I usually start by doing some basic SEO work, then dump my new url on linkdumps. That will cause my site to get spidered and I'll see some incoming SE clicks.
Then I look for link trades. Normally just doing searches for sites in my niche, and signup for various toplists. Since I use a toplist script to trade links on all my sites, others can come and signup easily.
I don't do many hardlink trades, but if I were, I would defiently use one of those scripts for that, or many will remove your link and you'll never know.
Posting on boards for linktrades helps too
