Anyone getting more than 500 uniques per day from free traffic?

Between 3-6 months. Primarily this is achieved by being in the the top 5 Google search results for multiple, low competition, long tail keywords. Targeting a single, mid to high level competition, keyword takes longer and a lot more work but will bring in more traffic.

Sorry Pete but that's BS. Just Google on terms like "credit cards", "wholesale lots" and "weight loss plans". But you keep believing that and then wonder why sites that have mediocre content that's focused around buying keywords and also have strong backlinks always outrank your 'quality content' site.

How long have you worked for Google? Or Yahoo or whichever one it is?

Your statement is just not true. I do searches all the time where most of the top results are machine-generated with no real content beyond the keywords or other garbage.

This is why I laugh whenever Google and quality are mentioned together.

Example: I search on my city name with an industry or profession and most of the top results are empty directory or review sites that aren't even local but have pages for every city in the country. I have to go to page 3 to actually find a business in my city of that type.

If you search on Cloud City barbeque restaurant, shouldn't page 1 have some listings that are actually restaurants in/near Cloud City or that have that name? Or just a bunch of pages that have those keywords and maybe some names of restaurants with no details? Might as well dig the Yellow Pages out of the time capsule.

There is always going to be a lot of talk about techniques X, Y and Z, or how the latest bot or hot software can deliver you tremendous traffic.

The truth, however, is simple.

Stand back and take a birdseye view of the internet. The sites that get the most traffic are those that, ooooh, deliver awesome content.

When you deliver what people want, a viral/multiplication factor kicks in. The site gets recommended by a forum poster, which may deliver a few more disciples, who continue to spread the word. These backlinks start adding up and eventually you become an authority site with oodles of traffic.

The problem is that most people look for the shortcut instead of focusing on the content...instead of giving people what they want.

I remember reading a post by Allen Says many moons ago that said you must give people what you yourself would want. How many marketers can truly look in the mirror and say that they do that? Those that do have every chance for success.

"Give and you shall receive", "Build it and they will come"...whatever. They are all true.

I used to put out crappy little sites stuffed with rubbish PLR articles (no offence to PLR creators, but most ARE rubbish. Tiffany Dow is a notable exception) or 'speed articles'. Might get 15 hits a day if I was lucky.

Then I created a niche site where I outsourced 25 high-quality articles. I followed Chris Pearson's principle of building equity by developing a unique website with real value. And guess what? Without doing any kind of backlinking, bar a few submitted articles, that site has 'magically' risen to the top of the Google rankings and is pulling in nearly 300 visitors a day.

BTW, I'm not saying you (the OP) is putting out bad content. I'm just saying that if you put out exceptional content -- the kind that you yourself would make part of your daily RSS feed -- then word will get around, and the traffic will take care of itself.

Give as much away as you can

Honestly, I've tried plenty of methods to drive traffic to my blogs, to my html sites, and at the end of the day, I realize that I work 10 times less if I drive traffic to my squeeze page! Because even if you drive only 40 people per day, and if you convert at 50% you will capture most of the leads, and will be able to print your own paychecks. You can later on build a blog, and send your list traffic to it, BUT I would always start with the squeeze page!

For free (cheap) strategies: Article marketing , Usfreeads. 6.99 I believe per month and if done right, great source of traffic, some guest blogging, blog commenting, and some forum marketing, all things combined, you will get the traffic you need and leads you need!

Make sure you have a task list:
2 quality articles per day
5 forum posts per day
2 usfreeads per day
2 blog commenting

Do this little experiment. Google on 'credit cards' and several related terms like 'credit cards for bad credit' or 'credit card consolidation' and see what you think about the quality of the sites in the number one position.