A year ago, most articles that covered internet marketing extolled the virtues of the social media sites Digg and Reddit. Such articles argued that making the front page of these sites was a great boon for any website looking for visitors. However, in the last few months, I've read a good share of articles and commentary that now argue that Digg and Reddit traffic is useless. Why? Because such visitors eat up your bandwidth, fill your website with useless comments, and don't ever stick around. So with this new counter-current of thought toward Digg/Reddit, I wonder whether such traffic really is useless. Fortunately, I have the following instance to look at and draw conclusions from:The Submission
About three months ago, I authored a blog post covering various client questions that I will generally answer "No" to. I then gave it an acerbic title (Ten Absolute "Nos!" for Freelancers) and submitted it to Digg (the one time I've self-submitted a post from this site). One day later, the submission had run its course, garnering only 10 diggs.
Fast forward several weeks to the Thanksgiving holiday. I decided to finally register for Reddit and as a new member, submitted the same story (although Reddit made me wait an hour to submit it). I didn't give the submission a second thought and left to spend time with the family (I think that's what you're supposed to do during the holidays). Anyways, to make a long (and rather boringly self-indulgent) story short, the submission hit the front page of Reddit. The next day, a user submitted it to Digg (despite me having submitted it a few weeks back), and this time it made the sitewide Top Ten.
The Stats
The first day (on the Reddit front page) the site had 20,000 visitors. After it hit the Digg Top Ten on day two, the visitor count hit 54,000, then 18,000 on day three. Over the next few days, another 13,000 visitors rolled in, rounding out 100,000 visitors in under a week.
Of those 100,000 visitors, 60% came from Digg, 16% from Reddit, and about 10% from StumbleUpon. The average time on the site was one minute and the bounce rate was 86%. StumbleUpon and del.icio.us visitors spent twice as much time on the site than Digg/Reddit visitors; they also had half the bounce rate.
Here are some other metrics at the end of the big week: Technorati ranking went from the low 20s to over 100, RSS subscriber base jumped from 203 to over 600, and the Alexa rating quickly climbed to just above 100,000 (although Alexa takes a 3-month running average). Also, daily traffic increased 8-fold for a while, but now has setlled to 3-4 times the previous levels. As far as revenue goes (since that's the metric many people judge traffic sources by), I don't have anything to report since I don't run adSense and use only a couple affiliate ads.
The Real Value of Digg/Reddit Traffic
Given the above stats and my own experience, here are my personal observations about what the traffic is not necessarily good for:
Instant Propulsion into Sustainable Traffic
Think about the Digg/Reddit stories you've read – do you ever really explore the site or come back? Keep this in mind after the traffic spike...
Revenue
These visitors (myself included) are very likely to either block ads or simply ignore them. Besides, I can't see blog spam netting you much more than a few dollars -- is it really worth it? I personally think that blogs can have other purposes.
Low-Bandwidth Servers
It's no good to have your content hit the social media scene, and then have your server die after a couple thousand hits. We're fortunate to have a dedicated machine here and custom software (which admittedly, has a lot of work ahead of it).
So given that you have a server that can handle the bandwidth, here are some benefits of Digg and Reddit traffic:
New Readers
The reality is, very, very few people from this traffic will grace your site again (unless it hits the front page again). But if you have half-decent content that is useful and consistent, there's a good chance that you might capture a small slice of that traffic. And since bandwidth cost is almost non-existent, getting this traffic is better than not getting it, right?
Exposure
Exposure is no guarantee that anyone will be around the next week. But if your content has some relevance, you may generate some sparks elsewhere on the net. Other bloggers will mention your article and you'll probably get some love from del.icio.us and StumbleUpon (which seems to be the best sustainable source of traffic).
Opportunities
A direct result of exposure, opportunities could come in various shapes and sizes. From my post, I got a number of writing requests (despite my now fixed grammatical errors) and several freelance offers (which is odd since the article was not too kind towards clients).
Reality Check
When 100,000 people read your content, you are bound to get a fair share of criticism (especially when some of them have more knowledge or experience in your field). You will quickly find out what grammatical errors you have made and what other points you have failed to consider. This not only helps your view on certain subjects to be more balanced, but it also should cause you to raise your standards for future content.
A Momentary Smile
It's nice to know that there are a few others who appreciated your piece. Don't gloat - just be happy and move on.
Having taken all the above into consideration, I would say that traffic from Digg and Reddit is far from useless, and can be especially beneficial for small sites hoping to make some progress. Just remember that it will be your relevant, consistent content that will build a site, not one story. So I wouldn't advise making these social sites your obsession, but if you write a decent post, you or your visitors should (already) be submitting it there...
Community Comments
LonerVamp
Joanne
Michael
Samuel
D
Jordan
