Im a kind person so I may as well share this. I signed up to freeviral not so long ago. Im a bit of a cynic, but I am willing to try anything once to get traffic to my blog and this promised to generate millions of hits. Now to be honest i knew that was probably bollocks and would take a lot of work, but my hit counters have gone made with new traffic, AND due to it not being blog specific (this is the crafty bit i spotted with giving it a try) most sites on there are just adverts, so when someone sees a blog that they HAVE TO LOOK AT, then they seem to be more likely to have a look around.
As a result I have have had a huge amount of new people visiting, and even though there are a lot of worthless hits, there has been loads of quality hits from it. I find it is working better than blogexplosion and simalar sites.
Anyway I thought I would mention it.
[edited] no advertising/self promotion allowed[edited]