Banner Exchanges and Web Rings
A quick, easy, and often very effective way to start driving traffic to your site is to participate in banner exchanges and reciprocal links. A banner exchange is a service that connects webmasters together and they trade banners, posting a banner ad or button on their site to promote the other's. A reciprocal link program can be organized through a central site, or it can be something you arrange by writing directly to the webmaster of a site you think would have visitors who would be interested in your own site. Banner exchanges and reciprocal links are free and can be one of the quickest ways to get people to start visiting a brand new site! A web ring is a group of sites on the internet which have related topics or themes - webmasters agree to exchange banners. This is a good idea that allows visitors to follow on to related sites.
If you have access to image creation and editing software, create a banner and a smaller button to advertise your site with. Then search out all the banner exchanges you can to find one that seems to suit you and cater to sites dealing with your chosen theme. Be careful, however, not to overload your site with dozens of banners and buttons as that can simply look too tacky - no-one will take your site seriously.
You don't need a banner or button to participate in a reciprocal link program, as you simply write in the text and link to the other site as you would for any other link on your page. But, set aside a separate page for your links or highlight them in a box so your visitors will be able to find your links page - once people start to visit your site and see there's a links section they may end up writing to you and offering a link exchange!
BigHits.com - runs a novel service to increase traffic. When a visitor comes to visit a participating site, another browser window is opened behind the current one with the site of another participating site ready for later viewing.
>Bravenet - offers a free service to set up web rings.
Linkbuddies.com - runs a banner exchange program