Yes by having a apealing and quality content website with fresh content will be able to help you gain some priceless quality traffic such as word of mouth, return visits.
Other ways may include SEO (search engine optimization). I undestand you are a novice web developer/webmaster. A good tool for simple seo is webceo it is a free download this will help with directory, search engine submission and optimizing your pages for major search engine bots/spiders so you will gain you rankings in search engines for your related keywords.
Link exchange is another way of getting some traffic. Just keep asking people to exchange links with your website. But mak sure that it is a relevant website you want to exchange links with since it will also help you with SEO.
You can try banner exchange but i wouldnt bother you might get about 50 - 100 unique visitors a month from banner exchanges if you are lucky. But if you are find a big banner exchange network.
Create articles and post them on article/ezine websites they can be a good source of traffic if you write quality articles that is also relevant to your website.
Press releases can be another source.
Thats all i can think of from the top of my head.
Good Luck With Your Site,
Marty