We all know that Digg is one of the biggest and most popular social bookmarking sites around. Why on earth would I not want to use that to help promote my blog. Well, I have come to the conclusion that tring to get traffic from Digg is a waste of my time. Like yours, my time is very valuable and I am seeking other avenues that will yield better traffic with less effort. After experimenting with Digg for the last 6 months, here are some of my observations:
- Digg users do not like bloggers. Let me rephrase that, they like a select few bloggers like Mashable, engadget and treehugger. It seems like bloggers that blog about blogging, making money online, SEO, and the like are shunned by the Digg community. I have come to the conclusion that I do not write about stuff that Digg users are interested in reading. The front page is usually dominated by gadgets and breaking news.
- Digg is such a huge community that it is very difficult to become a power user and build a sizeable enough network to build enough votes to become noticed.
- I am guilty of submitting my own content and I think because of this Digg has buried a great majority of my stories.
Rather than continue to waste my time, I have decided that I rather be a big fish in a small pond and have started to embrace several other social bookmarking communities. Here are the top 3 that I am involved with right now
Mixx – If you want to be my MixxFriend- my username is tjs1
Blog Engage- my username is TycoonBlogger
Twittley- I have a very high karma rating and am more than willing to tweet you up, just drop me a comment and let me know you are using it.
Have you had any luck getting traffic from Digg? What other social bookmarking sites are you using?
I’ve started to feel the same way about digg. You really sum it up well.
.-= Nicholas Z. Cardot´s last blog ..5 Irrefutable Qualities of Successful Blogs =-.
I can’t say that I blame you bro, there’s not a tremendous amount of room for growth there unless you have something that will blow people’s doors off.
Original pictures of a firey crash or something like that.
I seem to be growing my Stumble a lot more than any of the others right now, Blog Engage is doing very well for me as well.
I am actually doing a little test between Twittley, Blog Engage and one other site I will be reviewing in the next few days.
.-= Extreme John@Extreme John Blogging and Business´s last blog ..Firefox Add-Ons for Blogging =-.
I like Kevin Rose but i never liked DIGG.I found the so called super diggers in there to be snobs and super LAME I don’t get how people get idolized because you mack DIGG ?
Give me a break:)
Also since Mixx just switched to no follow I wouldn’t invest much if any time on that site:)
What we need to do is converge on and rock stumble,I do like blogengage and Brian we should all stick to the common man like US
Thanks for stopping by I just thumbed and Twittley <mine has a prob I will have to check out but that site has some cool owner when I signed up he emailed me about widget placement etc. As time goes on we have to stick with people that do people right
.-= John Sullivan´s last blog ..US Health care debate please weigh in thanks =-.
Digg has been overhyped…
Digg need proper strategy from the day 1….
Your blog should be atleast few months old along with it.. Your blog design needs to be perfect along with it Digg users hates contextual ads above the post. Ad placement should be very professional and should not hamper the post quality in anyways..
If you do it right and if your submission is perfect , I’m sure you will get qualiity traffic.
.-= Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..Backlink and How to Get Free Backlinks for blogs? =-.
I have stopped using Digg like, a year and half ago??? Haha. All you said where right. They are really nonwelcoming when it comes to our niches (blogging tips, seo, make money online).
Submitting your own stories doesn’t help too, they like have a social circle in there and if you’re not a really active (famous) user, which I may add is very hard to achieve, then it will be more likely that the articles will just be ignored by the Diggers.
Didn’t receive any good traffic from it too, so I immediately stopped using it. There are other more productive methods anyway.
.-= Liane YoungBlogger´s last blog ..Keepin The Passion Strong: Blogging For Two Solid Years Now and Counting =-.
I haven’t been using digg for a while now, never seemed to get much traffic from it, not like some of the other sites I use like Mixx, Twitter etc. I’m very taken by Twittley at the moment and just love the way it works on my humble blog
.-= Karen@Blazing Minds´s last blog ..Music from the amazing show Monkey Dust! =-.
We have never used social bookmarking sites to promote our website. Let’s see will try and use any one of the three mentioned communities above.
.-= iWrite2Know´s last blog ..Friendship Chain Award =-.
Hi Dan,
I’m a bit on the fence here!
I agree digg is lame and they shun bloggers but Is till use the service! As an example once I’m done writing this comment I’m going to digg this. I figure if I can help your blog get 10 or even 15 more hits then I have done my share.
For the record I don’t submit my content to digg and it’s for the same reasons you have mentioned. Like you I focus on smaller niche communities. Mixx, Stumbleupon, blogengage, twitter, tweetmeme etc..
It’s sad because digg is a great community but getting to the front page is nearly impossible.
.-= bbrian017´s last blog ..Working on this new blog theme right now =-.
Never really used any social bookmarking sites to promote my blog apart from twitter…
Will need to lookout for social bookmarking sites and will keep your review about digg in mind
Cheers
Sandeep
.-= Curious Little Person´s last blog ..Use Mind Map for Unlimited Post Ideas =-.
I completely agree with what you’ve said Tycoon. I do quite a bit of Social Bookmarking, but I stopped using Digg a while ago. I used to get very little traffic from it — and surprisingly enough, the content I was posting fell right under the categories you mentioned (the ones Digg users “shun”).
.-= The Gooroo @ Finance Advisory Stop´s last blog ..How To Overcome Loneliness If You Work From Home =-.
I was doing some research about Social Bookmarking when I came across your post. Glad I did; you’ve given me some good leads, thanks.
i have stopped using Digg from last few months because of many such probs. i prefer stumbleupon, reddit, twitter more then using Digg for social bookmarking purpose and getting traffic or getting my posts noticed globally.
.-= Custom term paper´s last blog ..Un astudentessa racconta la propria preparazione agli esami universitari a Bari =-.
I’ve never really succeeded with Digg. Even though I had a interesting page with over 1000 unique visitors each day it only got about 30 diggs within 2 months.
.-= Stefan´s last blog ..Link Building With Link Directories =-.
One of my blog posts got dugg once… about knitting, haha! I think it got about 3 diggs and 15 hits overall. I haven’t submitted my own stuff because I don’t think people would vote for it, same as you. I haven’t had very much success submitting my own Stumbles either. It’s easier to just wait to be discovered, though that definitely takes time.
.-= Money Seeds´s last blog ..Entrecard for increasing blog traffic =-.
I learned the hard way how detrimental submitting to digg could be as well. I find having a substantial amount of friends on other services and helping each other can boost you further.
Thanks for the advice as I was thinking about where I COULD or could not taking my ebeggingonline blog to. I want to take my blog to another level but as you quite rightly said..time is valuable and of the essence.
.-= yanjiaren´s last blog ..On Hosting, Complaining and other things.. =-.
I agree with most of you here! But I won’t leave my dream of landing on the Home page of Digg. I am planning about an ultimate strategy about making on the top! Not kidding at all…
.-= Tech-Freak Stuff´s last blog ..What is encrypted code in WordPress themes? =-.
Since Digg disabled its shout feature, I can’t get more than one or two Diggs per post. The shout feature was very spammy but that was the only way I had to share my posts there. I do a humor blog and, believe me, unless you’re onion.com, cracked.com or collegehumor.com, you’re not making it to the front page.
I noticed another commenter brought up SumbleUpon. I’m part of a humor blogger community that stumbles each other’s stuff. I just read an article about how SU is trying to counteract that.
http://socialnewswatch.com/how-to-not-get-banned-on-stumbleupon/
Social News Watch is not my site. I have nothing to do with it. I just think it’s worth reading the article before thumbing up friends’ posts.
.-= kathcom´s last blog ..HBDC Summer Camp Survival Tips =-.
I totally agree with you over the Digg ‘view’ you have. I presently use IndianPad, Mixx and Propeller to my advantage. You shud try the other two.
Recently I have written about How Self Submission to Social Bookmarking sites proves risky to your blog.
And my post has been backed up by similar thinkers who have energetically submitted their own posts and got banned from SB sites.
.-= Team Nirvana´s last blog ..Using Pingomatic Bookmark for WordPress Blog Posts =-.
I do agree with you, it’s not easy to get noticed on DIGG nowadays. Stop using it for around 3-4 month now.
Yeah I just can’t be bothered with Digg. You need lots of good active friends in there to vote for you no matter how good your article is, etc. It’s just not right!
.-= Michael Aulia´s last blog ..Community Spotlight at BlogEngage =-.
I used to submit my own content to dig. However it has since become so popular and digg has become smarter that it is no longer in a blog owners benefit to go through all that trouble.
I think the reason dig users dislike blogs is because there is so much b.s. that gets digged, and it gets frustrating as a user. I’d guess that over 95% of blogs are completely worthless..
I have just recently started experimenting with the various Social networks. Based on your post and the comments of others, I will be interested to see if I come to the same conclusion.
I really don’t bother with Digg anymore either.
Digg has become a place that mostly talks about Apple and other tech stories which my blog really doesn’t fall into.
I think the most diggs I’ve had before is about 30 or so, ah well.
.-= Beginner DJ´s last blog ..Music Stuck In My Head: 3/07/10 =-.
It’s definitely a challenge to get significantly Dugg. I prefer Reddit and another that is creeping up the charts is Diigo.com, which I kind of like, but it’s more social bookmarking.
.-= Richard@How To Videos´s last blog ..How To Copy A DVD =-.
I am active on both digg and mixx. I noticed that the traffic we get from mixx are very targeted and bouncing rate is very low, but digg is full of spammer and the bouncing rate is also high for the traffic we get from the digg.
year back..digg was considered the best social bookmarking website..just because crawling rate of your submitted posts was too high…but it is a little different now..and many other websites are working the same way
Well, I have come to the conclusion that tring to get traffic from Digg is a waste of my time. buat duit
.
.-= Madno´s last blog ..Adakah identi.ca masih lagi relevan? =-.