Its fairly easy to get people to visit your website. All you need is a few dollars for advertising and you can get people on your site. The problem is getting people to actually stay and interact. I would guess that around 1% of the people that arrive from Google advertisements actually stay around and/or come back. That's not a very good rate if you ask me. Is it worth the money? Not at all. Its just my opinion, but I think using Google Adwords should only be used when you first start up your site and have no other way of becoming visible.

The best way I've found to get people to hang around is posting stories on social bookmarking sites like DotNetKicks, DZone and Digg. This is nothing groundbreaking, but you should know that these are wonderful sources of "free" traffic if you don't already. The visitors tend to stay longer, read related posts and even sign up for your rss feeds. You just never know what's going to be a "hit" and cause lots of traffic to come your way.  I had a story about SubSonic make the main page on DotNetKicks and DZone at the same time. That was fun and very satisfying. 

I tried StumbleUpon's advertising service for another site, ConservativeKicks.com, but the results were even less impressive than the Google ads. I recommend these actions when you start a new web site:

• Start posting comments on related websites (make sure you have links back to your website in your sig)
• Buy some Google ad space. You've got to get people on your site, but don't go overboard. Set a daily budget you can afford
• Post links to your posts on social bookmarking sites. They are the best way to drive traffic to your site
• Submit your site to StumbleUpon and consider using their paid service because it does drive a lot of traffic to your site and you never know what will make them stay on your site.
• Make friends with other website owners. Cross-site linking can help everyone involved.