I think the fact his site had received 50,000 hits had a lot to do with it. I know nowt about the significance of this figure but I remember one of the Dragons saying it was a big number.
That actually seems quite low to me. I used to run a Twin Peaks website in the late-90's, and it didn't take long to get past 50,000 hits even back then when the internet was a lot less mature than it is now.