If i'm just launching a new site, what would you suggest as the best way to get traffic without being penalised for too much traffic?
Penalised for too much traffic, not sure where you got this from however you do not get penalised for having too much traffic. This would make sites like DIGG and stumble upon go out of business. It all depends on what your website's market is, if you told us this perhaps we could help further. I would not be able to give you advice for quick fire ways to send your website traffic short term unless you told us. Long term ways would be things like search engine submission and SEO your website, forums and yahoo and google groups. You need to target your audience and communicatr with them, blog posting on related blogs, blog carnivals.
ppc, write articles and forum marketing. social bookmarking is also a great way to get traffic to your site.
I am also in the same boat with a brand new site. It is www.idbadgecenter.com. It is basically an ecommerce site for ID badge products. Any suggestions to start me off? I have submitted to the free directories. I have done a small email marketing campaign to a list of emails we had access to. Not sure where else to go from here.
Considering you have a product you are focusing on i woudl recommend SEO for that single product, choose some high searched keywords surrounding your product and SEO for them. This is a long process and is not easy however in the long term it will be much better.