TMZ.com has come onto the radar of most people in the last month or so because of buzz, and that shows one way to get recognition for your web site. Buzz works. TMZ has a lot of video stuff, and they have broken several big "stories" over the last couple of weeks, and they get recognition for that. It is the same recipe that brought recognition to the DrudgeReport.com site back in the Monica Lewinski days.
Nice summary of how it happened:
The scoop on the scoopThe story on
PerezHilton.com in that article is also interesting because he is one guy.