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.
[tags]digg, digg effect, digg effect statistics, digg traffic stats[/tags]
Well ya did pretty good Luke, 807 diggs so far. lmao. Surely ya knew that article would get dugg, its right up their alley. I was wondering if your pie graph includes rss readers ?? Probably not. But I usually read your posts in liferea so of course i don’t see your ads and yes I do use adblock in FF. I read a couple hundred blogs daily … yeah I know I need to get a life … so a RSS reader kinda helps alot. (BTW I don’t care for FF active bookmarks or whatever they are called). Anyway for you i disabled adblock on this site, haha. Even try to remember to click an ad now and then :)
I’m always surprised when I find out sites have ads when viewing in another browser or hearing about them. :P
I’m the same way – I used to use Bloglines, but recently I switched to Google Reader and the list of blogs I subscribe to gets longer every day. LOL
There seems to be about 91 people subscribed to my feed at the moment. Interestingly, this number did not grow drastically on 22nd.
I had 85 subscribers on 21’st, 88 on 22’nd, 89 on 23’rd and back to 87 on 24’th. I was at 93 yesterday, and I have 91 right now. So the number oscillates in the 80-110 range. At the end of April I had 108 subscribers for example.
But there seems to be no direct correlation between getting dugg and subscriber base.
yeah I’ve been thinking of using Google Reader But I already keep a ton of tabs open in firefox and usually more than one instance of it running also. now i have 7 tabs open in one desktop and 6 open in another. If I used multiple computers in different locations it would be worth it tho, but that is seldom the case.
Firefox is still showing up as Mozilla, hmmm. My user agent sting in about:config is set to Firefox 2.0.0.3 Ubuntu Linux, its been doing that since i last updated it. I updated it by running it as root and letting FF update itself … just to see if it would work ;) Of course i also have Mozilla installed, I like multiple browsers, nice to have to test html code out on ya know. Anyway screw it, haha, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
But regardless I’m not surprised “there seems to be no direct correlation between getting dugg and subscriber base” they are more into immediate gratification, lmao. And yeah I find another blog or so to check out every few days it seems. lmao. Wonder why ya lose subscribers tho? I seldom delete any blog I subscribe to, I can tell reading a few posts whether it is worth my time to read it regularly.
I think we read a few of the same ones like WTF. I love that one. BTW what do ya think of haskel ( the prog lang?) the blog A Neighborhood of Infinity is really great and has me interested in it. Besides I find QM and Quantum computing a fascinating subject and he seems to know alot about it.
[quote comment=”4606″]Wonder why ya lose subscribers tho? I seldom delete any blog I subscribe to, I can tell reading a few posts whether it is worth my time to read it regularly.[/quote]
No clue. I rarely unsubscribe either. Usually when a blog goes dead for a while I consider removing it from my feed reader. That, and really high volume blogs that I just can’t keep up with. Also blogs that completely change focus. For example, I once subscribed to some blog that had tons of very insightful technology related posts. Since then the dude has been mostly posting about his workout routine and family excursions. This has been fairly consistent shift in topics that was going on for months – and it didn’t seem like the technology topics would return. So I unsubscribed.
I don’t think I fit into either of these categories. I do post random shit at times but it is usually fairly consistent variation on geeky stuff that interests me. :P
Then again I sometimes post about politics and religion. I think that might be a reason for the lost subscriptions. I guess some people might have a hard time reading someone who has completely different political views from them.
[quote post=”1627″]BTW what do ya think of haskel ( the prog lang?)[/quote]
I never really used it but it does sound interesting.
FWIW, I don’t use any kind of ad blocker . . . I just naturally ignore them. ;-)
It’s nice to know that I’m not the only Opera user who visits your site on a regular basis. I’m suprised you gained no real increase in RSS subscribers. Typically, visiting sites like Digg is what gets me subscribed to most of the feeds I view daily. I think I actually subscribed to your feed via a link to one of your posts from another site. I can’t recall if it was the first time you got Dugg, but I’m thinking it was before that.
Keep up the good work.