How I Got Digg.com's Founder Kevin Rose to Plug My Company LIVE on National TV...and for FREE!
Hello everyone! 
I'm a little excited today because I found an old episode of 'The Screen Savers'. Kevin Rose used to host this show back in the day before digg.com became mainstream.
In this episode, Kevin was kind enough to plug my company LIVE on national TV for free:
YouTube - The Screen Savers 4-9-2004
(Time slot: 24:13-24:25)
This wasn't the first, second, but THIRD time he hooked me up - couldn't find those other episodes anywhere though.
So how did I do it?
Well first of all, I contribute 90% of it to Kevin being a really cool guy. He is definitely a nice dude...so I am glad he became as successful as he is.
Anyway, how it all started was that one of the show's producers was a customer of mine. I noticed he had a technology oriented website, so I offered him free web hosting in exchange for a small advertisement on his website.
I also told him that he can refer anyone he knows to my service and that I'd host their sites for free as well.
So eventually, he sent Kevin over to me. Kevin had a pretty popular site that required 2 dedicated servers to run smoothly.
One was his message board, the other was digg.com in its infancy stage when no one really knew about it.
His message board was actually the most popular of the two sites at the time.
It cost me about $450/m to run his sites on 2 dedicated servers.
I didn't charge him pay a penny.
I was always there when he needed support. If his sites were ever down, he would instant message me and say he was having problems - I would fix them.
After a few months...he decided to plug my service on national tv for the first time.
And I didn't even have to ask him. He surprised me with it, and I didn't even realize it happened until the next day when my friend said he heard Kevin plug my service on TV. I thought he was kidding until I saw the replay.
I was wondering why 75 people signed up for my service that day...
Pretty cool, huh?
And Kevin...if you ever read this, which I doubt, thanks dude! You are the man!
Moral of the story: Do your best to help people, without expecting anything in return, and eventually it will pay off for you in ways you can't even imagine.
You can apply this anywhere in business. It doesn't matter if you run a product creation business, service, popular website, etc. As long as you go out of your way to help people without expecting anything in return, it will come back 10 fold.
I'm a little excited today because I found an old episode of 'The Screen Savers'. Kevin Rose used to host this show back in the day before digg.com became mainstream.
In this episode, Kevin was kind enough to plug my company LIVE on national TV for free:
YouTube - The Screen Savers 4-9-2004
(Time slot: 24:13-24:25)
This wasn't the first, second, but THIRD time he hooked me up - couldn't find those other episodes anywhere though.
So how did I do it?
Well first of all, I contribute 90% of it to Kevin being a really cool guy. He is definitely a nice dude...so I am glad he became as successful as he is.
Anyway, how it all started was that one of the show's producers was a customer of mine. I noticed he had a technology oriented website, so I offered him free web hosting in exchange for a small advertisement on his website.
I also told him that he can refer anyone he knows to my service and that I'd host their sites for free as well.
So eventually, he sent Kevin over to me. Kevin had a pretty popular site that required 2 dedicated servers to run smoothly.
One was his message board, the other was digg.com in its infancy stage when no one really knew about it.
His message board was actually the most popular of the two sites at the time.
It cost me about $450/m to run his sites on 2 dedicated servers.
I didn't charge him pay a penny.
I was always there when he needed support. If his sites were ever down, he would instant message me and say he was having problems - I would fix them.
After a few months...he decided to plug my service on national tv for the first time.
And I didn't even have to ask him. He surprised me with it, and I didn't even realize it happened until the next day when my friend said he heard Kevin plug my service on TV. I thought he was kidding until I saw the replay.
I was wondering why 75 people signed up for my service that day...
Pretty cool, huh?
And Kevin...if you ever read this, which I doubt, thanks dude! You are the man!
Moral of the story: Do your best to help people, without expecting anything in return, and eventually it will pay off for you in ways you can't even imagine.
You can apply this anywhere in business. It doesn't matter if you run a product creation business, service, popular website, etc. As long as you go out of your way to help people without expecting anything in return, it will come back 10 fold.