Also, I will suggest don't focus on a single launch day. Think every day is a launch day. First launch on forums like HN, then get some feedback, then launch on few mid-size blogs, see if they cover it, see if you can handle traffic, then again launch on bigger blogs, and then keep launching to every single person you meet on each and every day. Once you are ready, every single day is a launch day.

a) Approximately 99.998% of the people who will eventually hear of you will not do so on launch day.

b) In six months from now if I arrive on your site for the first time following a Google search, to all intents and purposes you just sprang into being. Am I getting your best launch experience? If not, revise plans.

So do the opposite: launch next Tuesday, 24 Feb.

But, and I say this with love, it doesn't fucking matter when you launch. We launched a beta... 12 days ago? I don't remember precisely because it doesn't matter. The people using are happy and we don't need to see our names in print.

I've worked at places that had rock star launches and promptly failed because they didn't make something people wanted. I've worked for nice, profitable businesses you've never heard of, and never will.

Anyway -- if you want publicity, it's more than just numerology. You have to build relationships with people beforehand. It's not like you're going to email news@wired.com at exactly 8:13 am on the day before deadline, and boom! you're an internet legend. Give journalists a little credit.

Believe me, I'm well aware that I'm currently an insignificant force on basically all forms of media, which makes me happy to hear you sympathize.

How do I go about creating a relationship with sites like TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, etc? What I'm going to launch is something I they really would want to cover, and if they didn't, they'd be doing terrible at their job. There has to be some hope that great ideas will rise above connected people's ideas, at least in terms of coverage. This is the internet, after all.

That's a nice way to put it. But truly great ideas tend to be self-demonstrating. If your idea is like that, like the portable water purifying straw, or wheels on luggage, you really don't need to do much.

For every other idea you either need to be connected yourself or you need to build a base of support. Perhaps identify the B and C listers, the ones who actually are hungry for a story. Or try to get 1,000 customers / people / whatever your metric is, then give them something in exchange for blogging about it.

You have the imagination to invent your thing, right? So why are you not using it? Connected writers are lazy. People come to them all day long. Do you really want your company to hinge on the whim of a lazy, distracted person who has no stake in your success?

Figure out what you really need to succeed, and go after that. Chasing PR because it's the default choice is a waste of time.

I'm definitely not expecting PR to "make or break" what I've made. That being said, some PR at launch certainly wouldn't hurt, and if its something that will grow by word of mouth (hence, exponentially), twice as many people initially seeing it means twice as many users at any given point in time thereafter.

And I do use what I made, several times a day, and I love it.

Ok -- so after all that you really do want publicity but you don't have money. That takes time. Maybe set up a month-long private beta and invite the 500 most influential people you can find contact info for. It'll be good for you (small base of demanding users) and good for them (interesting story).