind of decent network.
4. Your blog - this seems pretty straight forward - you have a blog - its got PR - you throw up a couple of links. But, you adsensers out there dont seem to be using this method. Why? Is it due to this "bad neighbour" link thing I have been reading about - on the google website, no less. Surely if this really works, all I have to do for my online store is create a high number of adsense site, on the keyword I want my legit website to rank, then add links to all my competitors and they will be penlised - abit harsh on them!
5. Free directory listings - Are they still worth anything? I listed my one established adsensor with maybe 20-30 free directories, back before xmas and it lead to about one registering back link at present - Not a great return - (It wasnt Dmoz - that might have been more worthwhile!!)

So, alot of questions, but I feel important ones that are getting in the way of my progress.

If, of course, you just throw them up, submit the sitemap to google and forget - Please just let me know and I will try the same.

Cheers,
Rich