webrampage

Why am I saying that StumbleUpon’s (SU) traffic is better than Digg’s? Am I joking? Of course not. Let me explain this to you today.

Okay before you start thinking that I’m high or something. Let me tell you that I’m not trying to convince you to use SU more often than Digg. Digg is great. Use them both. But, these 2 bookmarking sites are really different. I’m taking about the traffic patterns.

Over at Digg, once you hit the (holy) front page you’ll get the biggest traffic wave ever. And when you’re on the first page on upcoming with the most diggs, you get a pretty good amount of visitors too. Overall you get a decent traffic from Digg on average. But, this traffic wave only lasts a few hours. You get off the front page, remember?

What about SU? Well at SU, the traffic wave is a bit smaller than Digg’s, but you get that with a lot less effort and time. My post about Twitter vs Plurk got 17 reviews and I got about 300 visitors from SU. And the visitors from SU came at the same time (causing my VPS to crash). That day I got about 500 visitors from SU, in total.

The best thing is the traffic from SU is long-term. I’m still getting a bunch of people from SU to my Twitter vs Plurk post. SU traffic lasts a few months. Yes that’s right, a few months. The traffic might get smaller as the weeks pass, but still, I would rather have a (semi) big traffic wave at first and then smaller ones later.

So, should you concentrate more on SU? Well it’s up to you. I would say you try to get on Digg’s front page and also get a buch of stumbles and reviews. More traffic that way, huh? First a server crash then a bunch of little traffic over the weeks.

Okay what about you? Are going to stick to SU or Digg? Or use both? Which one would you concentrate more on?

Hmm looks like Digg just got the “Digg effect”. You can never have enough bandwidth. Yeah that’s right folks. Digg is down. I’m not sure why. But, at first you couldn’t even load Digg and now they have a page with all their hot topics and the title of the page says “Digg will be back soon!”.

While we’re getting the site back up and running… check out the latest news before we took the site offline. If there are updates during this outage we’ll keep you informed on the Digg Blog. Thanks for your patience!

Okay so its confirmed that Digg ran out of bandwidth. Or maybe that’s not the reason. I can’t tell what’s going on. I’ll look around and update you guys. So, stick around!

Oh and here’s a screenshot of the “Digg will be back soon” page.

Update (10 mins later): Digg is back up again. Yay!

Update again: Looks like Digg’s acting as if it never happened. I emailed them. No reply. Checked their blog. No post about this. Oh well.

Last night I was working on th13rteen.com. I’ll be linking to all my sites and social networking site accounts from there. Its not really done yet. Okay moving on. Today I’ll be giving you your first guide to Digg. This will teach you all the basics and hopefully, help you reach the front page.

Things you’ll learn

These are the things I’ll be talking about. These are the basics and you need to know these. If you can become a pro at these few things then you’ll reach the front page one day.

1. Add friends on Digg

2. Digg other’s stuff

3. Get to know the diggers

4. Now submit yours and spread the word

1. Add friends on Digg

Okay you just joined Digg. Now you need to start adding some friends. See if anyone you know is using Digg. Add them. Go to the front page, go to the profile of the users that submitted the stories and add them as friends. And also add some of their friends as your friend.

Now you should have a bunch people on Digg. And don’t forget to add me.

2. Digg other’s stuff

Don’t just expect everyone to help you. You need to do something for them first. Digg their shit! Diggers will shout to you requesting diggs on a particular submission (and sometimes on a few). Digg it for them and shout back saying that you dugg it. This is how you make a nice Digg buddy. Moving on to #3.

3. Get to know the diggers

People aren’t just going to help out random people. Sometimes they do. Most of the time they don’t. If they knew you then they would obviously digg your stuff more. So, you need to go and add your “digg buddies” on MSN.

Also add random diggers. See who’s digging your articles and check if anyone dugg a lot of your stuff. Shout to them and just say hi and ask them to add you on MSN or whatever IM you use. Some diggers also leave their email addresses on their profile (so check for that first).

4. Now submit yours and spread the word

Yeah its time for you to make submissions. So, do that and then share it with your friends (there is a button for that). Write something nice and convincing (so that people digg it). And don’t forget to ask your Digg buddies (on MSN) to digg it. They’ll do it for sure (since you’ve been so helpful to them). And if you think your article is great then ask your buddies to share it with their friends.

One more thing. Only submit your masterpiece and send one shout per day. There are people on Digg that send out requests for diggs like 5-6 times a day. Now that’s just annoying. I usually ignore these people (and I’m sure most of us do the same). Just remember not to bug anyone on Digg!

That’s it for now guys. And let us know how this went and also if you have any tips.