I dunno about that: "Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 hours" became popular within 48 hours after it was published, and I have no built-in audience. I posted it to the Haskell-cafe mailing list, someone else posted it to Reddit, and when I woke up the next morning it was on the front page of both Reddit and Delicious. It's now the top Google result for "haskell scheme" and on the front page of results for "haskell tutorial".

I think the secret to getting widespread publicity is to build something that people want and are eagerly awaiting. I wrote "Write yourself a Scheme..." because I'd seen complaint after complaint about how there were no Haskell tutorials that build a practical project or deal with IO, so I started with some practical IO in the first chapter. When the tutorial appeared, it merely fulfilled a niche that everyone wanted to be filled.

FictionAlley was the same way, though I wasn't around for its birth. Basically, everyone was complaining about how Fanfiction.net sucked and the servers were always down and they eliminated the forums and arbitrarily removed stories. So eventually, some of the leading members of the HP fandom said "Well, let's start our own site then." And since everyone was already dissatisfied with FF.net, it spread easily through word-of-mouth.