Favorite way of FREE promotion

[Jordan]

Posting on forums for link trades is another great way to swap links with relevant sites.

[Kaabi]

Link trades have worked out great for me, I'm getting 20% of traffic from two sites.

[Shubie]

for promoting your site you must choose SEO technique .SEO is best way to promote your site.

[WingedPanther]

Another consideration is this: what is your competition level for the relevant searches? If you want people to find you when the Google "Blog", you're going to have a tough time of it. Look into why your competition is ranking higher than you.

Another option, if you sell a service, is to go to trade shows and use word-of-mouth as a tool. Going low-tech can pay off well.

[Willmaniam]

Church. Seriously go for a couple of weeks and start talking to people you get all sorts of business people in a church and you can generate loads of business from them.

Leave some cards or flyers there-offer to do your local churches website for free in exchange for this.

This will all generate interest in your site and help spread awareness. I guess this is if you are selling website design though although I am sure said plan can be modified for the service you're selling.

[morefood2001]

Become really active in some big forums (Like CodeCall) and have a link in your signature. Thats the best way to do it free. If you want to pay, buy a global link on a major site.

[RichardM]

Submitting to directories is a quick and easy way to make the search engines aware a new site exists. However, they provide almost no benefit in terms of PR or traffic.

Once you have submitted your site to some directories, move on to more serious work: article submission, link exchanges, forum participation, etc.

You could also do a link search for your competition. If you go through the sites linking to your competition, you might be able to contact those webmasters and ask if they'd be willing to link to your site as well.

Also don't forget social bookmarking, offline marketing, and word of mouth.

[Jordan]

Adding to what WingedPanther and RichardM stated - every couple of months I will do a link search on several of the sites compete with CodeCall. I've actually found several great ways to promote CodeCall that I would not have known about before.

[RichardM]

I would also like to add that if you are willing to spend a little money, putting an ad in the campus newspaper of a local university or college is a good idea too (or simply putting up home-made posters for hanging around campus). Students tend to share their information more freely than individuals within a company, so if a few of them start talking up your site, the word spreads fast. And I think students are more connected than older folks, who are too wrapped up in other things, so they tend to bookmark sites socially, etc. (That's my thinking anyhow.)

Plus, where else can you get a regular stream of thousands of viewers of your poster (except perhaps a football stadium, rock concert, etc.)?