Okay let's start the ball rolling here.

I have a dilemma...

I have a site that deals with the subject: Anime

Now getting traffic to my other sites are easy, since the resources and avenues are available to me, but dealing with anime fans are a bit different.

I do not want to spend money on adwords and I have tried the following methods:

(lurk and post in forums related to anime with a signature linking to my site- which either gets me banned or I am simply told I cannot link in any form to my site. Anime sites are a stickler for competition. I do not advertise in forums so that has never been my problem, just having a simple www.mysite.com in my signature will usually get me banned.)

(Offer a freebie on the subject of How to Draw Anime to potential people, and trying to draw them in. Problem is most forums/sites will ban my account immediately if I do that. Hence why I did it once and never again.)

(Worked on a few sites like Stumble, furl etc. Getting no attention in that arena.)

Problem is anime fans either gravitate to:

a) Sites where they can download fan-subs
b) Frequent forums.

Once they get into a forum, they rarely leave.

They do not like being told about other sites unless it deals with downloading fan-subs. Believe me I know what you think... getting fan-subs onto my site... problem with that is I would need a server and a hell of a lot of bandwidth. Not interested in getting sued either, because at some point fan-subs usually get licensed and then I would need to take it down. What usually happens is that anime fans keep sharing it, even if it's licensed.

The only way I can see getting traffic is if I use adwords, but I am just not willing to spend the money on it. I tried articles, but it's quite rare that articles dealing with anime are being read. Usually anime fans just go to their favorite forum/website for that.

So in order to receive traffic I would need something of value, original and interesting. Something that no other site has.

At this point in time I am clueless. I need to get back to the site and get it advertised, but would appreciate to get some feedback from people who are creative.

In your opinion, what would a social site need that is totally different from anything else? What avenues of traffic to the site is available that is a bit different from normal mainstream sources like adwords?

Comments and Ideas appreciated.