Building traffic to a niche TGP without using any skim to trades is going to be a very slow process. One thing that is critical is to get your trade partner links in a prominent location so you can get surfers to click those links. Take a look at
stocking-mania.com for a prime example. He has huge traffic, but he's also been online since 2001.
My advice would be to enlarge the top referrer list at the top of your left column to include the top 25 or 30 most productive referrers.
I just checked your trade stats at
well-heeled-women.com. Your productivity is very good, but you've only been sending me 15 to 20 hits per day. I've been returning 25 to 35. Prior to the 15th of last month you'd been sending 40 to 60 hits per day and I was returning 75 to 100. I'm not sure what changed at that point. Perhaps you fell out of my top 30. It currently takes productivity that produces about 120 outgoing clicks per day to make my top 30 referrers.