places it's ok to plug your own site

It's great that Ozzu permits a limited amount of publicity in our sigs, but where else can a person who's trying to get something like, for instance, a forum off the ground go and not be spamming? I don't want to be "that lady" who pops onto a forum, says something tangential to the conversation, then drops a plug to her own site and vanishes again, but how else can I get the word out to audiences that are genuinely interested? So many forums only allow links in sigs if you pay them, and will remove your post if it contains a link to a site you own even if it's legitimately related to the topic at hand. Any suggestions? I see successful forums (fori?) out there, and now I'm so disillusioned I'm just sure that the owners resorted to shady methods to drum up conversation.

Try link exchanges, paid advertisement. There's a lot you can do to promote a forum. Get some friends to start posting who share your interests.

I've got an AdWords ad, which gets me hits but costs too much really and the hits aren't great quality (or maybe they are, I don't really have a reference frame for this kind of thing). I have some members who post regularly, too.
As for link exchanges, I hesitate to even look into them because who would want to exchange links with a site that doesn't get very much traffic?

I know this sounds silly, but I was owner of a non profit website, and listing in Top Sites listings are a good way to get hits, *IF* your members are willing to hit the vote button that is.

I was a member of one top site, and I had 2000 hits in 2 days from being in the top 5 on it.

Just a suggestion