Hmm so I thought why not post a little guide about what people should submit to Digg. This should give you an idea of what kind of topics work best on Digg. And you might wanna check out my beginner’s guide to Digg.

Well you need to keep in mind that not everyone on Digg is going to like your submission. That’s how you get buried. Duh! Okay lets move on. No more noobish stuff.

1. Something hilarious

Everyone likes to laugh. If you can make them laugh, you’ve got their digg. Most of us have a short attention span (or we’re just busy). So, a funny picture would be perfect. Takes a few seconds to look at and figure out what’s going on (unless you’re a blonde, of course).

And what about videos? I’m not too sure about that. You would need to have something unique then. Like the website is down, for example. Here’s another great tip. Try making fun of someone (or a group). Everyone loves a racist joke (but most people have a hard time admitting it). Just don’t go all Nazi.

2. Breaking news (or just news)

Digg is the best social bookmarking site for news. Got something great to share? Do it ASAP. A submission with a headline like “McCain becomes President. WTF?! How?” would be perfect.

Now only submit news that will help people. Or at least the ones we’re interested in and try to stick to subjects like the web, tech, gaming and Digg itself. Oh and try to submit “bad” news because it travels faster and further.

3. Controversial

Make people argue. You need to make them shout. Make them go angry. Make them say “you’re wrong! I’m right! Digg is better than Reddit!”. Getting any ideas? Things like “McDonalds vs Burger King” will work well. Like comparing things and being neutral (no buries that way).

But, keep in mind that this doesn’t always work. So good luck! And let me know how this went.

4. Guides, tips, helpful things, etc

The subheading says it all. Help them and they’ll help you. Teach them something interesting. For example a guide on how to install Linux. Well maybe that won’t be extremely helpful, but you get the idea. A guide on how to make Vista use less RAM would be great. Just keep it unique and new.

Update: Another reason you shouldn’t blog when you’re really, really tired. Actually you can only submit those 4 topics to digg. But, everything wasn’t a complete BS. #1 & #2 works great. Try those two.

Yep that’s it. I hope this was helpful to you. A mixture of the right topic, loyal digg buddies and luck will take you to the front page. And let me know which one works the best for you.

Guess what? I was doing some research and I found some pretty interesting stuff. Your chance to get on Digg’s front page. I’m going to pin-point the the best days of the week to make a submission on Digg.

The Lucky 3 Days

Lets call it the “lucky 3 days”. It’s Friday, Saturday and Sunday. These are the days where you could get on Digg’s front page a bit easily and stay there longer than usual.

• Friday - People are tired. They want some rest. Some have plans for the night. And therefore, there’s a bit less activity on Digg. There are still a bunch of users, but not as much as on weekdays.
• Saturday - Digg is completely dead. I’m not joking. Submissions with only 150 diggs get on the front page and they stay there for a few extra hours since there’s not a lot of users digging and submitting stuff.
• Sunday - Not as dead as Saturdays, but still. You’re not gonna stay on the front page as long as you would on Saturday though.

There is a catch!

Sorry I didn’t mean to ruin it for you, but you need to know something else too. I did mention that Digg goes pretty much dead on the lucky 3 days, right? That means most users will be offline. So, who’s going to digg your stuff then? Yeah that’s the horrible little catch.

Okay here’s the deal. You need to have a bunch of loyal friends on Digg. Plan to stay on the computer and digg each other’s stuff. You need to get around 150-200 diggs on average. These are just estimates, of course. But, you get the idea.

Do you think you can manage to do that? If you can then maybe you’ll get to the holy front page. And if you’re wondering about the traffic then don’t worry about it. You’ll get pretty much the same amount of traffic. Maybe not the same digg effect that fries your server, but still, it’s pretty good.

Go ahead and give it a shot this week. Let us know if it worked for you or not. And good luck!

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?

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.

StumbleUpon (SU) is one of the coolest social bookmarking sites. You can really get some traffic out of this site. Today I’ll give you some tips that would help you get the most out of it. And I’ve specifically written this guide for blogs. But, you could use this guide for your forum too.

Stumbling other sites

I’m assuming that you have an account and have the toolbar installed. If not then go do that first. Okay don’t just start stumbling your own blog. Lets make it look legit and save your ass from getting banned by SU. So, go to some of your favourite sites and click on the “I like” button on your toolbar aka stumbling it.

Do that on about 2-6 sites. And make sure that you write a review on at least 2 sites. Make sure that the review is nice and not just some dumb shit.

Time to stumble your blog

Yeah now lets work on your blog. First pick a post (preferably a recent one) that you think is superb and would be useful to people. Bookmark that. Write a nice little review and try not to look spammy. Okay good. Don’t stumble all the posts. Just pick the best ones.

Adding friends

Add a few random people as your friend. And if you know people that use SU and has been a member for a long time then you just won the lottery. Add them right away. Ask them to stumble your blog and write a nice review.

Stumbling Networks

There are sites which are dedicated to stumble exchanges. Like people there will stumble you and in return you’ll stumble them. Smart bastards, huh? One of the sites that does that is StumbleXchange. And another one is BlogCatalog. You’ll find groups like this on BlogCatalog that exchange stumbles. You could give them a try. It’ll be worth it.

So that’s it for now. Have fun stumbling! And feel free to subscribe to my feed for more stuff like this. Or you can subscribe via email.