Question : Fresh promo ideas for puzzle site

I want to promote a site with crosswords, cryptograms and other games. Since this is a low budget project we need to look for creative solutions to generate a fair amount of traffic. There will be some classic bannering, but this will not be enough I'm affraid.
We will submit the site to many search engines and launch a tell-a-friend action.
To be clear: we don't want to use bulk email.
Since I'm quite new to this kind of business I would like you to provide me with some fresh, inventive ideas to promote this site. Tnx for any input.

Answer : Fresh promo ideas for puzzle site

First off, make sure that you have your site listed in some of the major free directories on the internet, like www.dmoz.org and www.zeal.com. Those will give you some powerfull links that are used in directories throughout the internet.

Now, A very cheap way for you to find new traffic would be to start a link building campaign -- all you pay is your time. The best traffic is targetted traffic, so if you can get other puzzle-related sites to have a link to you, that will be extremely targetted when someone clicks from their site to yours. Another great benefit will be higher search engine rankings if you get a lot of contant-relevant links.

The first thing I would do is find out who is currently linking to your website; this can be done using a variety of tools... here are a few examples:

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
http://www.antssoft.com/linksurvey/index.htm

It is a good idea to run a report every month or so allowing you to keep tabs on the progress your campaign is making.

To prospect new links, basicly just use search engines and search for *your* keywords -- the other sites that appear along side yours will obviously be related. E-mail the sites one by one with a personal e-mail (if it even smells like spam it will likely get deleted before considered); make the e-mail honest, explaining you are a webmaster that is looking to get some more traffic to your site. Often offering to link back to their site in return is a nice enticement so they will benefit as well. If you are polite and straight forward, hopefully can build up some solid links.

I hope this helps, good luck!