I once heard somebody -- maybe Guy Kawasaki-- say "Create more value than you capture.". This has become my guiding principle for marketing on the Internet. I strongly believe that if you consistently help people out directly, and/or write/contribute/share in a scalable fashion via OSS/blogging/etc, then they will be around for you when you need it. This isn't hippydippy fluff : specific mechanisms like link building for SEO tend to promote it, too.
That is also why I got in touch with these guys: they did something extraordinarily nice for an HNer, and I wanted to know if there was some way I could help them out.
FWIW I spend a lot of time helping people out for free and it has lead to more opportunities than I can even begin to describe. I have never regretted it. Try defaulting to Yes when asked for help -- it's easy (particularly when you are obscure), and you might like what happens.
> I once heard somebody -- maybe Guy Kawasaki-- say "Create more value than you capture."
Google and my memory suggest it was Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly Media) who coined (or at least, popularised) the phrase but Guy Kawasaki rephrased it as "eat like a bird, poop like an elephant".
That is also why I got in touch with these guys: they did something extraordinarily nice for an HNer, and I wanted to know if there was some way I could help them out.
FWIW I spend a lot of time helping people out for free and it has lead to more opportunities than I can even begin to describe. I have never regretted it. Try defaulting to Yes when asked for help -- it's easy (particularly when you are obscure), and you might like what happens.