Getting Links and Traffic

How to get links and traffic to your site on a budget...Well, for me, it has been the "old-fashioned" way for the most part. I submitted to search engines and directories (I do have a scrubtheweb.com account which helps speed that up a bit). No directory is too small for me. If I come across it in my searches I go ahead and suggest my link! I was very happy when my very first site (not counting my practice sites) BangkokDentistry.com was listed on DMOZ on my first submission! From what I have gathered from online articles and mentions, this is a fairly difficult, yet important directory to get on. I did notice a significant increase in traffic just after I was listed.
I constantly surf the net for one thing or another, whether it's trying to find information for one of my many projects, inspiration for something new, or just looking for "the name of that guy..you know the one that was in that movie with that actress.." So, if I am in a forum or reading a blog and the topic is relevant to one of my websites, i will post a comment or answer a question along with my link. Many forums ask for your url and link it to your name, so I try to use a good keyword phrase or maybe just my website name for my "name." I don't just post for the sake of posting, I try to have something both relevant to the site I'm on and the url I submit.
For eample, Fodors is a popular travel forum and after posting a few answers to questions, I noticed quite a number of visits from their site. I haven't been on there lately, but last time I checked, my site still get a visit or two on a regular basis if not daily. Note to self: visit Fodors again and see if I can be of assistance to anyone in the forum.
Link Exchange: I try not to do too much of this and if I do, I try to keep it very relative to my sites. I know there are a few links on some of my first sites that I should get rid of when I get a chance.
One-Way (non-reciprocal) links: I like LinkReferral , but not so much for the quality of the traffic as the reviews. The traffic is mostly good for numbers as people review or visit your site. I'm at about 300-500 visits a month from unique visitors. If nothing else it is another one-way directory listing, unless you choose to link back to them. (good idea if you become a premium member for $50 and want others to sign up).
Another great way to generate tons of one-way links back to your site is using this mvlinks system. you add your link to the list of 9 other links and post it on your site. promote this to some other friendly webmasters and before you know it you have some quality one-way links back to your site and it grows exponetially. Of course you'll never get the perfect world multiplier of 15x15x15x15x15 etc. but it's still a whole lot! Of course one-way links are weighted more heavily that reeciprocal or paid links for the most part and that helps quite a bit when your page is ranked by search engines. If you promote it to webmasters in generally related content, the links will be even more valuable as the sites that link to you are relative to your site and your site is seen as more of an authoritative source and more important on the web.

I've just started with the FreeViral ( Send me One Million FREE Guaranteed Visitors) , I've heard it works very well..much like the mvlinks page above. I'm just trying it out on a few small, practice sites to see if it is effective.

Don't forget to set up pages in the social networking sites, Myspace, Facebook, etc. Here's a new one that will actually pay you a few bucks if you generate enough page views YUWIE.com
but I think you might have to put up some sexy pics to get enough page views! I'm not that sexy!