Would You Pay to Reach The Top of Digg
Posted by Anthony LaFauce on January 31st, 2008 10:30 AM
We all know about the Digg effect, very similar to the Slashdot effect. When something is Dugg, and reaches the front page, a swarm of traffic comes to your website that can crash your servers. A massive amount of people and bots will view your ads and your content like never before. Marketing gold right?
I started the morning by reading an article over at E-Consultancy about why it is a bad idea to pay for a spot on Digg. I didn’t know this but according to Patrick Altoft, the article’s author, there are companies out there that will guarantee you a spot on Digg’s front page for a small fee.
I did some looking around and I found a few sites that promise to get you on Digg for as little as $35 to as much as $150. I was all set to upload my latest masterpiece video of my friends trying to jump a moving car on a tri-cycle when I asked myself what would I be getting if I paid for a spot on Digg.
I would probably get tens of thousands of visitors to my site. My site would probably crash but I would reach people sitting at their desks trying to do anything but work, score! These people would think about me and my tri-cycle for maybe 4 seconds until the went on to the next article. Then my article would get buried because those who control Digg, the users, would realize I payed to get on the front page.
I then started to think what would happen if I earned a spot on Digg’s front page. I would slowly earn exposure, probably have to submit several articles, and actually learn what my targets were after. I would also have to invest a large amount of time and money (money=time) to figure all this out.
What this argument comes down to is time and investments vs speed questionable results. After reading several more articles on how to ‘earn’ a spot on Digg I realized that buying a spot does present a certain value; it is like paying for a press release for the wires. Tons of quick exposures and some lasting traffic if you have quality content.
I am still up in the air about paying for content on Digg. I see the value of ‘flash’ exposure but I also see the value of earning a spot on the front page. What do you think about this? Is paying for a quick exposure worth it on Digg or do you think that the only value can come from earning a spot? Let me know.
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