Let's start with the FREE ways to drive traffic to your website:

1. Directory traffic: This is traffic brought to your site because someone found you in a directory using a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo. There are plenty of smaller directories too. You should submit your site to as many directories as you can. There are some directories that charge money to be listed or for a premium place in their directory. I have not found that paying for these services brings in more traffic to my site, but others say it helps a lot. To bring in traffic from a search engine, you need to make your site search engine friendly. This is often referred to as SEO or search engine optimization. I have plenty of free tips and articles to help you with SEO for your site.

2. Banner exchange: You can make a banner for your website and exchange it with other sites. The easiest way to exchange is to join an exchange site. My favorite is LinkBuddies and they have been around awhile. They even have a free banner creator. There are more free banner creators on the web. The most common size is 468x80. For a link exchange through a service, you just put some html into your site where the banner will go and the banners from other websites in the exchange are loaded onto your page each time someone views it. Each time a banner is shown, you earn credit towards having your banner shown on other sites. At LinkBuddies, your banner is shown once for each two banners shown on your site. The nice thing is that you can put a banner on each page, so credits add up quickly. If you are just starting out and need some traffic quickly, you can additional credits, but this is not required. At LinkBuddies you get 500 free impressions of your banner when you sign up.

3. Forums: Join some forums related to the topic of your website, or other topics you are just really interested in. Post and respond to other posts. Answer some questions. Once you are actively participating in the forum, put a link to your site in your signature if it is allowed. Be sure to include it in your forum profile.

4. Blogs: Setting up a blog is free. Blog about your topic. Make comments in other blogs that are relevant to your topic. Make good contacts and exchange links between your blog and someone else's.

5. Exchange text links: This can help with your search engine ranking as well as bring in some traffic. But don't just exchange links with anyone out there. Exchange links with sites that will be of interest to the people who read your site. Links to relevant pages are always better than just a link to another site for the sake of having a link. Make sure that your links page is easily accessible from the main page of your site.

6. Email: Make sure to include a link to your site in your personal email signature.

7. Offline: Is your website part of your business? Put it on your business card, stationary, flyers, etc.

There are also paid methods of bringing in more traffic to your site:

1. PPC: Paid-per-click ads can be a quick way to bring in traffic. Popular programs are Google's Adwords, Yahoo's Search Marketing, MSN's ad service and 7search. There are plenty of other programs too. The lesser know programs will probably cost you less money, but you will probably not get as much traffic either. The trick is to write a great ad that will make people want to click on it and combine it with low-cost keywords. If you are making money with the ads, then consider adding on some more expensive keywords. I don't spend more than half of what I bring in on ads and this works well for me.

2. Paid traffic sites: You can pay to have somewhat targeted traffic driven to your site. If your site is new and does not contain Adsense ads yet (or a similar program) then this can be a way to spread the word quickly and inexpensively. Just be sure to read the terms of service for any affiliate program you join. Some specifically prohibit you from participating if you are using a paid traffic program to get a lot of traffic to your site.

3. PTR programs: Paid-to-read programs pay people to read emails. Basically, the program is acting as your affiliate. You pay them, they send out a great email and some of the people who read it will be interested, click on the link in the email and visit your site. Again, make sure that this is ok with any other program you may have running on your site.