What is the best way to generate traffic to a website?

[Ian]

Paid traffic is certainly a good way to get traffic to your site quickly. Surprisingly, Google Adwords has less of the market than you might imagine. Try Bing/Yahoo first. My results have been very good. However, if cash is limited and you're not in so much of a hurry, article marketing can be a great way to help build your profile and establish your site as an expert in your field. I use an article submission site for this as it saves time and the cost is not too bad. Once you understand what they are looking for in terms of style and content, it's easy enough to produce at least an article per week preferably more at first.
Above all you should be trying to encourage visitors to sign up to your list. Your list of opt-in subscribers is the backbone of your business.