Saying No To Digg
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The statistics are back. From May 2 to May 9. This blog saw 511 unique visitors. Out of 511 people - can you guess how many came from digg.com? A grand total of
“4″
Which leads me to remove the “Add to Digg” buttons from this blog. It just took a lot of space. And added to distraction.
Why Digg.com is Not a Good Idea
Digg.com is a great site for making your blog posts wildly famous… if your blog is already slightly famous. If you can get a 100 diggs from your own website traffic, then adding digg.com buttons makes sense. And they can help you go from 100 to 1000 diggs. But if you don’t have the ability or the pull to get those initial 100 diggs for your blog posts - digg is useless. Your blog posts will remain buried on their website.
Alternative Real Estate Usage
So what else can you show on your blogs instead of wasting the valuable real estate on digg buttons? The answer is…
Add Stumble Upon Buttons!
The Might of StumbleUpon.com
As I write this post - 2,315,617 people have installed stumbleupon.com toolbars on their computers. Whenever these people have free time, they click on the “stumble” button on their browser toolbars - and stumbleupon.com will take them to a random website based on what they like. These people can vote on whether they liked that website or not. And based on those ratings, stumbleupon.com shows them similar websites.
The twist is: the more people that give a positive vote to a particular website, the more stumbleupon users will get to see it.
By adding a “Stumble This” stumbleupon button to your blog posts - you allow your blog visitors to give your post a positive vote.
StumbleUpon Statistics
In the last one week - I voted positive for 3 of my blog posts through the stumbleupon.com browser. And a few people voted positive using the “share this” button on this blog - which already has a stumble this button on it. That seems to have created a stumbleupon.com whirlwindy roll over effect.
Out of the total 511 visitors - a whole 362 people came from stumbleupon.com!
(Statistics provided by Google Analytics.)
(This week, I’m going to test having stumbleupon button on this website along with the “share this” button.)
Action Summary:
If you liked this post, buy me a beer. (Suggested: $3 a beer or $7.5 for a pitcher)Spread the word:
del.icio.us Digg Reddit StumbleUpon
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I got here with Stumbe Upon.
Posted 10 May 2007 #
Woop! I got here via StumbleUpon as well! Just a few thoughts on your ideas…
You’re probably right in the ideas behind why to remove the Digg buttons but replacing them with SU buttons seems slightly more pointless. Haven’t we all got the SU tool bar to do this ‘I like it!’ business with? I always find it cheeky when a website asks, or even tells me, to click the thumbs up button so that others can find the site - I know how it all works! (Well, I like to think so anyway; although your link is quite unobtrusive and not quite the same…)
Posted 10 May 2007 #
I got here with Stumbe Upon… Nice way to promote your site. But you need to have interesting site to get “I like it”. Othervise you’ll get I don’t like…
Posted 10 May 2007 #
Hey I use stumble upon and love it. I tried blogger a while ago and found I didnt like it all that much. Right now I blog on myspace and when I right something I have about 50 people read it on a good day. um…I was wondering if there was a way to implimant a stumble button on the myspace account. Thanks. Great article and I will push I like it!
Posted 10 May 2007 #
Nice article.
I got here vis Stumble Upon too. I like it!
Posted 11 May 2007 #
thanks for wastimg my time—NOT!
Posted 11 May 2007 #
I got here via DIGG.. but you can’t tell since I disable the lame referrer field as well as a bunch of other lame crap. Firefox rules..
And ever think maybe you don’t get much traffic since the site doesn’t warrant it?
Posted 11 May 2007 #
That’s a great idea. I just got here stumbling too!
Posted 11 May 2007 #
If you know how to get your story to the front page of Digg, it is very worthwhile. You just have to know how to beat the system…
Posted 11 May 2007 #
Add me to the list of people who got here by way of stumbleupon! great post!
Posted 11 May 2007 #
why cant we have both?…..like now…
Posted 11 May 2007 #
I agree with Dorian. Use both.
Posted 11 May 2007 #
I STUMBLED across this page.. and I must agree… Stumble Upon is worth adding to any page, or blog….Digg is for… well… diggs, Stumble Upon is for everything!
Posted 12 May 2007 #
Another Stumbler!
Posted 12 May 2007 #
Even, I got here via stumbling.I completely agree with you on digg, it is useless if you can’t get initial 100+ diggs.But you should also consider sites like reddit.com and indianpad.com,you can pull a lot of traffic from there
Posted 13 May 2007 #
Great Article! I wrote something similar on my blog a little while back and came to the same conclusion as you - stumbleupon is the way to go! Oh and obviously that’s actually how I found your blog as well! here’s the direct link:
Posted 14 May 2007 #
sorry, not sure why it didn’t show up: http://morrisisaacson.wordpress.com/2007/05/03/how-i-quit-my-diggcom-addiction/
Posted 14 May 2007 #
I got here with Stumbe Upon too.
Posted 14 May 2007 #
wooooo. i got here with stumble upon also..
i loveee this thing.
Posted 14 May 2007 #
I got here from SU. But what sucks is I would have been alright without stumbling on this useless page.
SU is awesome, I love it. But I don’t care about Sally’s random blog about god knows what. But that’s why you just click Stumble! And onto the next…Like right now.
Posted 15 May 2007 #
I stumbled on to this page too.
Posted 15 May 2007 #
woot. i also found this entry from su. nice post!
Posted 15 May 2007 #
I got here via stumble as well. I think you are correct about the analysis of digg - because remember digg users will submit your post to digg if they like it with or without a button.
Posted 15 May 2007 #
I got here through Stumble. I love that toolbar! I recently created a new website and submitted it to Stumble. In one day I got total 119 unique visits from StumbleUpon, to a completely new and unknown site! However, I suggest that before you submit stuff to Stumble, make sure it’s in good browsing condition. I didn’t expect the return to be that big and submitted the site without much content, expecting it to take a couple of more days before anything would happen giving me time to finish the site… Resulting into thumbs down. However, I still digg Stumble!
Posted 15 May 2007 #
I couldn’t agree more. We tried to leverage Digg for a long time to help promote our sites, but it only rarely yielded results.
The couple of times we saw massive traffic from Digg seemed to be based pretty much on luck, because they pale in comparison to the 1,000 times we posted something to Digg and got 4 hits out of it (sound familiar?). I would say that our average for those roughly 1,000 links (no, I’m not kidding) is maybe 50ish pageviews each.
That’s just not enough to warrant focusing on it.
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
Nice article. I don’t like Digg.
Found your page on StumbleUpOn. I am a stumbleUpOn fan. I have generated good amount of traffic from StumbleUpOn. I have many post about StumbleUpOn, which is a good guide for people to get traffic.
StumbleUpOn - Boost your traffic for FREE
Posted 17 Jul 2007 #
I have been trying to drive more traffic to my site. But I am just getting the feeling that I am destined to suck. SU, Digg, del.icio.us… all don’t work if you suck.
Posted 21 Jul 2007 #
ia agree better StumbleUpon
cheers
alex
Posted 22 Jul 2007 #
agreed!
Digg traffic always sucks if your content is crappy.
Just joking.
Dean
Posted 23 Jul 2007 #
I Stumbled Upon this!
Posted 10 Sep 2007 #
very clear tutorial. - couldn’t get it to work though! eventually had some success with the addthis button - that is a cool gadget. I just wonder why there always seems to be a long delay in posting and then seeing these tools appear. maybe just me.
Posted 29 Nov 2007 #
i also find targetting smaller bookmarking sites useful like sphinn.com, mixx.com, and region centric sites like for india, indianpad.com
Posted 17 May 2008 #
I agree completely with what you have said. I am nearing the completion of revitalising a bookmarking site, www.Blogbookmark.com and aim to be of service for those who will not find their way to the front page of digg.
We accept articles about anything and are very strict about blatant advertisements or static websites. It is for Blog articles which are informnative. This would be great to see there.
Currently an article gets to the front page with just ten votes. With ten votes the article will be front page within its category for around 24 hours.
At Bookmarkify.com you can get a script to automatically add any buttons you wish to all your blogposts automatically. You can have one or fifty buttons displayed so it saves space and you can target the sites you want to appear on. If you write regularly then Blogbookmark.com is a good site to go for. But then I would say that !
Posted 17 May 2008 #
Why and when (I noticed this is an old blog post) did you decide to put back digg button?
Posted 17 May 2008 #
I got hear from popurls, though I am a big stumbler. But HOW do I add a stumble button to my page?
Posted 17 May 2008 #