Digg Value - Part 2 (The experiment ends)
Recently I conducted an experiment to analyse the effects of what Digg would/could do for my readership and here are the general results.
Readership on the days last week of the experiment increased 400%, however, Digg only provided me with a 100% increase and the interest from Digg users was only for a few hours. At the same time I had seeded to Newsvine the same posts and received twice (50% of 400% increased traffic was Newsvine) as many users over a longer period and those users also viewed more pages.
As well Newsvine traffic peaked on the 2nd day not the 1st as Diggs did and therefore it is easier for me to draw conclusions on my feedburner stats. The first day only saw a few feeds subscribed to but the results from day 2 and 3 showed a 30% increase in RSS feeds. I would theorise this was due to Newsvine users subscribing.
Now I appreciate that I am not giving rock hard numbers and appologies for that. I tend to be a little shady about my website numbers.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Newsvine not Digg provided significantly more long term value to my site than did Digg at least that is how I view my data.
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I have seen the exact opposite. Of course I do not seed my blog but rather cross post to both my Newsvine column and my blog and provide a link back to my blog in the Newsvine post. I have seen little traffic increase from Newsvine – witch makes sense because people have little reason to go to my site when the content is already in front of them on Newsvine. However, a post of mine recently (last night) got dugg and I have seen a dramatic increase in traffic with only 3 diggs so far. In addition I posted a comment to Life Hacker and posted a link back to a blog post on my site that had to do with the topic of the Life Hacker article – I first however posted a meaningful comment, I did not just post a link to my blog. I saw an increase of traffic from that as well.
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You are right it is against the Code of Honour. It is why I only did it as an experiment. Admittedly I tried it one more time simply because I was shocked by the traffic figures and figured it was a fluke. Nope it wasn't.
Sometimes I wonder about the Code of Honour but as I agreed to it when I registered there is little point in complaining.
You bring up some great points and about the effects of good conduct. Regarding your LifeHacker post, good spot and if you did contribute than good for you. However, I find lots of people will post purely for themselves on my blog and elsewhere and I don't have much patience for that.
Newsvine is at the least a community, my blog isn't. Its my house in a larger community and should be respected like you stepping on the lawn infront of my home.
What I have learned from this experiment is that commenting is in most cases the best way of doing business and I will recommend it whole heartedly to clients.
PS I was in on the early Code of Honour discussions so I am very aware of the rules that I was bending.
Regards,
Roger
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The Lifehacker comment can be found here
I did notice that the article does not appear on Newsvine anymore, interesting.
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I wasn't critising (just in case), but I do like your thinking. Its when we stop being concerned or questioning when to link that I think we fall off the ethical ladder.
Good luck.
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