<i>So how do you "launch" a beta, what do you to do interest the relevant startup blogs and generate some publicity and attention for your freshly baked business?</i><p>I don't know why you're targeting startup blogs unless you are intending on selling your services to startups (which has its own problems, chiefly that a million other people are chasing after the same $600 dollars in their bank account).  Michael Arrington will have, to a close approximation, the entire population of Silicon Valley send him an email today.  Your odds of getting even fleeting attraction are low.  Should you get fleeting attraction, you'll find your site crushed under a wave of looky-loos who will make disparaging comments on everything they can before abandoning it.<p>By comparison, the people you made your application for might actually, you know, want to <i>use</i> it.  Why don't you target their blogs?  Speak to the people you know in their community?  (You do know people in their community, right?  If not, turn off the IDE and go meet some people in their community.)<p>I'd also start your SEO efforts, if you haven't already.  (If you haven't, turn off the IDE and...)  That is a deep subject when starting from nothing, but the short version is think of ways that linking to you will improve the lives of people who don't want to buy your software, then, tell them that.<p>Oh, and this comment is going to sound like a broken record from me, but launch is not a one-time event.  99.9999999% of people who see your site will not see it on launch day.  For someone who comes in on day 4 or day 40 or day 4,000, your site JUST launched.  Optimize for their experience, not Michael Arrington's.