Cracking the DIGG nut. CPC a feasible answer?

Like a lot of others I haven't really had much success in getting dugg in the past. My highest amount of diggs at the moment is 7 (and that's with my current article) and most of the time I've struggled to get even half of that.

On the train home tonight I thought about using an Adwords campaign on the article in question to target people who might be genuinely interested in what I'm writing. Has anyone else tried anything similar in the past? If so, what type of keywords did you find most effective for targetting potential subscribers as well as diggers? It's a tough one that'd probably need a lot of experimentation for it to be effective in the long run. I just can't for the life of me think of where to start, heh.

Would be good to hear your opinions on this.

 

With only 7 diggs I think you need to focus on the quality of the article, rather than ways to advertise it.

 

You could have a point there. Although I have seen a number of high quality articles sink unnoticed mainly because the blogs are just starting out. Similarly I've seen some poorly written articles that have had hundreds of diggs.

 

How many have you guys have had ove thousand visitors in a day using this method?

 

Goat, it really does depend on the niche as well, keep in mind the readers of Digg. Personally, I don't care for the site and I've had a lot more success with ShoutIt, if you haven't already you might want to check it out.

SamLeeds, I've received well over 1,000 visitors when an article of mine made it to the front page of Shout.

 

I'll give it a look. 1,000 is a bit more managable than 45,000 visitors especially if you are on a shared hosting account like myself, heh!

 

Comparing Digg to CPC is like comparing apples and oranges. Digg is Free CPC; costs money. Digg can give you lots of traffic, but the traffic will not convert at all. CPC gives you good targeted traffic that converts well.

CPC can work well, you just need to keep an eye on your ROI and make sure you are getting your money's worth.

 

I'm kinda shying away from the idea now as I still can't decide upon which keywords to target within Adwords.

I can just tell that the ROI would be lousy. That might just be me being pessimistic though heh.

 

Googgle Adwords is tune tune tune tune tune tune keywords and ads
After that, it gives OK ROI I think

 

It is definitely an interesting concept. If you found something that converted well off of Digg I could see this being quite beneficial. (I have little experience with Digg traffic either way, but the rumor on the streets is that it DOES convert for some, not to mention exposure and backlinks and all the other benefits of Digg)

Example, you had a story about 5 ways to make the worlds best meatball that got people really excited about making the meatballs, dropping hints along the way that there could be some money to be had if you made the meatballs then sold them for profit.. Then, at the end, maybe have a link to another "article", aka sales letter or something of the sort, about how to retire from making meatballs....

Let me know if you try it, I'd love to hear if it was actually successful.

The only thing that puts it into a grey area would be the following from their TOS:

By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree not to use the Services:

9. with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the 'digg count', blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg's services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg's services.



Not sure if sending traffic via adwords would be "artificially inflating" your diggs or not. I could certainly make a good case that it isn't, but that won't matter if you run into a digg "purist" who has a chip on thier shoulder about anyone making any money off the internet.


My final thought on the subject, is that even though it is a really interesting idea, and I could see how it could spin a small amount of traffic from adwords into a ton of traffic from Digg, in the end might it be better to just send that traffic to your page directly, do the usual social bookmarking links to encourage users to digg, etc, and let it work out that way? Seems like if users are interested enough to click on your ad, that you'd be better off capturing out of the gates rather than risking something else pulling their attention away on Digg. I'd imagine that since you need to register on Digg that very few people who don't allready use digg are going to register and digg your story.

 

That's a very good point.

 

Ive done reasearch on Digg and most Digg users when visiting a website DO NOT click ads.

So no matter what you are doing if its an ROI with revenues as the base youre better off trying myspace marketing.

 

Digg is fake. You need to pay users to get to the top.

 

That makes sense, I know when I go to DIGG I have an INCREDIBLY short attention span, it's click, skim, back button on the browser, repeat. Once in a while I will actually read the whole story, and once in a GREAT while I actually take the time to look at the rest of the site/blog if the article had enough content to keep me interested all the way through. But generally, it is simply one of my ways of keeping up on some of the hot topics of the moment.

I would imagine that is exactly as the folks over at Digg would prefer it, giving profiteers less incentive to try boosting their stories, leaving more interesting and desireable content on the homepage.

I'm still not convinced though that Digg traffic can't convert in some fashion. It's way too powerful of a force to not do something for some people. At some point I want to put some time into Digg and see what I can do.


Oh, and while going off researching one of my tangents, I came across this blog post, really sweet list of digg tools (at least it looks like it is..)

http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/09/complete-digg-tools-collection/

 

I think my website got 16k hits from digg We had a 100 words long article about or website and people liked it

 

I had one post be on the front page of digg, only for one hour. Then it was buried by some diggers and I never know who. It brought around 2k visitors to my site that day. But seldom clicked ads.
The worst thing is, my site was banned by digg after that.

 

Without debating the merits of Digg-style sites or Shout, I have noticed more sites having digg-it links with articles.

The implication is that if you create good material and you market your site instead of individual articles than people may be willing to click the digg-it link and give your article a vote.

This is classic guerilla marketing. You are not going to get big, immediate bangs, but you will create long term momentum and interest in your work . . . which, IMHO, is what you should really be aiming for.

AdWords is also getting more and more expensive these days and the cost-benefit is getting edgy for a lot of people, especially those who rely on advertising clicks for revenue. I use AdWords to drive traffic to my sites where people purchases subscriptions to gain full access. But, I must admit those sites probably never feature articles which could get "dugg"

 

I do not believe adwords to digg would be very worthwhile. You might be about to accomplish it on a single site where most users are Digg members.

 

anyone tried to make money from digg/popups since they dont click ads?

 

Ah - but the backlinks - think long term, not short-term...