Your experience with Digg.com

Saw a referrer the other day for digg.com. Thought i would submit a few articles of my own. Right now, both are planted on the first page. I'm getting a visitor every second.

We'll see what that translates to

 

I was just reading digg before coming here and saw your articles, fine work... I've never been able to get to the front page, but even the sub pages drive good traffic. I still get traffic from digg searches.

 

One of my photoshop tutorials got to the front page of Digg and maxed out my bandwidth in half a day. LOL

 

Do Digg send quality traffic?

 

yeh DIGG has be good to me, never made it on front page but still recieved some gd traffic from it

 

But keep in mind Diggers are not good Adsense Clickers.

 

well i'm getting a ton of backlinks anyway

 

I submitted an url to an article and got an email saying they only accept an url to a NEWS site with a News story, not an url pointing to an article on an article site......

Help ?

 

To anyone posting to Digg. Keep in mind that you need thick skin. If your post makes it to the front page, there are a whole slew of Digg members standing ready and prepared to flame your post upside down and sideways.

I just got one of my sites on the front page today and I don't think I've ever dealt with such a barrage of insults from so many different people at one time in my life. Eventually it got yanked from the front page, because enough people reported it (as either "spam" or "Lame"). Apparently they felt that just the presence of Adsense on my site constituted it as being spam (also they said my site just basically sucked LOL).

The tutorial I got on the front page a month ago was flamed just as badly too.

The only thing that brought me some comfort was knowing that a lot of people must have liked my site to vote for it to be on the front page (that and the fact that my daily revenue shot up...I had to email Google though because the traffic skyrocketed out of control and I didn't want to raise any red flags with them). But still, man, those others were ruthless. Part of me wanted to insult them back, but then the whole thread would just end up being one giant flame war, so I just bit my tongue and kept quiet (mostly )

Yes, the backlinks are definitely the plus side of posting to Digg. What happens is that numerous members will add your Digg post to their blog which will give you a lot of backlinks.

Be careful with tutorials though or any story that involves images. There are many unscrupulous users that will start a forum thread, repost your entire story in that thread and then directly link to the images on your server (stealing bandwidth).

Oh yeah...also be sure that your post is at least in the general area of being tech related. If your website is about purchasing flowers or teddy bears, you're not going to get very far on that site.

 

I like Digg.com,

I have tried it and have got a few visitors from it.

Is there any other site that does similar things to this where users can find news and submit it theirselves.

Also, the site can be on any topic, not just technology related.

Thanks!

 

I was just reading digg, and found this:

Digg Effect: The Top 10 Things Webmasters Should Know

 

Yeah, I read that too just before posting in this thread. The flaming point is so true, but I disagree with the idea that the users don't click on ads. True that they click less than targeted traffic does, but the guy who wrote that article runs a forum website and forums are next to impossible to get clicks on (in my experience).

 

I submitted an url to an article and got an email saying they only accept an url to a NEWS site with a News story, not an url pointing to an article on an article site......

Help ?
Reply With Quote

 

Someone on an IRC channel said that digg.com is the next slashdot and in my opinion it sure does seem so. The flame wars story by Chopster, great traffic and it being tech related all fit. But there's already a thread about that. (see below in similar threads).

I like the whole idea of user-moderated stories. It only seems fairer, not to mention digg looks whole lot better than slashdot.

Thanks
Daniel

 

I just had my first digg experience. Someone posted one of my pages there over the weekend. It apparently made it to the home page. Some comments were harsh but mostly complaining about the sloppy HTML code and not so much the content itself.

 

DIgg is junk traffic.

The dont click ads and the traffic drops off substantcially ofter a couple days.

I never tired it but that is the case most likely.

 

You don't know what you're talking about. Digg is very good. I wrote an article that was VERY succesful. Because of that many other sites posted the link on their site and some of them pretty big. Even when the traffic slows down from Digg, you still get tons of traffic from other sites. Heck, at one point I was because of this awarded on a MAJOR site and got 42,000 visitors that day and made $450 in 24 hours and with extreme CTR.
Because of Digg I've seen a major boost in PR, Google traffic, heck, I even had the new forum on my site go from PR0 to PR6.
Sure, PR might fall slightly for this forum (which is only a minor part of my site), but because of it I was able to get a major boost for my forum, tons of new members that will stay, no matter what the PR of that forum is.

And as for my site, average traffic has doubled because of it a VERY short time (and I'm talking thousands here on a DAILY basis) and even now 6 months later it's still growing.

Yeah right, they don't click ads, now I really have to laugh! (see above).
It's actually those visitors that never visit your site before that bring in the cash, not the ones that come to your site a few times a week and have become ad blind.

If you never tried it then don't make those assumptions. Because everything you said is totally wrong and actually a good article like mine (in the top 100 of 2005 out of 8,000+ articles) has been the best exprience for me online EVER, especially when you know it was just an article and it didn't take me weeks to write it either.

You certainly don't "digg" digg.com

And as for that article: http://www.tech-recipes.com/blog217.php : my experience has been TOTALLY the opposite and lot of the things he points out in that article weren't true for my Digg.

I do have to point out that there is difference between a Digg at position 7,367 or one like mine that was for months in the top 30.

Yeah, but that has nothing to do with it being a forum. That ads are not successful on a forum has a lot to do with the fact that its visitors are returning visitors and they become ads blind very quickly, but these Digg visitors are new visitors. So if this guy didn't have a much higher CTR, then he doesn't know a lot about Adsense to begin with.

Let me go through a few point of this article:

1. Digg users do not click ads. Webmasters should stop trying to game the system to get the traffic. The increased traffic will use up your bandwidth and will risk slowing down or crashing your server. In the short run, getting on the front page is more likely to cost you money than make you money if you are depending on ads for your revenue. We don't care as we give most of our ad proceeds back to our users in the forms of gifts and such. I am not certain why digg users do not click on ads; however, my best guess is that a lot of this traffic is just people surfing to see what's popular in the internet world. Surfers are not looking for anything in particular; and therefore, they are not going to be influenced by content-targetted ads on the site. Webmasters, quit trying to abuse digg for your greed; it does not work.

Not true, see above.

2. Digg users do not use Alexa. I have blogged about the lack of Alexa use among digg traffic before. The graphics and stats on that blog post prove that digg users abhor the Alexa toolbar.

Not true. I went from a steady rating of 500,000+ to 89,000 and I'm now steady at 115,000 and the average of 90,000 this week means it's up again. Btw, can anyone explain to me why he actually cares about the Alexa rating?????

3. Digg traffic does not generate new users, comments, or posts. Digg users often comment regarding a site on digg itself instead of on the dugg website. Even though we have often had easy ways for people to leave comments (no registration required), digg users typically do not post. Likewise, we do not get a bunch of new member registrations. They swing through, look around, and leave. I do not believe that phenomena is unique to just our site. Typically when I see forum or blog posts dugg, they do not get a big jump in comments either.

His mistake. A dig should be on the main site and not in some dumb forum. That he doesn't get a lot of extra members is logical.

4. Every site on the front page gets flamed in the comments. If you read digg, you need a thick skin. If the site is something about windows, the apple/linux people whine... and visa versa. However, this is in no way saying that the comments are not helpful to the digg users or to the webmasters. We have seen many helpful suggestions in the digg comments as well. Any webmaster who is lucky enough to have their site dugg should follow and participate in the digg comment section regarding his/her site.

I got lots of possitive comments. Sure, there were a very few negative ones, but that's life right, can't make everybody happy. I guess I was more tactful with my article

5. The digg effect brings in a moderate amount of traffic and uses a lot of bandwidth. This is obvious, but I'll try to quantify. Typically we have seen an increase of 5000-10000 visitors per day that tapers off after about 5 to 7 days. Likewise, we typically use a gig more bandwidth per day during that time. Although this is quite substantial, it is not quite as bad as the slashdot effect that I have experienced in the past. That being said, it is a big, quick load that can stress a server. We have recently increased our server's memory and CPU in order to better tolerate the traffic. People hosting large files such as PDFs or media files should be very cautious. You can burn through a ton of bandwidth (and overage fees) very quickly.

I had my site running on shared server and 5 days of 20,000-30,000 visitors and my hosting company didn't complain, not even with 42,000 visitors. Sure, go cheap with hosting and pay for it in the end, but don't blame digg

6. Digg users are more polite than slashdot visitors. I don't know if digg has less of a troll culture or not, but digg users do not wreck a place like slashdot members can. Many times you'll see a slashdotted site have comment boards filled with typical trolls links and material. Digg users typically leave the place as they found it. On the other hand, both slashdot and digg have users that will attempt to mirror sites if the server gets slow.

I don't have experience with Slashdot.

7. The digg effect is much less on a weekend. In our experience, the traffic gained from being on the front page of digg is much less on the weekend. It seems like it usually about half as much. Likewise, the traffic is easier to tolerate on the weekend as most sites are less busy then. The digg effect is also variable on the content of the site as well. For example, my post on hacking sleep did not receive near as much traffic as some of the tech-related tutorials that have been highlighted on our site. It makes sense as digg is a technology-related site first and foremost.

Unlike him I only sent in a TRUE digg (I knew it after experiences with it on other sites). No wonder why he's getting flamed when he sends every dumb article to digg

8. The best digg post regarding a topic is not always the one that reaches the front page. My tech-recipe on installing the sidebar into vista was dugg as sidebar ported to XP and reached the front page. However, AlexTheBeast's actual directions for installing the sidebar into XP although on our site at that time were never directly dugg.

Could be that the front page digg is not the best digg you can have, I have no experience with that, because I only sent one artcile to Digg, it was extremely successful and it was on the front page

9. Digg may or may not have positive effects on your google pagerank. Digg is a popular site. Getting on the front page would seem that it would tell google that your site is important. Likely sometimes it does. However, often the digg link itself will appear higher in the google rankings than the actual site to which to link points. If you are a SEO-type person and trying to use digg for your evil doing, it's probably not going to work. It is just another reason that webmasters should quit trying to abuse the digg system for their evil purposes.

That's not true. I've seen my PR go up a lot faster and higher for ALL pages because of the Digg, so there is a connection. In my case I think it's because also the rest of my site offers quality (hey, that's what other webmasters tell me), so that helped to get a lot of returning visitors. Many sites also started linking to my site, not just the article (I checked this in Google/Awstats)

10. After a site is highlighted on the Digg front page, it will start showing up in the other social bookmarking systems soon. We have seen several of our tech-recipes become very popular in del.icio.us after we were on the front page of digg. Most recently the tutorial regarding using batch files to start or stop windows services starting appearing on the other social bookmark sites after it was highlighted on digg. The tutorial is two years old and never appeared on any of them as far as I can tell before it was highlighted on the digg front page.

After 9 points of putting Digg down he is somehow admitting that Digg can be very suceesful...geez