With Stormpulse we "launched" with a post on Hacker News that got us a whopping 200+ visits in a single day! Then we lingered at 50-100 visits per day for over a year. Then we figured out distribution (embeddable widget) and traffic is no longer a problem (we did get a TC mention a few months after the widget launched).

So freemium really worked for us in getting through that post-launch desert plain. Aside from the cost of supporting the free users, our out-of-pocket advertising expense has been <$100 since the start of the company to present day.