Some people said that he lied about how many people he had at the beginning and this gave him free publicity which helped him get the statistics he have today.
Like all the other now big sites. ... He started it off with advertising. A slew of ads in other webmasters' sites. And, perhaps, offline too. But since he was advertising a free service, I doubt he had to go offline. And, needless to say, word of mouth soon took over, so he no longer had to advertise. Naturally.
Agreed. I don't think it was the advertising that made it so popular, just a really, really smart idea for a site.
In the end, word of mouth made it popular, basically. That, and overtime the numbers just added up from it. No matter how good the site is, it doesn't make a bit of difference if people don't know about it. Ya still have to kickstart it to get it out there. I'd sell my sister on CraigsList to know how much he spent. Ghostterm, where did you get that 11,000,000 number from? Ya sure it isn't closer to, maybe, 6? I met my now fuck muffin through PlentyOfFish, of all places.
find other services that charges and offer the same service for free! that what i read from his interview at the inc.com! pretty good idea tho!