Few days ago I got dugg for the second time in my life. Last time this happened it was smooth sailing. This time around, diggers literally buried my server. I’m guessing part of it was the fact my post included several sizable images.
As many other people measured before, Digg effect is as earth-shattering as it is fleeting. I got dugg on the 21st-22nd, and by today the digg traffic all but dissipated. You can see a sharp spike in traffic on the day my post hit the front page – but the next day it falls down significantly. Interestingly enough there is some residual inbound traffic few days after the digg:
I’m suspecting that this is caused by all the trackbacks and links from other blogs. Funny thing but when you are dugg, people start linking to you more – it’s like a chain reaction. Here is a more detailed breakdown of my traffic:
My website seems to be an anomaly compared to the rest of the internet, because most of my visitors use Firefox and it’s forks:
Then again the post that got dugg was about Linux applications so perhaps that really skewed the average here. I’m proud to attract the right kind of readership though. 
Surprisingly enough, the Digg effect did not translate into huge adsense earnings. If you think I made some serious cash on 22nd you are mistaken. My total adsense revenue from that day was $6.96. This basically what I usually make over 3-4 days with my regular traffic, so in proportion it is actually a pretty good result. But it just doesn’t seem all that much considering that the traffic killed my server.
Why? I see two reasons:
First, it was the topic matter. I’m guessing that command line linux applications do not bring up many high paying adsense keywords. In fact there are few people selling anything relevant to that particular niche, so my ads were not directly targeted at my audience.
Second, as you can see most visitors user Firefox. Most Firefox users, use Adblock. Thus it is very likely that a high percentage of my visitors never even saw my ads. This is the price you pay for writing stuff that will be read mostly by savvy linux users.
One more side note: digg effect does not help you to grow subscriber base. It is mostly a hit and run thing. Check out my RSS feed stats:
The 22′nd is the first Tuesday counting from the Right. As you can see the subscriber numbers are astonishingly stable. In fact my subscriber base was higher at the end of April, than directly after getting dugg. It seems that most digg users just won’t subscribe to your feed.
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