I agree about marketing. We have done all sorts of cross promotions: other sites (including craigslist); dropping business cards at stores; writing articles about the content with small local papers (they are always looking for well written content) as well as writing for popular blogs with similar content. Everyone we have contacted has been open to the idea of cross promoting.
We started with a small group of core users that posted great content and it grew from there.
Although we are not a big-board, I think we will be there quickly.
Mark
www.hotcouponworld.com