What follows is a list of easy ways to promote your website. They might seem obvious, but it is so easy to forget.
Sign Up
As you browse around the web you run into any number of websites that offer registration, a profile page, and a link to your profile page from whatever content you create - be it news submissions, discussion threads, etc. Sign up as for these sites as you browse around and link back to your own site. Yes, you're inbox will fill up faster than normal, but there are plenty of solutions for that.
Participate
Don't treat your competitors as forbidden territory. Help their websites grow. Participate in competitive communities. There are a few goals here. First - grow the niche. The more sites, the more end users, the more community participation the better. Second - while direct promotion of a competitive site is generally taboo, gaining a trustworthy and quality reputation in will eventually lead very qualified individuals over to your site through profile views or signature links.The Big Boys
High traffic and well reputed sites are arenas that you don't want to leave untouched. Hit up everything from slashdot to flickr and everywhere in between for accounts and participate in these communities regularly. This is a review of steps 1 and 2, but make sure you hit up all the big boys, and all the major sites related to your niche.Power Blogging
We all know the power of blogging. Now it's time to learn power blogging. Every major blogging platform has a community site based on their software. Sign up, create a blog, and manage it. Hopefully you can get a good keyword targetted subdomain name, or maybe a branded one. You want a blog everywhere. Don't duplicate your content - rewrite it. Get to know the communities. What goes over well in one, might not go over very well in the others. Sarcasm can be a big hit in one community, where another one prefers abstract thoughts.Put together 100 entries and schedule them. Start out with 1-4 / day for the first month, then trickle down to a couple of times a week. Don't put up spam. Don't put up junk. Don't hire a copywriter.
Work your human network
Friends and family is your foremost social network. If you can't promote your project to them, you can't promote your project. Don't MLM them with your idea. Show them how cool it is and let them spread the word on their own. Get them to ask you for updates. The more interested they are, the more promotional work they will do. Keep it friendly and pressure free - but if you really want results be clear to them that you want to use them as a resource.Mailing Lists and Newsgroups
Mailing Lists and Newsgroups are archived all over the place. Use a signature link and abide by standard netiquette guidelines. Let your personality come through. Don't try to put up a professional front if it's not you. You want the inbound links, but you also want people to want to click through.Be a Rock Star
If you aren't good at what you do, you are doomed to failure. Believe in yourself. Know your subject matter better than anyone else. Be the guy who others look to for answers. Show up at conferences. Hand out free t-shirts, hats, etc. Get your name in the paper and in press releases. It takes time, but if you brand yourself you inherently lend credibility to all of your web projects.Stand Alone
You don't need controversy to stand alone. You need principals. You need self confidence. Identify when common knowledge and popular opinion is wrong and stand your ground. Let it be known that you are standing your ground - anything from arguing in high profile forums to putting out press releases or any of your other standard promotional tactics.Ask for Advice
Always be concerned about the quality of your product. Ask around online for advice on your design, your UI, your back end code, your hosting solution, your promotional plan, your management tasks... EVERYTHING. First - you are bound to get sound advice you haven't ever considered. Second - you are getting the word out that you have a product and you care about it's quality.Footnotes
Make sure that you rotate your anchor text and your inbound link destinations as you self-generate links. You don't want all of your promotional activity to point to your home page.There is a lot that I didn't get into - for instance where to spend smart dollars, how to work social networking and social bookmarking, or guest blogging. The list of promotional activities that you can run through on a low budget is enormous but it is also time consuming. Instead of creating an all consuming promotional plan - ensure that you are doing things from a promotional standpoint when you do your regular activities. It's much easier and it's a lot more natural. Once it's a habit, it is hard to break.
If you have other ideas, I'd love to hear them.
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