Yes and no. There are other ways of getting immediate attention, check out stumbleupon.com, I have an associate that listed his site and got 1000 unique visitors the next day! A brand new site.
or if your site is news worthy and techy, try sites like Digg. Tapping into a user community can be a powerful way to get the word out and its free!
Try blogs and other forums that are related to your site contents. Please do not jump in there and be spammy with your postings. Only post if it's relavent content. You're going to get the best traffic if your posting is on a relavent site anyway!
ok... you can try free community event calendars(I don't know what the web site is about though) or contact your local newspaper online blog editor... I could give you more specific ideas if I knew what the site was about, if you have a specific site in mind
There are other ideas. again, having a specific site it's easier to recommend ideas that have a better chance of succeeding!