Building Traffic - Techniques for Maximization

Let's discuss one of the most important issues about hosting your own online business in 2007: promotion and traffic. Everyone wants their site to be the buzz of their niche, but the truth is that sometimes it is easy to over-focus on your site's content and value (not that those things are NOT important), and forget all about how you will PROMOTE your site!
The trickiest part about all I have described is that getting not only traffic, but also TARGETED traffic is one of the most difficult steps to building a successful business online. One of my greatest struggles when I first started doing affiliate work was to get over 50 people to my site each day so that I made at least 1 or 2 sales. Not only did I struggle with only getting a few people to my site, but I also found it difficult to get the correct target audience. I saw some moderate success with using Google AdWords; but advertising costs were equaling (and sometimes EXCEEDING) my sales and traffic came and went in bursts each day. This created emotional waves of highs and low. Enough was enough; I had to invest in my time and NOT my money by research and testing out proven FREE ways of generating traffic.
The only question now was, "Which sites do I use?".
Before I get too detailed I want to briefly list the different types of free traffic generating methods:

1) Forums
2) Article Submission
3) Viral Rebranding
4) MySpace
5) YouTube
6) Squidoo
7) Ad Communities

I have dabbled in all of these areas and found most moderately helpful. However, like anything else in life...What You Put In Is What You Get Out. I ended up putting most of my time into forums, articles, rebranding, and ad communities; I am currently investing more time into MySpace for my younger-targeted brands (clothing). I can honestly say that by far the most helpful venues have been article submission and ad communities.
I would love to give some more specific communities and details, but I do not want to directly advertise on this site. You can visit my URL and sign-up for my newsletter for details.