Reflections on being Dugg
June 12th 2007 00:54
Last week, one of my posts was dugg and it went to the front page on www.digg.com.
It currently has a Digg count of 1453, which is the most popular story I've ever had, and that's including the post on Femtroopers.
Personally, I don't believe it was a post that deserved to be dugg. It was a review of a year-old movie about Evangelical Christian camps for kids. But it was a controversial topic and one that got heavily trafficked - on the day it was posted it received 15 000 readers.
It was an interesting experience and it's important, I think, to look back and take something from it. Some points that I think can be appreciated by the Orble community.
1) Perhaps the biggest point is that getting the front page on Digg doesn't usually mean that you're going to make a lot of money. In fact, it's quite well known that Digg users don't click on ads. Additionally, the ads on that page aren't well-targetted towards Digg users.
2) Getting to the front page of Digg means a lot of traffic in a short amount of time. This overloads the Orble servers, which slows down all of the Orble blogs. As a result, the Orble admin had to pull the plug on my blog until the traffic subsided, which was a lose-lose situation for me.
3) People are going to dislike you - that's inevitable. Many of the comments stated that I was 'an idiot', or that I was writing on the topic to stir up trouble. As soon as one of your posts gets dugg, it's a good idea to modify it to clean up your grammar and spelling, add links, make sure you've referenced everything.
4) In order to reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent, try to use pictures that aren't very big. That is, don't use high resolution photos in your post.
5) After the weekend, my traffic is pretty much where it was before, so being dugg doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get a surge of new readers.
6) One reason that my post was dugg was that I embedded a YouTube video from the movie, and people linked to the post in order to watch the clip. Media is important!
Getting to the front page of Digg seems like the Holy Grail of blogging, but, in reality, it's more of a hassle. Sure, it's nice to be the hot topic of the day, but your time in the sun is short, and you'll be quickly forgotten.
It currently has a Digg count of 1453, which is the most popular story I've ever had, and that's including the post on Femtroopers.
Personally, I don't believe it was a post that deserved to be dugg. It was a review of a year-old movie about Evangelical Christian camps for kids. But it was a controversial topic and one that got heavily trafficked - on the day it was posted it received 15 000 readers.
It was an interesting experience and it's important, I think, to look back and take something from it. Some points that I think can be appreciated by the Orble community.
1) Perhaps the biggest point is that getting the front page on Digg doesn't usually mean that you're going to make a lot of money. In fact, it's quite well known that Digg users don't click on ads. Additionally, the ads on that page aren't well-targetted towards Digg users.
2) Getting to the front page of Digg means a lot of traffic in a short amount of time. This overloads the Orble servers, which slows down all of the Orble blogs. As a result, the Orble admin had to pull the plug on my blog until the traffic subsided, which was a lose-lose situation for me.
3) People are going to dislike you - that's inevitable. Many of the comments stated that I was 'an idiot', or that I was writing on the topic to stir up trouble. As soon as one of your posts gets dugg, it's a good idea to modify it to clean up your grammar and spelling, add links, make sure you've referenced everything.
4) In order to reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent, try to use pictures that aren't very big. That is, don't use high resolution photos in your post.
5) After the weekend, my traffic is pretty much where it was before, so being dugg doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get a surge of new readers.
6) One reason that my post was dugg was that I embedded a YouTube video from the movie, and people linked to the post in order to watch the clip. Media is important!
Getting to the front page of Digg seems like the Holy Grail of blogging, but, in reality, it's more of a hassle. Sure, it's nice to be the hot topic of the day, but your time in the sun is short, and you'll be quickly forgotten.
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Comment by Ahmed
Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks
Point 1 is so true, you mostly get impression hits, not click hits, which adds up to about $7 per front page.
Point 2 is sad but true, you probably missed out on a good 15,000 hits because of that.
I love point 3, Digg basically gives you the feeling of what it must be like to be a person of great influence, you have all this pressure on you to get your shits together otherwise get killed by the mob. Not once has my *other* blog ht the front page that I haven't recieved death threats
Point 5 is interesting, because your post iis a special kind of post where linking to it doesn't have much benefit which is probably why you were forgotten as soon as digg let you go. If your content is worth linking to (like the sattelite pictures of Mars) then you will be linked to and will have a far more gradual slowing down period after the Digg effect has worn off.
Hey now, it's true that you'll be forgotten, until next time though, next time you'll be remembered. That and your review as you so put yourself wasn't much of a review, it was really teh content that got you the attention. I don't see how that could ahve changed, I suppose you got Dugg but in the worst possible circumstances in that you got dugg up ina forgetful kind of way 'this you? yeah? cool', then thats it, memories.
Comment by Ahmed
Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks
You're setting the 'dugg' standard too high, beleive you me, what gets dugg and doesn't often has little to do with the effort you put in it.
Comment by Damo
Your story was good but as soon as it got Dugg (Digged) it was like a red rag to a lot of Bull.
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
damo, it got a lot of attention, more than I would have expected.
Comment by Ahmed
Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks
Comment by D. Armenta
The Florida Keys and Everglades
The Black Sheep Chronicles
What constitutes bad manners?
The male mystique
Debate Fan
L.A.M.P.
I'm still learning this stuff, so I'm curious; if you had disallowed anonymous comments would that have affected the hit count?
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis