Couldn't believe my eyes. Someone just IM'd me the link to Alexa Movers and Shakers: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/movers_shakers?lang=en I am on number 4. Going to get a beer now
Post number two on the front page. Secret: Make sure your Server never ever goes down, no matter how many visitors you get.
I got a bunch more than that even before and my alexa rank never went below 100k either (its not really a technical site).
Congratulations I guess its more to do with your content, which is of high quality and what you said about keeping your site uptime is very important. I have seen my site sometimes go down in the peak hours and that certainly hurts. So its always logical to invest in a quality host instead of losing sales!
The Uptime is everything when your site hits the social media. I have had this happen before when I was on a shared host. After 30 minutes the site was suspended and since nobody could get there anymore, it didn't receive any more votes. This time I was able to cope with the traffic (to some extend) and keep the story in front of people's eyes, so it kept going and going forever. So what you should take away from this is: Never let your site get slashdotted and go down. Keep it up and do whatever you can to keep it going. Get a cheap VPS and forget about shared if you plan to create a buzz (as simple as that).