Written on November 10th, 2008 at 12:11 am by Darren Rowse
Skip Digg: Not All Traffic is Created Equal
Today I want to publish the first half of a ‘debate’. The topic is whether bloggers should promote their content on Digg. In this post Josh Klein argues the negative. Later in the week I’ve asked a big Digg users to tackle the flip side.
If you’re promoting on Digg, you’re losing your blog money.
The web is crowded, attention spread thin. It may not cost you a $70,000 full page print ad, but building a following requires patience and passion. It’s almost 2009, and the social media personal brand isn’t an early adopters’ secret anymore. Promoting your blog can be free, but not costless.
When you’re down in the trenches, scouring online guides for tips and tactics on how to drive traffic to your blog, you sometimes miss the big picture, the strategy. You don’t have a limitless amount of time or money, so you need to decide what not to do. It’s not always about “how to” — sometimes it’s about “which to”.
Like all social media, Digg costs time -– and lots of it -– so I want to make sure your time is well spent.
I’m not here to tell you Digg doesn’t work; there are plenty of people reading right now who have hit the front page and gotten that famously temporary blast of traffic.
But how many of those people have turned it into a sustainable strategy for making money? Did they do it after reading the same “Top 10 Ways to Win on Digg” guide as 100,000 other traffic-hungry bloggers?
I’m here to tell you the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
For those who aren’t familiar with Digg (yeah right), here’s a snippet from the about page:
“Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg.”
That requires some translation. Here’s what it really means (with tongue planted firmly in cheek):
“Digg is a place for 18-24 year old males to read about Internet gossip. From the smallest local news rags to the wittiest satire websites, Digg surfaces the stuff most entertaining to our users as determined by our large staff of editors.”
The problem is Diggers aren’t Doers.
Digg’s mission is to be distracting. People use Digg as a sanctuary, to be bounced from page to page as a momentary respite from their day jobs as knowledge workers. Unless your website’s tagline is “Distract Yourself Here,” it doesn’t match the Digg demography. The value you provide, no matter how high, will not match a Digger’s expectation, and he will eventually move on.
This makes visitors from Digg unqualified traffic. You might convert a few here and there, but it’d be like corralling a horde of anti-war protesters into an Army recruitment office; it doesn’t matter how many you get, they’re not going to join.
And what did it cost to get those visitors? How many people did you ask to Digg your submission? How much time did you spend wooing a power user? How much did you water down your content so you could submit the Top 10 Ways Ducks Quack?
I talk alot about value, so here’s the truth about Digg as succinctly as possible: your time is better spent elsewhere.
What else could you be doing for every hour you spend with Digg?
Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy entertaining myself on Digg as much as you, but we’re talking about making money here people. There are no shortcuts, just good ideas and bad ideas. Digg is not the right place to promote your blog.
If you want to really espouse the lessons of social media, find the people who matter and, you know, talk to them. Try forums, for one, or other blogs. If you ask Darren in the comments below, maybe he’ll let me come back and talk about those soon.
If not, maybe try shaking hands and kissing babies. Just stay away from Digg.
Josh Klein advises Fortune 500 companies on their web strategies and writes a blog about making websites that matter to human beings.
PS from Darren: Stay tuned for the flip side of this topic. In the next couple of days I’ve got a post from a big Digg using blogger who will tackle the topic of why Digg IS a site bloggers should consider spending time on.
100 Responses to “Skip Digg: Not All Traffic is Created Equal”
Jani
November 10th, 2008 12:22 am
Wow! Really great article. I totally agree with Josh, but can’t wait to see what your “other blogger” can say about the topic.
Michael Fowke
November 10th, 2008 12:30 am
All social media is a waste of time. Search engine traffic is what you need.
Ganesh
November 10th, 2008 12:36 am
This was indeed a great post. It opened my eyes. Josh, you’ve pretty much convinced me that Digg is not for bloggers. :-)
I completely agree with what you say. Digg is used mainly by young techies who just want to see headlines such as how Microsoft sucks and how Mac rocks their socks. I think its not right for a blogger to submit a post like “How to Gain Number One position in Google”. Diggers are not going to read such kind of things.
I guess there are also some pros of using social media sites like Digg. So, I’m waiting to see how the Digg user proves that Digg is useful.
Zack
November 10th, 2008 12:52 am
All I can tell is that Digg doesn’t bring me visitors. But where should I go ? Do we have a better choice?
Ajay
November 10th, 2008 12:56 am
i also thinks that instead of wasting time over the digg bloggers has to constrate on their content
Linus T.
November 10th, 2008 12:58 am
Digg has struck me as mostly a technical/news publishing site; that is where the majority of focus seems to lie. And you have to be consistently promoting on there to get hits.
For a category of blog that doesn’t fit that, Digg becomes rather worthless. Forum participation and reputation along with search engines return better results. I have two blogs: one is a personal blog that would be of interest to those going through a similar experience while the other is a cigar reviewing blog. Neither blog benefits from Digg but does benefit from other avenues that require a more personal interaction.
I think the trick is to figure out what method is best for your blog and maximize on that as much as you can without appearing to be a spammer, gold digger or charlatan.
David Leonhardt - SEO blog
November 10th, 2008 1:00 am
The thing about these debates is they are very good for helping people understand the pros and cons about the issue. That’s why it is so important to read both this post and the other. The truth in most cases is somewhere in between, and it also depends on the nature of the blog and the reasons for going to Digg in the first place.
greg cryns
November 10th, 2008 1:04 am
I have no results to compare since I’ve not used Digg much at all. But I have used other social networks and I tend to agree that the time spent there may be misplaced.
That is, for making sales. But for making acquaintances and learning a ton about what is going on “out there” I treasure the social networks. We also need to be aware that the under 25 crowd does not use email much anymore so how else can you get their attention? Texting? First you would need their phone number for that.
I will continue to use social networking but I will alter my strategies based on experience.
Nice article.
JR Griggs
November 10th, 2008 1:12 am
The next half of the debate will be much better. I started digging my articles for a couple reasons. It’s guaranteed to be on digg and easier for others to digg once it is submitted. It also gets out there and gets more readers you never would have had. My blog has very very little traffic (a baby blog still in diapers). The day I started digging it increased. Maybe just for a moment but people saw my blog and that will stay with them especially if they see it again. I even scored a comment from a digg user on one of the actual blog posts and several on digg.
I can also now use those who dugg my articles and send them new ones that they may like.
This article might make sense for the major blogs but for the little guy I think we can use all we can get. Looking forward to the next half.
Matthew Dryden
November 10th, 2008 1:12 am
Why stop at Digg? Skip StumbleUpon and any other kind of social media networking that focuses on delivering as much content to it’s users as possible - forgetting completely about the quality of content as well.
I’m still struggling to find a social media network that puts it’s focus on the users - Twitter is a ‘kind of’ good example of this, as you strive to find someone who produced good tweets, and converses with their followers…it’s all just on big slipperly slope, no matter how you look at it.
To me, the best kind of social networking is commenting - it’s non-obtrusive, requires little to no work and no stupid sign-up pages, no password to remember, and with CommentLuv, it makes it easy to plug your own site.
Rob Chant
November 10th, 2008 1:16 am
Okay, it’s a touch cynical, but I can’t help but agree!
Even when browsing Digg, I find myself reading utter rubbish that I’m not remotely interested in. Is this really the best that the Web has to offer?
That said, that are gems buried in the dross, but overall you’re correct — those gems aren’t what Digg’s readership is really for, and most of them aren’t going to be especially interested when they find some.
Lee
November 10th, 2008 1:18 am
Digg is a waste of time for bloggers. I just wrote on this topic myself, although I took a little different of a spin. Bloggers will do better by slowly and surely building a community or readers. Long term growth is more important that the one night stand of traffic that Digg sends.
Just Lizabell
November 10th, 2008 1:23 am
I have to agree with this end of the post. Large bursts of traffic from places like digg, stumbleupon, and reddit only serve as a temporary boost. They only provide short terms visitors - equivalent to channel flipping on your tv. They may see your show but they aren’t actually appreciating it.
Not to mention they shoot your hosting costs through the roof and often cause servers to fail for that day - a huge complaint among digg users. The bottom line is that traffic from Digg really isn’t the kind of traffic that will build you a real solid following. It may look nice on your stats page but you wont see any of those users making comments or subscribing to your RSS.
Liz Strauss
November 10th, 2008 1:26 am
Way to go, Josh! Entertaining and informative.
Digg isn’t useless by any stretch of the imagination, but as you point out, we have to know what we’re getting in return for the significant investment.
Traffic isn’t the same as readers or customers. Gotta be clear on what we’re working for.
Havi Brooks (and duck)
November 10th, 2008 1:27 am
Interesting ….
I’ve been wondering about this too and while I’m curious to read the counterpoint as well, this absolutely makes sense to me
My stuff has never been dugg … but after close to six months of blogging, I’ve got a lovely Alexa ranking (#108,380) and really great, active subscribers who are really fun to write for.
So obviously I’m already convinced of the benefit of things like organic traffic, connecting with people in my field, Twitter and so on because I’ve seen the results.
With Digg I’ve done a lot of wondering about “is it worth all the time investment” … and have seen friends and colleagues spending a ton of energy and not getting the results. Will wait to see what the next piece has to say, but for right now am feeling pretty content to just stick with the stuff that has been working for me.
Robert Witham
November 10th, 2008 1:30 am
I have to agree on this article. I too browse digg occasionally for entertainment but have not found it to be useful at all in promoting my sites.
I can see how using digg could be useful for a very limited subset of blogs. For instance, if your content was consistently a close match to what is popular on digg then I could see how promoting on digg could produce some regular readers.
However, I think Josh is exactly correct - most sites are not consistently producing digg material and, therefore, any temporary boost in traffic is worthless because the digg visitors are never going to return.
Thanks for a great article!
David Balogh
November 10th, 2008 1:55 am
I agree, it’s a waste of time.
Unless you have the power users helping to bump up your submission, it just gets trampled under the tons of other submissions.
The quality of comments left on articles that have made it to the front page aren’t exactly to be desired. Do people like this fit into your target audience?
If your goal is to make money, think about that huge traffic surge from Digg, racking up excess bandwidth costs, overwhelming your host and seriously jeopardizing your hosting account. All for a here today, gone tomorrow spike.
Your best bet is to grow your audience and let them worry about getting you to the front page of Digg.
Andrew Galasetti
November 10th, 2008 1:55 am
Great article and I can’t wait to see the rebuttal.
I think digg can work really well for some bloggers and shouldn’t be ignored. But for others that don’t approach it in the right way, digg becomes a huge time-suck and waste.
I don’t focus all my efforts on digg but I’ve benefited greatly form hitting the homepage. Not only do you get a nice burst of traffic, but you usually get links from other bloggers and websites. I’ve been linked by Esquire.com, RD.com, and Portfolio.com.
But it’s certainly true that most digg users are young, and often “haters” but there are also some really great diggers that become loyal readers, there’s just not many of them.
-Andrew
Todd - Home Construction Improvement
November 10th, 2008 2:03 am
I tend to agree with this post. When I first started my site I was starving for traffic. Now that I have quality traffic I see that whether it’s Digg or Stumble there is never an increase in my Adsense or Affiliate conversions. In fact, one of my articles went really crazy on Stumble and my Adsense revenue dropped significantly (hmmm…what did father Google do to punish me). So for me I’ve basically dropped most of my effort in submitting to those sites.
Don Draper
November 10th, 2008 2:04 am
I agree, the traffic you get from Digg will not be particularly useful. It doesn’t generally convert. But you don’t have to hit the front page on Digg to get a ton of value out of your activity. You just need to be able to build a profile that can submit something and get 100+ diggs. We did a stufy on the pagerank of powerful digg profiles, and the results were extremely surprising. Whether or not your article hits the front page doesn’t matter. The SEO impact of those links from Digg is dramatic. Google is looking at the number of internal links (votes) on a submission, and how high it is in the page hierarchy. 100 Diggs seems to be the dividing line. The long term effect of the search engine traffic on the term you’re promoting is well worth the time you put in. Of course, it would be nice if there was some software that made those activities easy, wouldn’t it?
Milinda
November 10th, 2008 2:18 am
Until I read this post, I think bringing one of my post to digg front page will increase traffic to my blog. But this post help me to understand pros and cons behind digg as marketing tool.
Thank you for your valuable post!
Sucker
November 10th, 2008 2:29 am
Hahaha I’m a big fan of his translation of Digg’s about page! Definitely agree with this article - unless your site matches Digg’s target audience, it’s not worth your time.
UltraRob
November 10th, 2008 2:33 am
I rarely find anything interesting on the front page of Digg and it also doesn’t work for my blog. I can see how it is worth it if you have the right type of blog and reader though.
Matthew commented that he sees StumbleUpon the same way. I’ve actually gotten a fair amount of benefit from it. Both from getting traffic to my blog and having other users send me things I’ve found very interesting.
Mike Nichols
November 10th, 2008 2:35 am
While it’s gratifying to receive those big Digg spikes, very few — if any — of those “readers” actually stick around to read your post, much less go deeper into your blog.
I’ve given up on Digg. The demographic of the typical user isn’t interested in my blog’s niche or the kind of posts I write. Why waste my time?
StumbleUpon seems to be a more mature audience, though still it’s a shotgun approach — only a small percentage of the people visiting my site read the post beyond the headline.
There is no silver bullet, and the verities of building your blog still hold true: great content, commenting on other blogs, networking, etc. Digg, StumbleUpon and their ilk are just ego builders that in the end deliver little value to your blog for all the effort it takes.
Ali Hale
November 10th, 2008 2:36 am
I suspect that Digg works well (or at least “okayish”) for some blogs, but not for others. I did start out using digg, digging other people’s posts, etc, but it seemed to be a lot of time for very little traffic. Those who I’ve known who have hit the front page often found it quite a negative experience — digg users tend to know what they’re looking for, and a lot of blog posts don’t appear to be quite it! The comment style on digg is also famously a little more, hem, “robust” than on most blogs.
Like UltraRob, I’ve seen a bit more benefit from StumbleUpon, though not a huge amount. Most of my traffic comes from guest posts, google and links from other bloggers.
th13rteen
November 10th, 2008 2:38 am
Digg isn’t really a good place to promote your blog or site. It takes a lot of time to hit the front page and once you do you get a huge traffic wave. But, most of them leave within a few seconds.
StumbleUpon on the other hand is a bit better. They keep on sending you traffic for a month or two. And the traffic wave is a lot bigger than Digg’s.
I wouldn’t say that you should stop using Digg. If you can hit the front page without a lot of effort and money then go for it. Every bit of traffic helps.
Robert Barr
November 10th, 2008 2:55 am
I agree it isn’t useless as well. I do see the author’s point about time value of money. But Digg has also lost some cred because of the way votes are garnered these days. Giant Digg lists, friends voting up friends, the whole basis to the system has been bastardized into a boy’s club mentality where you get Diggs for who you know, not what you know! I prefer StumbleUpon and Reddit to Digg overall.
Brad
November 10th, 2008 3:13 am
This is a great post! From my own limited blogging experience, traffic from sites like Digg don’t do much to help my blog in the long run. Don’t get me wrong, I always love the spike in traffic, but the traffic doesn’t convert with my advertising and I hardly get any regular readers from such places.
I think there are blogs that do well with traffic from DIgg, but they are rare gems indeed.
Great post! I’m looking forward to the follow-up!
Webdesi3
November 10th, 2008 3:16 am
Thanks Darren, I have been wasting time on Digg, and to no avail, think I’ll take you advise:)
David Airey
November 10th, 2008 3:17 am
A point well made, Josh. Thanks, Darren, for prompting the debate.
Rotten Little Girls
November 10th, 2008 3:30 am
I’m not going to lie, I get the fewest results from Digg. I find I get much more traffic from search engine results and reddit. However, the hits I get from Digg and Reddit are really “one time viewers”. I don’t seem to get many repeat visitors out of sites like these. My best strategy is commenting on blogs within my topic and creating meaningful relationships with other bloggers.
Josh Klein
November 10th, 2008 3:40 am
Thanks for your comments, everyone! I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I really appreciate your taking the time to tell me what you think. Darren is doing a great job with this debate.
@Matthew Dryden - I’m actually a big fan of Stumbleupon, despite my bashing of Digg. For SU, things don’t have to go through an editorial filter (of a staff editor OR a democratic consensus) - they are going to get a random assortment of people. There is value added by the actual service, and as odd as it might sound, I think SU users “stumble” away from posts less readily than Diggers.
SU is the referrer to my blog with the lowest bounce rate — consistently around 30%, better even than organic search. I think I’ll be writing about that soon.
Brandon Mendelson
November 10th, 2008 3:45 am
In terms of traffic, I agree with Josh. Although there is something to be said about just having your material found and blogged about because of Digg. I had that experience with National Zombie Day and marketing Humans Vs. Zombies.
That said, I’ve found Digg’s “Upcoming” section to be the most useful for bloggers. It’s a great way to find content to talk about that hasn’t yet hit the point where everyone’s talking about it.
You could have also swapped out Digg with Fark or College Humor and the same point would be true for this article. Perhaps most social media outlets?
Bill Masson (WWAH)
November 10th, 2008 3:56 am
Couldn’t agree with you more, total waste of time; Time that you could be using to mine the proper forums and groups that are interested in your content. Overall if you don’t target your efforts in the right locations you may as well forget it.
“The problem is Diggers aren’t Doers”. Well said!
Matt Coddington
November 10th, 2008 4:10 am
Seems fairly obvious to me that Josh has never really succeeded in promoting a site on Digg. If you hit the right niche with the right content at the right time you can take a no-name blog to a big earner in no time.
Ray The Money Man
November 10th, 2008 4:44 am
Your post is god sent. I had come to this conclusion on my own but have been second guessing it. At least for me, Digg is a big waste of time. Forums are the place to be. people who have a specofic interest and spend countless, calm, quiet hours enjoying your subject matter. I get amazing traffic from forums. Just Google your category and start with the highest ranking forum. Join and contribute.
Great post!
Cassie
November 10th, 2008 5:05 am
I’ve actually found some really useful blogs through Digg, but I’ve also spent hours wasting my time with total crap at the same time. In fact, the comments are what usually suck me in. Even if I think an article is really great, there are always some losers who post something negative. It actually makes me scared to get anything on the front page. Being a blogger requires a bit of thick skin, but I still hate reading anything negative about my writing.
My niches aren’t usually the type you would find on Digg, but even if they were, I think I’d still prefer to focus on writing great content, bringing in quality traffic, and converting them to loyal readers and customers. I find that Digg users and the like don’t convert very easily.
Hamid
November 10th, 2008 5:20 am
I would have to agree here. This I was thinking since last few days that the traffic from sites like digg, specially the blogs sharing site like Mybloglog or blogcatalog just are not suitable for a blog which is at the same time of blogging trying to make some money out of it.
People from these networks are so used to the ads they see that they are too quick to ignore any ad which they see on a blog/website found through their network.
anthony
November 10th, 2008 5:28 am
i read this, hit the backspace button and returned to digg. you were spot on…
Andy @ Retire at 40
November 10th, 2008 5:52 am
As always, there are both sides to the argument and as always, you should pick and choose what you do with your time. Try Digg, see if it works. Don’t try Digg and you’ll be trying something else anyway to see if that works. You have to keep refining rather than just doing or not doing something because someone tells you one way of the other.
So the ultimate phrase is …
… decide for yourself whether it is worth it or not (Digg or otherwise).
Melissa Donovan
November 10th, 2008 6:55 am
I’m glad someone finally said it. After poking around Digg for awhile, I found it to be a complete waste of time in terms of generating traffic to any of my sites. Hits might go up but so does the bounce rate. Simply commenting on other blogs proved to be a far better use of time.
MK (Casey) van Bronkhorst
November 10th, 2008 7:11 am
Digg tells us this themselves. All one needs to do is look at the posting categories. For the tech blogger and eco blogger, it’s probably on the must-use list. For the fashionista blogger, it’s time better spent elsewhere. I post at Digg, but I post elsewhere as well.
Rather than bemoan the fact that Digg doesn’t do everything, it might be time to celebrate the fact that it does a few things -very- well, and move on.
I’d sneak in a plug for a ‘better’ service here, but I’m still hunting. Since I’m still struggling to decipher StumbleUpon, I hesitate to tout them as the next best non-techie thing.
SEO UK
November 10th, 2008 7:29 am
I couldn’t agree more ever since Digg became the place to be for social media users I have stayed away. It most definitely is not the place for bloggers to grow their blogs it is full of the same generic rubbish posted day upon day, only a few types of media get on the front page of Digg and thats the same day in and day out.
What is the point?
Why not use the time to write more quality content or try another social media site perhaps a niche social media site which fits your blog criteria. If not apply the time to working out the meaning of life its as time consuming and again you won’t get anywhere.
By Digg’s number one fan…
John P. Kreiss
November 10th, 2008 8:33 am
Darren,
This post makes a very compelling argument and gives the readers something to think about. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
John P. Kreiss
MorganSullivan, Inc.
Business Solutions in Real Estate and Construction
http://www,morgansullivan.com
Corey Freeman
November 10th, 2008 8:54 am
I kind of have to stop and ask who would spend HOURS on digg? I mean, I can understand it might take 5 minutes to digg a few articles, but hours just digging and digging is ridiculous. I wouldn’t do it in real life, and I’m not going to do it online.
Dr. Nicole
November 10th, 2008 8:57 am
Interesting comments and discussion. I have to agree with the article. I think Digg and similar sites are great for driving an immediate stampede of traffic to your site so that Google will index it sooner. I have used these sites to end up on the front page of Google in a few days for a selected search term.
They do work great, but they are also a huge time sink when people let them take over their lives. I have seen many bloggers grow so addicted to Digg that they spend what looks like 8 hours a day on there and can’t manage to update their blog but once a month. It truly is a waste when it comes down to that, because everyone knows that those eight hours would be better off spent on content creation.
I limit my time to about 15 minutes per social network site and get a decent amount of traffic. Incidentally the more important thing I am rewarded with is a community of like minded bloggers and friends.
Matthew Dryden
November 10th, 2008 9:03 am
StumbleUpon is like having a thousand people run into you - only you don’t feel a thing. I can appreciate it was a content-driven service, but I don’t think that it’s a great social networking tool.
The point that I’m trying to make is that SU’s job is to promote cool/interesting content, not help socialize people.
Michael Aulia
November 10th, 2008 9:04 am
@Corey Freeman: That’s because you need to spend hours and hours to be “connected” to the community so that your Digg friends will help you dugg the article to get you to the homepage.
I can’t be bothered with Digg, to be honest (simply because of the time that you have to spend)
As for the non-quality traffic, as long as you have a good CPM ads, then that traffic is worthy enough ^^
Raena
November 10th, 2008 9:05 am
“Digg is a place for 18-24 year old males to read about Internet gossip.”
So true. If that’s your demographic, go for it. If not, why waste time?
Geeks are Sexy
November 10th, 2008 9:22 am
Well, for those who are part of big CPM-based ad networks, getting dugg may mean ending up with $500 to $2000 in their pockets by the end of the day..
e7lam
November 10th, 2008 9:26 am
i also thinks that instead of wasting time over the digg bloggers has to constrate on their content
thanks a lot
Ryne Nelson
November 10th, 2008 10:49 am
I couldn’t have said it any better, Josh. You said all that needed to be said about Digg, and you didn’t dance around it. The people who disagree with you need to try a week off of submitting to Digg and creating real content. They’ll be agreeing with you in seven days or less!
LewP
November 10th, 2008 12:05 pm
As a former member and Top 100 member of Digg, I completely agree with your post.
I think Digg hates for people to promote their own site as it makes Digg jealous to see that someone creates a good following of readers. In fact, I can attest to the fact if your promotions are good enough and get noticed enough, Digg will ban you.
Rahul
November 10th, 2008 1:35 pm
This is a very good topic that you’ve raised here. People are using sites like these and other social networking sites for not quite good reasons, reasons like spamming and stuff. This has got to be checked too.
Sites like Digg have a true networking sites and not otherwise.
Mike K.
November 10th, 2008 1:46 pm
Digg is much like stumbleupon, if you do manage to get to the first page is is a nice boost of traffic but only for a short time then they move on. you need to focus on long term traffic that will convert. In my opinion diggs and stumble waste of time.
Lin Burress
November 10th, 2008 1:56 pm
Digg may very well bring a stampede of traffic for awhile, but just like with StumbleUpon, the traffic quickly wanes and virtually disappears once the rush is over. Then what?
As with any form of social media, whether it be Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter etc, it takes time and effort to build a network of “friends” who will submit your posts to bring in the mass waves of traffic.
I neither have the time or the inclination necessary to spend endless hours on Digg especially. Digg doesn’t seem to work very well on my niche anyway, so why should I bother wasting my time?
Creating good quality content for search engine traffic primarily is my focus and priority, and any social media traffic that comes in from people Stumbling my posts or Twitter users “re-tweeting” links to my posts is like the icing on the cake.
I don’t dig Digg at all.
Sire
November 10th, 2008 2:39 pm
People spend hours on Digg? Unbelievable. I’ve hardly ever spend more that a couple of minutes at a time, and that is on the rare occasion that I even go there. Nope, I must say I am not a Digg fan.
Ron Mertens
November 10th, 2008 2:39 pm
One thing that Digg helps with is search results. Getting dugg may give you a great boost in Google (although it might be temporary). This is a great benefit.
Although I agree that all in all it’s not worth the time/effort.
Ron
clickfire
November 10th, 2008 2:51 pm
I couldn’t disagree more. It doesn’t take that much time to submit a story to digg and vote for a handful of friends’ stuff. The benefit of getting on the front page is not in the short burst of traffic, but in the long term organic links and capital built from social relationships on digg.
Dave L
November 10th, 2008 3:19 pm
You can get a small number of qualified visitors and a small number of unqualified visitors by strategies that avoid Digg. Or you can use Digg and get a small number of qualified visitors and a large number of unqualified visitors.
Note that both strategies will bring in some qualified visitors. It’s just that Digg also includes a ton of “noise.” If you can handle the traffic spikes and are a good enough writer/marketer to adjust your content without watering down what matters, Digg can be a great place to get traffic. Especially to a couple of those “Evergreen” articles you need to have written to get backlinks, and hence increased search engine traffic.
Forget the noise: if you can handle the requirements, Digg can be great.
PCLicious Video Tutorials
November 10th, 2008 5:06 pm
Good point that Digg takes up a lot of time that you can be using to market your blog elsewhere with better conversion.
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Valeria | TimelessLessons
November 10th, 2008 7:19 pm
I sure do agree with you on this one Josh. Instead of wasting time over digg, bloggers better concentrate on their content. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
nick
November 10th, 2008 7:26 pm
I think that Digg has it’s advantages, such as finding interesting articles that make you laugh, but it can be difficult to bring quality traffic as stated.
Ravi Ahuja
November 10th, 2008 7:37 pm
I had read some where in problooger.net that from which sources problogger.net get visitors and the social media was the biggest source of traffic for it.
If a very successful blog (problogger.net) is getting most of the visitors from site like digg etc then from where we will get visitors.
Defiantly no one likes to spend money to bring visitors but social bookmaking is the easiest way to bring lot of visitors. If you are getting 1000 visitors with some efforts and only 10 are becoming your regular visitors then I think it is worth to bring visitors from social bookmaking site.
Of course you should try to bring visitors from other sources too and then after try what is the conversion ration if other ways of promotion is giving better conversion then try that way to promote your site.
Alex Fayle | Someday Syndrome
November 10th, 2008 8:05 pm
Thank you for explaining to me why I don’t use Digg.
jacqueline church
November 10th, 2008 8:51 pm
I couldn’t agree more. Digg is not only geared toward young male time-wasters, they are proud and arrogant about it. When I first discovered them I asked about a food and cooking section which they didn’t even have back then. Know what the response was?
“Our readers would simply view that as spam.”
Ouch. How rude. And that was after I had to ask them to give me the courtesy of a response…No way to do business.
Of course now they’ve added it. Code geeks have to eat, too you know!
It’s not my niche and unless I have a food related piece that I know will be of interest there, I skip them.
Dilip Shaw
November 10th, 2008 9:37 pm
I always believe that social network sites do not bring quality traffic and therefore I do not advertise / spend time on them.
SEO is my best bet.
Dilip Shaw
http://www.dilipshaw.com/
ashok
November 10th, 2008 9:46 pm
I’ve never made and don’t think I ever will make the front page of Digg. But it has been invaluable as a networking tool - I’ve made friends there, two of whom are regular readers of my blog and willing to do anything to help me.
I’m not going to sneeze at that. I am going to say that I got those friends because I knew how limited Digg was for me: my content is just not the right sort for that site, and the problems with promotion there were evident from the start.
Laugh It Out
November 10th, 2008 11:55 pm
I agree that digg is very time consuming and traffic is not worth it. But still search engine traffic is not very high and for average bloggers like me digg and social networking is the only way of getting noticed.
Jennae @ Green Your Decor
November 11th, 2008 12:54 am
Not all content is created equal, and Digg does favor a certain type of content. My website isn’t right for Digg…and I learned that the hard way. I spent countless hours collecting friends, Digging my own posts, asking others to Digg for me, trying to add some of the biggest Digg users as friends…and it was all fruitless.
Digg just wasn’t right for my content, and it wasn’t worth the time I had been spending on it — particularly because a vast majority of my readers are women, and Digg doesn’t do a good job of highlighting content targeted for women at all. Stumble Upon has been much more successful for me, mostly because of the ability to target a niche and get visitors who are actually interested in your type of content.
Digg’s categories are so broad and expansive that smaller sites tend to get lost in the shuffle, no matter how many friends you have. If I ever write something with an inflammatory, link-bait type headline, I’ll submit it to Digg. If not, I’d rather spend my time elsewhere, like Twitter and SU and commenting on other blogs and forums.
Bruce Simmons (brusimm)
November 11th, 2008 1:15 am
I think the one magic ingredient everyone is looking for is not in any one place.
Yes, like myself on another website I work for, I have on occasion, generated over 1,000 diggs and gotten almost 10,000 new readers for a post in a day.
What folks don’t seem to be aware of is the exact nature of the surfer, or customer. It’s no different than the real world sales / marketing demographics.
When I WAS in a sales position, working for myself, the numbers said it all: For every 100 people I made contact with, (Let’s call that a site visitor), I’d retain around 2 folks as curious customers.
For every 100 “curious customers” I developed, 1 would become a client. A paycheck. (In this case, I would equate that to a repeat visitor.)
Hence, with the 10,000 readers I got in one day, my expectation is that I retained maybe 5 readers as new, regular visitors. From there, it’s word of mouth by your regular visitors.
It’s just the way it is because web surfers (the customer or regular visitor) have tons of options and little time. They have to weed carefully because they don’t spend lengthy amounts of time surfing like the rest of us do.
Plain and simple.
Regards,
Bruce
Ian
November 11th, 2008 2:02 am
Excellent article. I have seen many bloggers get hit with Digg and then point out that none of the traffic stuck. However, I have seen sites like Zen Habits get hit time and again by Digg and build huge amounts of followers. Of course, I believe the content on Zen Habits has turned into a repetitious site with trite, repetitive articles in the style of popular magazines, but still, it works for keeping the Digg traffic flowing, and possibly for making ad revenue.
I believe it all depends on what you want to do. If your goal is to drive traffic and clicks for ad revenue, then perhaps Digg and other similar networks might be worthwhile. If your goal is to write the content and build an audience, well then you may be best off relying on a few initial subscribers and then really get the word of mouth marketing going with high quality content. See Writer Dad for a great example of building a blog based on content, not Digg.
Caitlin
November 11th, 2008 2:39 am
Would you make the same argument about StumbleUpon or is it different? It seems to me that SU has a different audience to Digg but people still typically stop at the stumbled page and then move on without ever going back to the rest of the site.
Robert Rittmuller
November 11th, 2008 3:00 am
Having managed to get on the Digg home page a few times I can definitely say that the burst of traffic is quite nice. That said, I have to also agree with the other folks here that the direct traffic from Digg usually does not result in any significant increase in ad revenue. What does make it worth promoting posts on Digg is the residual traffic from those who find the story on Digg and then blog about it or link to it in comments. That “after-digg” effect does significantly increase the bottom line and makes the time invested worth it for a large number of blogs.
David B Katague
November 11th, 2008 3:44 am
Excellent article. I agree 100%.
Miguel
November 11th, 2008 3:51 am
Digg is a crap. Granted, I am bitter because of how they treated my situation. But I don’t use Digg. I haven’t been to Digg in a longtime.
That said, as a newer blogger, it seems the best way to build traffic is work on your “blog voice”. I may not have the biggest following, but I will stick to my guns and write what I care about and not what others want to hear. Frankly, that suits me just fine. join me or don’t, either way, I will write about what I choose to write about.
Content and a voice are what I hope to have a following for, not because I happened to get a Digg spike.
Healthy Gaming
November 11th, 2008 4:20 am
Do you guys (and gals) submit your own posts to Digg yourselves, or let your readers do it (same thing for other sites, like StumbleUpon)?
Josh Klein
November 11th, 2008 5:27 am
Thanks again to everyone for the comments!
@Caitlin - I would actually argue that StumbleUpon is different. It’s a lengthy argument, so I’ll save that for another post. I do think the sites are very different.
@BruceSimmons - I don’t disagree with you… if you can get a large enough number of eyeballs onto your page with Digg, some are going to sign up. That is the same story as marketing and sales before the web came about. But there is a better way that exists now, because the web makes it much easier to generate qualified leads. Traditional direct marketing means you blast out the snail mail and wait for responses, but it’s different when people can actually come and sign up for your online newsletter about the very subject that you want to later sell them on! To me, it’s not a matter of efficacy but efficiency.
@others - Zen Habits, Think Progress, MoveOn … yes, these sites do well on Digg. But you have to wonder how repeatable that success is. Has the ship sailed?
The web changes so quickly, do the same strategies make sense today? Digg is a different place today than it was even 1 year ago!
JB
November 11th, 2008 5:35 am
“This makes visitors from Digg unqualified traffic.”
I have been saying this for quite some time now. It is very seldom that I see or talk to anyone that just happened to randomly stumble upon my blog and subscribe to it. The key is to promote your blog in a place where the users of that blog could/would potentially be subscribers of your own blog.
p@r@noid
November 11th, 2008 5:56 am
While reading this article hundred , thousand of thoughts strike into my mind!
1 The time i spent on digg, i could have utilize by writing new posts,
2 The time i spent shouting and digging others articles i could have working on other stuff.
3 Digg need time, quality comes after that. Whereas many other sites need quality.
4 Different forums will be a better place to get traffic.
Last but not the list??
5 Now what? Am i going to quit Digg?? will i be able to leave this thought, that front page of Digg can give me thousands of clicks.
Tschai
November 11th, 2008 6:33 am
For a lill’ and humble blog like mine,Aytemir.com, any traffic is welcome.
And from SU (and even Digg) I still get traffic after days and weeks.
It’s a start and you just might hit the right buttons or one might just do that for you…
It only takes 10 minutes to digg your own post and you do get some traffic: that’s the power of digg for small blogs!
Bruce Simmons (brusimm)
November 11th, 2008 6:37 am
Never submit your own stuff to stumble or digg.
Once a reader does, you can support the link / digg / stumble, but not before.
-Bruce
syringa28
November 11th, 2008 12:00 pm
I thought by digging, we could increase the PR of the website because it will drive more traffic to our website. But, I’m still new about Digg and don’t have any idea about it.
Sueblimely
November 11th, 2008 12:57 pm
I gave up on Digg a while ago but stick with StumbleUpon because of the social network I have developed on there; a network that feeds me more of the topics that interest me enough to want to stumble. It also brings me some traffic. Digg became a chore and it did not bring traffic. This is maybe because I did not put the time and effort into it but the motivation was not there to do so.
pay per click expert
November 11th, 2008 3:09 pm
The only thing that matters in traffic is conversion. Bookmarking it to easy accessible bookmarking but very credible sites is a great investment.
Mel T
November 11th, 2008 3:18 pm
I’ve tried Digg a few times, and made a real effort to create something ‘diggable’, but I’ve failed every time.
I’ve seen two of my posts on the first page of ‘upcoming’ with plenty of time and sufficient diggs to make it to the FP, and both times I’ve been buried!!
Digg can be really annoying!!
BloggerTests
November 11th, 2008 4:40 pm
Based on my experience, I have similar opinion on stumble upon, sure from time to time I get traffic surges that last for two days with no visible lasting effect at all
I’m not sure what all the hype is about.
Good post!
uwak
November 11th, 2008 6:20 pm
I like read your articles , good evaluation using digg…..with plus and minus…..
Zliggo
November 12th, 2008 6:19 pm
I am still using Digg now and still get traffic from it but I guess it not really good. Thanks for the article
bourgy
November 13th, 2008 1:58 am
Well, we’ve always known ‘DIGGers’ aren’t the best resource money-wise but the link itself will always have value and some bloggers need to see that little bit of traffic as motivation to continue.
a parent reason
November 14th, 2008 12:07 am
Wow! This statement really hit home when I started to think about it. This is exactly what I do on digg. It’s entertainment no different than watching primetime television to take a break from the chaos of life.
paul
November 14th, 2008 9:46 pm
I will never make it to the home page of Digg but I will still use it to submit articles.
LEADSExplorer
November 16th, 2008 7:33 am
Our blog got bookmarked a few times on Digg, StumbleUpon and Propellor
First: Who
It is important who bookmarks you: there are leaders and there laggards.
Leader bring a lot of traffic. Laggerds hardly any one.
The problem is: once you get bookmarked by a laggard, the leaders can’t bookmark you: thus you miss traffic thanks to the laggard.
Second: You
If the blogwriter bookmarks, he sure wll be a laggard: thus hardly any followers.
Never ever bookmark yourself!
Third: Conversion
Although getting bookmarked generates a lot of traffic, very little is corparate or company traffic as most are residential Internet surfers.
Thus in case you are selling B2B (as we do) hardly any conversion will happen.
Fourth: Internet score
The best thing about getting bookmarked: your “Internet score” increases:
- the bookmark links count as value
- a higher ranking on Alexa.com
- a possible better SERP on Google, Yahoo, MSN Live!
Fith: Branding
Branding - all those visitors will read your post and that will increase your brand recognition.These residential Internet surfers do work and could remember and mention your brand one day.
Ironic
November 16th, 2008 12:50 pm
I did love your “Digg This” link at the bottom, LOL.
Josh Klein
November 26th, 2008 2:48 pm
Ha, that is indeed ironic, though all of Darren’s posts have that, FYI :)
uwak
November 28th, 2008 10:37 pm
O’OW…..! .I am banned by digg…….
The Content Syndication Network
December 10th, 2008 12:55 am
Hi one n’all … isn’t the internet just great eh! … I started out about 10 minutes ago from an email from Twitter which led me to exposedseo.com/ then to buzzblogger.com/ then from there to twitip.com/ then onto simpleology.com/ from there to here and I’ve just been blown away with such powerful free information pouring from all these pages a real proper WoW … all this info could have all been sold for lots of dollars … and deffo this blog page really has the wow factor such valuable info thanks a bunch Darren your the man cheers mate …
All my best to you and yours
Phillip Skinner
Celes | EmbraceLiving.Net
December 21st, 2008 4:48 pm
Hi Josh, thanks for fresh viewpoint! I just launched my personal development blog (EmbraceLiving.Net) and I’m actually considering whether Digg is really worth my time (Reddit is currently a better traffic generator for me). There are so many sites inside that it feels like a small fish in a big pond syndrome. Still, there seem to be site owners who swear by Digg, so I’ll continue to hang around and see how things go.
farouk
February 23rd, 2009 12:40 am
i strongly agree with you and i have always been saying the same, i believe reddit.com is even worse even though its as popular as digg
Raleigh Fence Company
April 10th, 2009 12:38 pm
Darren,
I couldn’t agree more. As a small fence contractor that also blogs to gain customers, Digg has nothing for me. I wasted countless hours with it and SU all for not. I can say that the bursts in traffic I got from Stumble must have helped my rankings, but not enough for the hours I spent on it. I could have been working on SEO, content, links, and networking which I would have gained much more from.
I don’t mess with Digg or Stumble anymore (very rarely), as I saw it wasting my time. Besides, how could a fence contractor writing about local fence industry issues ever make the front page of Digg anyway!
Keith
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