We have drafted off the success of Flavors.me, which is Goodsie's sister property (http://hiidef.com is the parent). Goodsie was featured on Lifehacker (which is the holy grail) because I sent a thank you email for a brief Flavors mention and the author noticed Goodsie in my email signature.
For Flavors.me, we were super lucky to get a fantastic bunch of creatives and influencers to try our beta, largely through personal connections. Just before we launched, I emailed every big blog like TechCrunch and we were able to get a ton of high quality coverage.
Only now are we just starting to work with a PR firm, so it can definitely be done by pounding the pavement.