Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

Digg Effect – In Living Color

A few days ago, I posted an article saying that I got “Dugg”, meaning I got an article onto Digg.com and it sent me a big traffic spike. This was for an article called “Can Linux Replace Windows?” published over on PC Mechanic. I thought I would share with you the stats from the Digg Effect using screenshots from Google Analytics.

digg_visits.jpgdigg_refer.jpg
This is a graph which shows the visits. You can see that for a couple days ago, we had a nice traffic spike. However,
digg_bouncerate.jpg
The bounce rate went up quite a bit, too. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to the site and immediately leave. Meaning they visit only one page and then leave the site. So, while Digg sent us more traffic, they sent us primarily people who were only interested in seeing the one article and then immediately left.

digg_bouncerate2.jpg

Look at the bounce rate on that one article. Amazing.

I’m not going to show screenshots of my Google Adsense account in this forum, but needless to say that the daily revenue did not significantly increase.

So, yeah, the Digg Effect basically means:

  • Nice traffic spike, but short lasting
  • No real increase in revenue

In short, it’s cool. But, it doesn’t pay the bills and doesn’t lead to anything long term. Digg can be part of your strategy, but don’t depend on it.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

  1. The Digg Effect
  2. Digg, The Server Killer And How To Rescue Wordpress From It
  3. Why PCMech Was Sluggish Yesterday
  4. How to Use StumbleUpon to Promote
  5. Why a Drop in Adsense Revenue?

Learn The Real Story On Blogging As a Business...

  • Get immediate FREE access to the Six Figure Blogger Blueprint
  • Get exclusive stuff NOT available on this blog.
  • Get the latest updates from the weird Risley man who runs this site.

Enter email:

  • Agreed with Friedbeef; the long term effects of Digg really are priceless. That initial surge of traffic is sometimes good to increase RSS subscribers as well. Other than that.. Diggers aren't ad-clickers. *unfortunately*
  • David
    Good points. I plan to adjust a few things and go for it again. I have some ideas. :)
  • Actually to gauge the actual digg effect - you've got to take into account the chain reaction.

    I've been on digg front page a number of times and it would lead to:

    My post being featured on more prominent sites like Lifehacker, being linked to by a bunch of blogs, being delicioused like crazy, getting traffic on PopURLs, getting stumbledupon, building Google PR, and gaining more RSS subscribers to say the least.

    So yes - digg really does matter in terms of revenue, and also long term traffic.
blog comments powered by Disqus