And which ones actually covered you?
Also, what strategy did you use to contact? Start off with the small ones and worked your way up? Or start off with the big ones and hoped for a homerun?
1.
Round up the competition sites. At least 3-5.
2.
Go to: http://tools.seobook.com/link-tools/backlinks/backlinks.php and type in each of the competition sites one by one.
3.
See who linked to the competition and try to get a link back from there.
I recently read your article entitled "Where's the Money in Casual Web Game Development?". Our firm, Plura Processing, provides a really easy way for online games to make money through grid computing. If a game developer embeds Plura on his site, we will pay him up to $2600/month for every 1000 concurrent users. This revenue source is a completely new and incremental source of money for game sites, which means it does not have to replace other revenue sources, like advertising.
We entered beta a few months ago and currently have a handful of online games as affiliates, including the game you highlighted in your article, Desktop Tower Defense. When people come to these sites to play games, a Java applet is initiated, which connects the user's computer to our grid computing network. Our customers use that computing power for a variety of fascinating problems.
A game site owner just has to include 1 line of iframe code in the HTML body to use Plura. An example of this is:
<iframe src="http://ourserver.com?affiliate_id=xxx&cpu=0.7 scrolling="no" frameborder="0" width="150px" height="100px"></iframe>
The parameters you see in that code can be adjusted, so site owners have pretty much complete control over how Plura is run.
We've designed our applet to be very lightweight and secure. It follows and is restricted by the Java sandbox model (http://java.sun.com/sfaq), so it doesn't touch anything on the user's computer and runs completely in memory. We understand that player perception may be a challenge, but we feel the security and control we provide to site owners helps mitigate this.
I can share a lot more detail with you if GigaOm is interested in discussing this more. You can go to http://www.pluraprocessing.com for more info. Because we're currently in beta, we're working with site owners on an invite-only basis, but we do consider people that are interested in Plura and would be a good fit for us.
We feel that Plura is a great opportunity for game developers to boost their revenue and profitability. We would also love to hear what the GigaOm community has to say about us, considering your focus on computing technologies. If GigaOm is interested in discussing Plura, please let me know - thanks!
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N.B. Keep in mind that some of the technology has changed since then (Plura now focuses on desktop apps).. also, I now work for Plura's sister company, 80legs.
Show you actually read the blogs. (Comment on them, get to know the different authors, etc.)
Identify a writer (someone recently said to pick a junior writer - this is probably a good tip!) and contact them directly, rather than emailing the entire blog. If you can't grab them directly then email the blog team but 10 busy people reading a mailing list/filter with 100 messages a day means you really gotta keep it short and sweet.
Depending entirely on the blog, the blogger, and what you're pitching: Keep it short and to the point. Make it newsworthy. Make it interesting and relevant to their readers. Point out why. Give the bloggers something - exclusive preview, beta access, free trials/discount codes to give away. Make yourself available to talk further. Point to a lowdown page about your product/news item that the blogger can link to. Don't sales pitch them to death.
Bloggers are humans, they have needs (pageviews and daily quota), they have access points (Twitter, etc) and by understanding them and what they want, rather than just focusing on what you want, you can get far. Another approach is to sweeten the bloggers by going to events etc and make yourself known to them as an authority/someone to watch, maybe dropping them the odd line about stuff NOT your own; then when you launch, they'll jump on it like rabid monkeys.
I use delicious to find tags for blogs that would like to write about my product.
1. Do not use a PR firm. If you are on HN you are probably a startup with out funding. They will charge you an arm and a leg. You can do better on your own. Be passionate about your product - people will respond more to that, then anything else.
2. Make your product sexy. Sexy sells. A new way of using mobile phones is more interesting than a new DB model. If it is not an inherently sexy product, make sure it looks professional. People want to write about companies that 'feel' professional.
3. Come up with a story. "we are two guys who sold baseballs for 3 years and worked on this in our spare time." "the recession hit, and we both lost our jobs, and this was the result."
4. Reach out to reporters. Every newspaper/magazine/tv news show now lists reporters emails. Reach out to them; tell your story. Find them, and buy them a drink. They are often young and looking for cool stories.
5. Network your face off. Go to places where new startups launch, and launch there. Meet everyone. Get business cards. Tell people you are looking for press contacts. You should be doing this stuff anyway.
6. Use http://www.helpareporter.com/ Journalists need stories to write about. They need new (sexy) material. Craft your story to fit theirs - don't lie, but if you started in a recession and they are talking about new businesses in the recession, make your story fit.
7. Leverage your friends in PR / make friends with people in PR. If you are based in a major city, if you went to college, if you know anyone in marketing - you have a friend or friend of a friend in PR. Leverage them to write Press Releases (which I don't think work in the beginning) and to send you out the emails they get looking for stories.
8. Make an awesome product - at the end of the day, if your product sucks, nothing else you do will matter. No one will write anything about it (unless your FB)
Ok, just a bunch of quick thoughts from a guy who has had a little luck with this.
For example, when GigaOm wrote a store called "Where's the money in casual gaming?", I emailed them saying "Hey, we've got a great way to monetize casual games." Their staff picked up the email and forwarded it to one of the writers.
Since then, we have relied on a PR firm to get press. It costs money, but it can be very helpful. We are fortunate enough to have found a local, well-connected, and relatively affordable firm.
It's funny, more people downvoted this comment, than actually replied to the thread. Shows where your priorities are. Go ahead down vote, I can afford to lose the points.
It's a way to track responses. You don't need to do this in other people's threads, because you can go to "threads" link to see who responded to you.
So how about less bitching and more contributing?
I will admit that I agree with your "I can afford to lose the points" sentiment. I always read the -4 and +20 comments first, so when I get downmodded to -4 it means that I get more eyeballs than I would at +1. An occasional joke that gets modded to +60 means that I can afford to troll as often as I like.
</cynical observation>
(Incidentally, you and I have the lowest average post score among the top 30 users. I think I just made a friend :)