Depends on how interesting your article is. If the article isn't that interesting you'll still get some traffic, but it's not going to be much. I was on the front page on Sunday, the traffic didn't convert for shit and I didn't get many hits like I expected. I probably got about 50 visitors.
Basically for the front page you need to have multiple people rate your article quickly (you can do this all yourself with proxies). If someone calls you out for spamming they will ban your article.