Skip Digg: Not All Traffic is Created Equal

Skip Digg: Not All Traffic is Created Equal

from ProBlogger Blog Tips by Darren Rowse

Today I want to publish the first half of a ‘debate’. The topic is whether bloggers should promote their content on Digg. In this post Josh Klein argues the negative. Later in the week I’ve asked a big Digg users to tackle the flip side.

If you’re promoting on Digg, you’re losing your blog money.

The web is crowded, attention spread thin. It may not cost you a $70,000 full page print ad, but building a following requires patience and passion. It’s almost 2009, and the social media personal brand isn’t an early adopters’ secret anymore. Promoting your blog can be free, but not costless.

When you’re down in the trenches, scouring online guides for tips and tactics on how to drive traffic to your blog, you sometimes miss the big picture, the strategy. You don’t have a limitless amount of time or money, so you need to decide what not to do. It’s not always about “how to” — sometimes it’s about “which to”.

Like all social media, Digg costs time -– and lots of it -– so I want to make sure your time is well spent.

I’m not here to tell you Digg doesn’t work; there are plenty of people reading right now who have hit the front page and gotten that famously temporary blast of traffic.

But how many of those people have turned it into a sustainable strategy for making money? Did they do it after reading the same “Top 10 Ways to Win on Digg” guide as 100,000 other traffic-hungry bloggers?

I’m here to tell you the juice isn’t worth the squeeze...