What is with the Google PR

Over the last few months I have been trying to get the PR up on this site. I have links on about 6 websites that have a PR of 5 or better (links that I pay for). I also have many other links from sites linking to my posts here.

What confuses me is why it took me 4 months to even get Google to index my site. Now I still have a PR of 0. I am not sure what is going on or if it really does take this long to get indexed and ranked.

I am now listed in Google after submitting the site, submitting the sitemap and waiting a few months. If you have any tips on how else I can get the PR of this site to go up please feel free to leave a comment.