Originally Posted by Shap

Hi Guys! I have to write up a brief history of my business (hence why i'm on GFY --> procrastination). Anyhow in doing so there is always one moment that I felt was a huge turning point in my business. It was completely out of my control and it changed everything from that day forward.

This is back in 1997 or 1998. I was running my own free sites and moved to Lake Tahoe to work for Xpics for the summer. While there my buddy Kevin who ran all the media buys was telling me at lunch (probably at Killer Chicken) how he just killed it. A client of his was going to be on Dateline in a few days. The client was Wetlands. I thought to myself
"HOLY SHIT i used to have a link trade with them. I need to hit him up to see if I can get that going again."

So later that day I hit them up and not only did I get a link trade but he put up my banner right on his main page just above his enter button. I think I was getting 50,000 uniques a day to my site back then. When Dateline aired HOLY SHIT! I got so much traffic from that one link. I think it may have hit 250,000 uniques. All I know is that in the days after that I was able to sustain the growth in traffic and where I used to get 50,000 uniques I was now getting 125,000 and growing fast. From that point on business never stopped growing. That little bump was exactly what I needed. Thanks Wetlands!!

Anybody else have a story about a turning point that changed their business forever?