NO More Gaming Digg....

The idea is to make the site more useful to more people. A select few have long had the most power over Digg's content.

"We’re constantly tweaking the Digg algorithm to ensure that a unique and diverse set of Diggs drives the content on the homepage," says Anton Kast on Digg the Blog. "We’ve made a few notable enhancements to our promotional algorithm recently, to ensure that all Diggers have a fair chance at getting their submitted stories promoted to the homepage. We felt it was important to call these out."

Power users have been gaming Digg for quite a while. A common complaint is that the average Digg user barely has a chance to get their submissions as much exposure as the power users.
So how does the algorithm work? According to this video from Digg Community Manager Jen Burton, it has something to do with MC Hammer... Why not?

Watch dance videos and dance lessons at DanceJam.com

I have to wonder if this list of most-dugg sites from Hitwise will change. The blog post announcing the updates has less than a thousand diggs at the time of this writing.

And you can read How to make money online with digg in my previous 2 part posts.

Digg I visit on a regular basis to vote on stories that I love as well as to find new and interesting information. A few days ago I was reading through the articles that are currently listed on the front page of the Scientific Section, and was observing the rich are getting richer and the smaller bloggers to the difficulty of the cracking upper echelon of Digg success.

Digg The voting system is designed to enable the most popular stories to maximize exposure and to prevent users from gaming the system. But one of the results of this system is that it strongly encourages blogs and websites with huge audiences while small ones are left with a much more difficult chance of winning the exposure of Digg.

If you visit the section of the technology on a regular basis, you probably see many of the same sites and blogs are presented almost daily. These sites regularly publish new content that users appreciate Digg and they built a large audience for a good reason. Some of the ones you see on a regular basis include Ars Technica, Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Mashable, Valleywag, Lifehacker, and ReadWriteWeb, among others.

While these sites all provide quality, timely articles. However, I can not help but believe that there are plenty of other worthy stories in the blogosphere. Digg I think most of the users who visit the research section already subscribe to most of these blogs, I know that I do. In this case, could not be more Digg useful resource for users, if we introduced the sources of content they do not already have in their RSS reader?

At that particular time I was on the front page of Technology, 11 of 15 stories came from what I would consider to be major players. Ars Technica were four elements of the page, and Gizmodo and ReadWriteWeb had two each.

I understand that this is not Digg has the responsibility to provide bloggers with the opportunity to reach thousands of new readers. Digg aims to show the most popular stories to its visitors. However, as Digg user, I would like to see more stories on the front page that are new to me and I want to be able to discover new sources of information. There are thousands of blogs out there that offer quality content that interests me, but I can never find most of them.

Many of the biggest blogs mentioned above have such a following that only a very small percentage of readers digg need for a story to get it to the first page. On the other hand, a small blog may need a lot of help to get the votes needed to access the home page. The biggest blogs often only need to include a button Digg somewhere on the job or in the RSS feed to convert a large subscriber base in a high number of diggs, an advantage that smaller is not of blogs .

So what options are only a small blogger to go to the front page? One option is to build a powerful Digg profile, which can take a lot of time and effort. Digg user profiles with a strong (and many friends) have a better chance to send their comments on the front page, but many users Digg disapprove someone submit their own content, except perhaps not a great option. Digg's shout system seems to be largely ineffective, so adding friends and share your story you probably will not get very far either.

I believe that this small leaves bloggers with only a few options, some of which Digg itself does not. The first method that I have used successfully casual is to create more traffic with other social media sites, and we hope it translates diggs. Another option is to e-mail friends and contacts with a request for Digg. This substance is the same as the system Digg shout, except that it may actually work. There are even groups of Digg users who agree to share their communications with each other in order to gain more diggs for everyone. Otherwise, you can communicate with someone who has a high visibility and ask them to send your evidence. The last option, and one that has received a large number of persons banned from Digg, is to buy diggs.

What is your opinion?

I would like to hear your opinion about whether or not small bloggers have a chance to Digg. Do you think that Digg is a resource more useful if it had not ceased to articles on the same site? Do you have any methods that have worked well for diggs for your blog posts?

If you want more about Digg please read my two posts on how to make money with digg

Make Money With Digg Part 2

Before I Continue with this part you should read part 1 of make money with digg

Typically, 50 diggs in a quick time should get you on the front page, but if you were to get less diggs in a faster time, you may also succeed. The splurge of diggs has to be within 24 hours of submission of the article, so make sure you’re well prepared.

So how are you going to kick start your article?

Firstly asking your regular readers to digg your articles seems obvious, but it’s often forgotten, and readers won’t think to digg unless they’re reminded of it. Simply put a note at the end of the post asking readers to digg the article, and ensure you have the digg button there at the end of the post. (If using Wordpress, the plugin here is very handy for this.)

So hopefully you have a few loyal readers on your site that will give you a few diggs. Now I’ll tell you a good way to get yourself dugg. Sometimes, you must give to receive. Find the top diggers and people who post a lot, and digg their stories consistently. Soon they’ll notice and check you out, and digg in return. If possible, even have them submit your story for you, and there’s even less work for you, as their reputation will work wonders for you.

Make yourself at least 15-20 Digg friends, and be kind to them. Digg their stories and comment. Give and you shall receive. The more friends you make, the better, but a minimum of 15-20 is absolutely necessary. Making friends is easy. Digg random articles you like, and leave a nice comment, and do this as often as possible. Add the people you digg, or often they will add you as soon as you comment and digg them. Don’t forget new users always want new friends, they’re all lonely in a huge digging world you know!

If you manage to comment first on what you think will be a popular story, make sure you make a somewhat memorable comment, and you give yourself a good chance of other people checking you out. A good profile username and picture also increases your chances of getting noticed. It’s the little things that can give you an advantage here.

A simple sure fire way to get your story dugg is to use the “Freebie” section of Digital Point forums, found here. Here you’ll notice that over 80% of threads are stumble or digg exchange requests. And you guessed it, they’re free. So find threads of digg exchanges, and digg the links left, and post your link in return. Ensure that you use a service like TinyUrl.com to hide your digg URL, as this helps stop you from getting banned from Digg. Be sure to keep up with your thread, and reply often to let people know you have returned their diggs. This will keep your thread near the top of the forum, and this will bring more diggs. If you are desperate, offer to pay for diggs, and offer a very low amount. Obviously more people will digg even if they’re receiving a miniscule amount of money in return, and many will digg you for free, in the hope of receiving positive reputation points in return.

If you use all my methods you should have gotten enough diggs to reach the front page, and your site will be exposed to thousands. If for some reason you still need more diggs, UserSubmitter might be worth a look, but as you well know by now, there are far easier methods to get diggs for free.

Lately it’s thought that the number of times your article is favorited is also important in getting onto the frontpage, so encourage people to favourite it too.

Also note that the Digital Point member, “Stormer320” offers 350 diggs for 30$, but can only provide this service on weekends or holidays. I personally asked him how he got into this business, and his reply was that he simple has a ton of Digg friends.

Now how can I make money off this?

Well firstly, getting your own site on the Digg homepage will drive huge amount of traffic to your site, which raises the value of your site, and your advertising revenue. If you have an affiliate link somewhere in your article you could make money off this, but it’s risky since your article could then be viewed as spam, and it’s not worth risking getting your site banned from Digg.

An article getting on the front page of Digg will often get you more RSS subscribers, so ensure you have a subscription link/form in a visible spot on the site. Feedburner’s email subscription form is very handy for this

The best way to make money from this is to charge other people for your services of getting their article on the front page of digg. On Digital Point forums (services section) you’ll see a few people at a time charging a total of $75 to get someone’s page on the front of Digg. Often they say that even if they fail, they charge $.5 per digg they get on your article. Want proof? Click here then. J

Sounds like a pretty sweet earner for them doesn’t it?

So use my guide to get your own page on the front of Digg a couple of times. You’ll soon master this art, and then you can start charging other people for your skills. So that’s $70 each time for doing this kind of simple work. Tell me that’s not tempting. The best part is, the more you do this, the quicker and better you become. This means you can charge more for having such a fast turnaround, and you’ll be able do more and more orders. Do one a day, and you’re making $500 per week. Real money now eh?

Make Money Online With Digg Part 1

Tell me what you think about this method ??

Make Money With Digg Part 1

Please bare in mind that you will need to have decent hosting if you are to benefit from this, as your story getting on the Digg front page will bring unique visitors of up to 35k in one day during the week, and roughly 10k on weekends (people use the internet a lot less on weekends). This can screw your server, so be careful.

Now, not every site is capable of getting on Digg. As I said, there is no cheat to get your completely obscure article onto the Digg homepage despite nobody having any interest in it.

There are certain types of articles which are preferred by Digg users, and trends prove this. Use your head here. What type of person is your typical Digg.com user? Not to be stereotypical, but I find the majority of proper, returning users are those with an interest in technology, and other related things. You have to use this to your advantage.

The first reason you should use Digg to your advantage is to get huge traffic to your site by getting your article on the front page. To do this you’re going to have to write a good article on a subject that will go down well with the general Digg population. The main topics for this are articles about Apple, Microsoft or Windows (generally putting these down), Digg.com itself, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, Mozilla Firefox, and the likes of those.

With Digg, you have to be quick. It’s no use deciding to post an interesting article when thousands have already dugg it somewhere else because some other guy was sharper than you and posted it before you, and is now on their way to the Bahamas to celebrate. You have to find yourself some good sources for news, then be quick about writing your article and submitting it to Digg. Some good sources are

www.cnn.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

www.howstuffworks.com

www.tuaw.com/ ( the unofficial Apple weblog)

There are a lot of good sources out there for you, and they’re not hard to find. Use the above links to start you on your way, and more links will follow. Google alerts is also a good way to get good news alerts quickly, so you’re not always searching yourself.

Any type of sensational or controversial story will naturally be dugg a lot too, but the difficult part with these is getting in before anyone else does. Digg users also love lists (“top 21 ways to…”) and helpful guides with bullet points.

Ensure your headline is attention grabbing, appearing to be giving away some secret or unknown method everyone will want to know. Curiosity will get you views. “How to” type headings are always good. A good way to research this sort of thing is simply to keep an eye on what stories are making the front page.

Also, Digg and generally users don’t like when someone submits their own page, so it’s often very beneficial to have someone else submit the article for you......

To be continued...