How to generate traffic

As traffic we mean the people that come to visit your site. So in simple words, what are the ways of bringing people to your site?
Fortunately is simple, but unfortunately, it will require the things that you miss the most. Time and money. And since you are determined on that, why you don't do it professionally? It will save you on both.
So the first question is:

What you know already?

You probably scouted around the web and found a lot of information with tips and tricks of fast ways or "must do" things to get people to visit your site, and all of them have a place in your mind, probably mixed up. You probably got more confused when you realized that higher ranking in search engines is the most effective way (if not the only), and all of that mixed up again for good.
Yet in your confusion, you missed the most important factor.

Quality

You want people to read what you write, but do you have a quality site? I wish i could repeat the word quality a million times, because its the most important thing. Its the only thing that you should have, and all the others will follow.
Take a look at your site. You like it? You would come back and read it again? What other things you offer that makes it unique? Polls? Comments? Reviews?
If you answer yes to most of them then continue reading. If not i suggest you bookmark this page and fix your content. Because if you want people to come to you and most important to come again and recommend you, you need your site(s) to be quality ones full of those goodies that makes your site a personal experience.
Once you have your solid base done, its time to speak about cost.

What are you willing to do, and how much to risk?

Two major techniques or tactics exist. The healthy promotion and the aggressive on.

• As healthy promotion we flag those natural things that a person does in an effort to promote in search engine ranking his sites (more on that later).

• As aggressive one, we flag those moves that are considered or could be considered as spam. From email listings to signatures on forums like

Thanks for this
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"Order Viagra"
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The difference is obvious but the thing you don't realize is that if by an aggressive way you have some ranking and traffic fast, as fast a search engine can flag you as spammer and your domain to be banned for life (you can appeal to their good side but it involves a lot of crying).
Yes its true, both of those techniques have different purposes, one is aiming for long term traffic and the other for short term. But if you decide to engage in aggressive actions, i would advice to be very careful.
Before we see the techniques that are used in these categories, you should know that both of them are linked. In other words, one can take actions that are considered normal and risk a bit by making actions that are a bit aggressive. Or someone can make all he or she can. Just keep in mind that i am not responsible for any consequences of those actions.
You should know also that some these actions cost money. For instance, subscribing to directories includes a free. Advertising on Google also costs. So decide how much you want to spend first. With that in mind the first category is the

Aggressive promotional

As we foretold, under this goes all the risky actions so without much of talking lets see what you can do.

Mailing Lists

Emails are the all time classic ways to produce traffic to your site.

To be continued...