Easiest is to use some established media from another tank, the new tank is basically immediately cycled using that method.
The next would be to seed the tank by adding a bunch of crud/mulm from an established filter, ask another hobbyist or local fish store for some filter crud and dump it into your tank/filter.
The next easiest is to use pure ammonia (no additives) and dose the tank up to 4ppm. From here you wait, keeping ammonia at 4ppm until you see some nitrites, then drop the ammonia to 2ppm while you wait out the nitrite spike. Keep the temperature in the low-mid 80 degrees and a stable pH for the fastest cycle. Using bacteria in a bottle can also speed up the process.