How helpful is it to get dugg at Dugg.com?

[KLB]

I know that successfully getting dugg by dugg.com can result in a short term high traffic, low ad clickthrough rates, but how much help is getting dugg for long term traffic levels? It the traffic a short term flash in the pan or can getting dugg really attract new repeat readers and do links from Dugg help much in regards to search engines?

The reason I'm asking is because I finally signed up at dugg.com and wonder how much effort I should put into promoting articles over there. My first attempt at promoting an article over there is http://digg.com/science/Norwegian_farmed_salmon_production_raises_global_c oncern

[John]

I have never used it but there was a great thread going on over at digitalpoint about digg a few weeks ago. I can't find the thread right now but it was basically a guy with a brand new site, he did no SEO at all and was getting under 5 uniques a day. Then all of a sudden he posted on digg and his site made it to the front page, it gave him about 30,000 uniques a day for 2 or 3 days then the traffic died back down to what it was before. I don't think he mentioned anything about his clickthrough rates.

Wish I could be more help, anyways I gave you a digg.

[KLB]

John thanks for the Digg. What you said is what I've heard elsewhere. That's okay, the article I'm trying to get dugg is a really good article on a really important issue. The author has basically been in the Norwegian press every single day for the last six months because of this issue. Some in Norway have labeled her a trader, which is kind of funny as she is really an American.

[John]

Well even if it is just temporary traffic it's still a **** load of free exposure, and even if the clickthrough rate is poor you'll still get something with the extra 100,000 uniques, not to mention what you'd get from CPM advertisments.

[KLB]

Well my bandwidth allowance could handle my site being slash dotted so I'm not worried about getting hit by Digg traffic wise. I'm certain I can handle it. I could probably handle an extra 50,000 pageviews a day and not even make my server break a sweat.

[Emancipator]

You say that KLB but are you ready for 2million uniques? I got that on 1 article and it brough me to a screeching halt quick and im on a dual xeon :P

[KLB]

Okay 2,000,000 pageviews would probably cause my server to buckle. ;)

Netscape.com now has a service similar to Digg.com except that they also have paid "anchors" that act as editors. I joined their service and posted the article over there as well. It will be interesting to see how the two compare. You can see the Netscape posting at:
http://science.beta.netscape.com/story/2006/06/16/norwegian-farmed-salmon-production-raises-global-concern/


I have decided to turn of my ad-blocking detection script to reduce load just in case. I've been thinking of doing this anyways sometimes this summer to run some experiments to see how it affects my traffic and ad revenue. Now is as good of a time as any to run that experiment

[Cutter]

I think the real value is from the banklinks generated by people who read the story on digg. Of course, if you make some money from the intial traffic spike thats great too.

Here is a story about my first commercial website, it got slashdotted, and made about $1.50 from Adsense! I wish I could do more testing in this area, but the way you monetize the site can really make all the different. I've heard of one guy running a hardware site who pulls in thousands every time he gets on slashdot.

[KLB]

What I really want is the exposure to new eyes. I've been rolling out lots of new articles the past eight months and already have four waiting to be published (I publish two per month due to budget restraints) and have several more in the pipeline.

If I could increase readership of the articles and in turn increase revenues, I could accelerate my article purchases, which would give readers more reasons to return more often. I'm trying to build up that critical mass that would allow me to publish new articles on a weekly basis.

[Selkirk]

I haven't been dugg yet, but I have been linked to from reddit and stumbleupon. I think these then led to an unsolicited deep link from DMOZ plus a few other links. The article that got linked is now toolbar PR 6. I'm happy enough.

[AndyH]

I may have to try this. Basically, I submit an article about my site and then tell all my site's members to Digg it?

~300 will get on the front page?

[KLB]

You could also tell us here and we could trade digs. ;)

[John]

Trading diggs is really popular over at digitalpoint. Maybe we should have a digg/netscape section on the forums for us to trade.

[KLB]

Trading diggs is really popular over at digitalpoint. Maybe we should have a digg/netscape section on the forums for us to trade.
This probably isn't the best idea as it could just paint a giant bullseye on these forums and ourselves. I've been reading up on this all day and the best practice seems to be simply adding each other to our friends list and then keeping an eye on each other articles voting where appropriate. In other words voting for real articles with real merit, not simply trading votes.

[KLB]

I wonder how important the timing of the posting of an article on one of these sites is. Could a Saturday or Sunday post when there is little traffic doom a post to obscurity?

There has to be methods to this madness that increases the odds of a good article getting some attention. I guess I just need to find somebody who really knows how to work the systems.

[Giles]

One of my not so good articles has the most diggs yet it isn't much good. I'm guessing a friday night eastern US time could be a pretty good. The netscape site is giving me pretty good traffic too, it has hardly any articles and wouldn't be very hard to get on the front page of it.
Yesterday was my biggest earning day and I have seen a huge increase in unique visits, but I have only had them up on digg and netscape fro 1 day so I don't know if this traffic is temporary, I certainly hope it isn't.

[KLB]

I suppose the 20 something crowd isn't too worried about an orchestrated cover up of cadmium contamination and illegal nitrate use in the fish food Norwegian fishermen fed to their farm raised salmon and trout, which were then exported to places like Russia, the United States and rest of Europe and so contaminated with cadmium that Russian inspectors picked up on it and issued a ban on Norwegian salmon. Hence the lack of interest in my article. After all the 20 something crowd eats burgers and fries, not fish.

[Giles]

It would be nice to have a site similar to digg but not so specifically IT, for example I have to submit photography under "design". One that was more general categorized and and all ages. I like the idea of advertising articles and getting a link to them without having to submit the actual articles. The other good thing is that quality articles get the the top, apparently.

Could be a project for someone...

[KLB]

I think the problem is that only these types of sites that are primarily IT related could really get off the ground and grow like Digg and Slashdot have. Netscape's new offering and Shoutwire are two examples of similar sites without a heavy IT bias, but I think they will turn out to be primarily focus on light news like entertainment. I doubt any of these sites could really successfully focus on hard news and serious issues. If for no other reason than serious issues seem to draw out the hate mongers who like to stir up trouble and troll simply to get attention.

[Giles]

The internet is a sad place.

[Selkirk]

Ken, your description of your article on here is more compelling than the one you wrote on digg. Think tabloid or fox news:

Norwegian scientist reveals fishy cover up
A senior scientist in seafood safety for the Norwegian government exposes an orchestrated cover up of illegal nitrate use and cadmium contamination in farm raised fish. The Russians have banned the tainted fish, which is also shipped to the rest of Europe and the United States. Is it safe to order the salmon?

[KLB]

Well I can't do much about my Digg, Netscape and Shoutwire posts, but I did update my XML feed and descriptions used on my site. I can't change the title as this was picked by the writer.