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"Digg" visitors spend 21 seconds on my site

by Ouroboros
20 replies
I acted on Mr. Waggenheims suggestion about using Google Trends to develop a blog or site about current trends Sunday. I took a Halloween site I was developing as an exercise, more for next year than this, and concentrated on a particular keyword.

I've documented that in another thread, I'd reference it but I'm not that good yet, but anyway, I've had almost 200 'digg' visitors for that. What I did was write an article, put it on my wordpress site and then 'digg' it.

I got a first page ranking from Gooogle within 5 hours for the digg, with almost 300 visitors so far...but they stay on average 21 seconds. (Yes, dammit, I did the math and I've got the analytics to support that).

My conclusion: These 'so-called' Web 2.0 bookmarks are great for LINKS, but totally un-targetted traffic for the average warrior. Use them to build links but don't expect them to suddenly flood you with buyers as some others would have you believe.

And another thing, If you're selling something in a 'niche' and the top sites in your google search are also selling something, the chance that you'll get a link from them is what us old southern rednecks used to call the three chances...a 'slim' chance, a 'fat' chance, and 'no' chance.

Steve
#digg #seconds #site #spend #visitors
  • Profile picture of the author Heman Patel
    Those digg and stumbleupon visitors are only good for traffic show off... I get lots of stumbleupon traffic and none of it converts into anything so.. i placed in few CPM ads just for those visitors on my site... heh.. bit sneaky but so what.. i just want to monetize all my traffic..
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    • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
      Traffic from StumbleUpon etc rarely converts.

      In fact, I exclude it from my conversion and visitor value analysis altogether, so poor is its quality as far as making a sale is concerned.

      Cheers,

      Neil
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  • Profile picture of the author tommygadget
    Steve,

    I wonder if you are getting quality traffic from Google now that the article's been indexed? Update the thread when you get a sale!

    TomG.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ouroboros
    Tommy,

    So far it's been all 'digg' even though it's on the first page for the keyword...time will tell.

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author Emailrevealer
      As long as digg gets me to page 1 for my keword I'm happy.
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  • Profile picture of the author Warrior Markets
    Sorry, just a question: how often can you 'Digg' the same 'story' (web link)? I mean, is it a case of 'being smart' about it? Meaning, you can do it more than once, but don't make it too blatant? I've read about people having their websites banned for what comes across as being spam.

    So, can we 'Digg' the same url more than once? Per day?

    -WM
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  • Profile picture of the author Ouroboros
    I'd never bookmark anything anywhere more than once.

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author ahuddy
    You can only digg a story once. You can't digg anything more than once to boost it up. You can always undigg it if you decide to. But the thing is, just becuase a story has a lot of diggs doesnt mean its going to make the front page. Some members on digg have more influence over stories with the digg or bury powers.

    I spend way too much time on digg btw. Also the traffic you get from digg probably won't get you many sales unless it has to do with apple products. They won't see any adsense or other banner ads you have. Almost all digg users are running firefox with ABP.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Derrick
    According to google analytics visitors to my name-sake blog spend an average of 12:55

    Digg traffic averages are 0:27

    That's why I gave up on digging my own stories... in fact anything of mine that gets dugg anymore is by someone else, not me.

    I can't understand why they even bother to visit.

    Digg is the ADHD of the web referrers. ha ha ha
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  • Profile picture of the author Bishop81
    I had over 1200 stumbleupon visitors to my new blog, but not a single one clicked on the adsense ads or opted in.
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  • Profile picture of the author iMarketer
    Digg and Stumble users are pretty jaded in general.... if your page is really salesy, you better watch out in the comments as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author money2spare
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael D
      Originally Posted by money2spare View Post

      I beg to differ about digg traffic being completely lousy. I put up a new blog and within 24hrs I received 11k visitors from digg. When I went to sleep I had 20 people who had dugg my site. Upon waking up the number had jumped to over 632. Today, four days later. The total # is at 805 diggs when I last checked. The article was crappy, but the title was catchy. Anyways to make a long story short-- I made $168 in 24hrs from adsense alone. However I failed to convert one sale for a clickbank product I was promoting on blog. 11k visitors and not one sale--- However this could be due to poor placement of links in the article as I just used a small link at the bottom of the article. Here is the digg if anyone wants to see it and analyze Digg - Lower Gas Prices Or Were Buying Generic

      I guess had I known that the digg would become so popular I would have addded an opt-in list on the blog and collected emails to sell products to down the line, but this was my first attempt and I had no idea the potential. Now I regularly use Digg to make $50 or more per day-- just from adsense! So don't neglect the power of digg.

      Well, you are in the minority with these results. Digg users and Stumble users are pretty internet savvy and don't click ads. Now, I realize you are making some money with Digg but you could be doing a lot better with adsense if you were targeting just organic traffic.

      Forgive my math skills but for example:
      You made $168 from 11,000 visitors. With an average click of .30 cents you would have had about 560 people click your ad - 168/.30
      That means your ctr is about .05 - 560/11,000

      I know the above is just an example, but that kind of ctr is going to kill you in the long run. Sure, you could keep submitting to Digg and get lucky here and there. Sure, 50 bucks a day is very good for most people. But, with those kinds of numbers with organic traffic that is targeted you would make way more. If you were to get 11,000 visitors all from targeted organic traffic and you have your pages setup correctly (this takes a lot of testing for each nice) they will click more ads. Not only that, your ctr will go up and you will start getting paid more for your clicks. A low ctr and just targeting social traffic is going to get your smart priced. You will still be able to make money but not even close to the full potential when you are not.

      I go as far as seting up an ad serving script called OpenX. You can actually just servce adsense ads to organic traffic and show the rest a general affiliate ad. This helps me tremendesly to maintain a high ctr which means higher payouts on the clicks.

      I am not trying to tell you how to run your business just some helpful advice.
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  • Profile picture of the author Deric Yin
    This probably confirms the theory that Digg traffic are just click-hungry and might not actually whip out their wallets to purchase anything from the sites they visit.

    Hence the high rate of Adsense clicks, and zero sales.
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  • Profile picture of the author money2spare
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  • Profile picture of the author Dan Grossman
    I've been on Digg's home page many, many times at this point. Over a year ago I did an analysis on 50,000 unique visits coming from there comparing them to normal traffic on the same site:

    Dan Grossman | Who are Digg.com's Users?

    Digg.com's spend much less time on site than average; only 18% viewed more than one page, while more than 50% do on the average day. Of those that did click through to other pages, their average stay was less than 2 minutes, less than 1/5th normal.
    Originally Posted by money2spare View Post

    Thanks for the advice Michael D, duly noted. I have been using adsense for two years now and my earnings have never been affected by this "smart-pricing", I'm not sure if it is a myth, or not.
    It's not a myth, smart pricing isn't some term people made up to describe a phenomenon, it's something Google announced and is documented on their site.
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  • Profile picture of the author yommys01
    great eye opener for me, I was actually expecting to get results from digg, yahoo buzz, stumble upon and co but now I know it is a total wastage of time.
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    • Profile picture of the author kah22
      The more I read these threads the more confused I get!

      Over the past few weeks I've been trying to Blog 'Hot Trends.' Following the advice offered by Steven Wagenheim, I've 'digged' them and also used Yahoo Buzz and pinged away using Blog and Ping Tool - Use Pingler.com to Drive Traffic your Blogs and Websites.

      Now you guys seem to be getting loads of traffic and no clicks; well I'm getting little traffic and even fewer clicks

      The idea of blogging Trends in a News type blog does seem logical enough after all it is what people are searching for at this point in time, but for me, at this point in time, it's not working. My blog is here Breaking News ; if you want to make any suggestions fell free to do so. I'm relatively new to blogging so maybe there is something I'm missing. As i said above I'm confused

      At the moment I'd like to concentrate on attracting visitors, after I've managed to get them to visit my site, irrespective of how long they stay then I can concentrate on how I can turn their visit to my advantage

      Kevin
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  • Profile picture of the author anomaly
    11k visitors from digg is definitely impressive ...

    i only use digg etc for backlinks, have never expected to get traffic from them really ... if i woke up one morning with 11k visitors i'd be a happy man lol!! but then, if they didn't buy anything, it'd be frustrating ...

    congrats on generating that many visitors though, that's good stuff
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Iser
    Why do people on this forum think any traffic is good?

    Digg traffic is not $$ traffic.

    I'm an absolute digg addict - I go on there several times a day.

    Digg traffic is not the kind of traffic that you can monetize. Reading the comments and you'll see that all they do is endorse "highly intelligent" conversation, jaded opinions and anti-marketing as much as possible - and mock contextual digg advertising.

    Infact, many of them use services like ADBLOCK because they hate ads.

    Don't waste your time trying to go for the Digg effect unless you are Kevin Rose, some HuffingtonPost Junkie, MrBabyMan, run some political site, or have something incredibly tech/dorky to provide. Even then it's not worth your time.
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    • Profile picture of the author neddag
      Kevin (kah22),

      I can't help you much with the traffic part, but I think I can clarify why the visitors that do arrive aren't making you any money.

      Look at the trends you are blogging about (at least currently on the front page of the blog), and consider that your primary monetization comes from AdSense. Many of the trends you blog about don't have related advertisers. And while you may be blogging about these trends, many of them are keywords that don't translate into buyers.

      For example:

      Michael Jackson A Freak And A Nutcase-I'm guessing most of the people interested in this post aren't looking to go out and buy Michael Jackson music or related items.

      Obama Clinton-I'm seeing AdSense ads telling me how to have a flat stomach or about Hillary's face lift. Probably not something these visitors will click on.

      Prince William's Penis-What do you suppose these readers want to buy? Again plenty of unrelated AdSense ads.

      The Lori Drew Case-Again not a real sellable topic. Lots of very unrelated AdSense ads for losing weight.

      I could go on but you get the idea. The best topic I saw on the front page is The Chainless Bicycle. That's a potentially marketable keyword.

      The point is, don't just blog trends, but look for trend keywords that might be commercial or at least have related ads, otherwise you're just wasting your time.

      Ned
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