I have, yes. Though I've tried not to be annoying about it because I see these people fairly often and they post their stories to the site pretty frequently. I can't stand people trying to sell me stuff every time I see them. I don't want to be that guy. Again, maybe this is the problem.

Is your story actually interesting? I know in New Orleans, local successes make the news all the time because there is an interesting story to back it up. If your pitch is just that you made a website about Chicago and not much more, it wouldn't interest me much either.

Good question.

So back in April, I was running out of cash after an advertiser bailed on a payment. I appealed to our members to chip in and become Micropatrons a la Kottke.org, and they sent me $1200 in 10s and 20s in about 48 hours. I was stunned. That's also when I realized that I had something that some people were really jazzed about.

I wrote my "story" out here for that effort: http://www.windycitizen.com/sponsors/micropatron If you're bored at work, give it a look and tell me if you think it's interesting or not.

Read their articles to get to know what they like to write about. Then look at different things that could be said about Windy Citizen and find a story that they would like to write. Then talk to them.

You want to be Jeremy Toeman. Skip ahead to the part about him at http://scobleizer.com/2009/04/07/a-private-note-to-pr-people...