Top Secret Advice On Making The Digg Front Page

Hi, everybody. My name is Naomi. Yesterday, I made the front page of Digg.

Here’s the scoop on how this whole lunacy happened.

I wrote a post. Unbeknownst to me, the ever wonderful Jon at Freelance Folder submitted it to Digg. Several hours later, I was checking my stats and saw that my post had seven Diggs by then. (FYI… seven Diggs does not the front page make.)

However, seven was the highest I’d received so far, and I drunkenly got the brilliant idea that I should email everyone I know and ask them to read it. Then I could post about what happened. Kind of like this.

So I did. I probably emailed about 100 people, although it may have been a little less. People came. They Digged. I was grateful. Shane emailed some people. Jon emailed some people. There were whisperings of the front page. (Whisperings which I thought were total bunk because come on, I was at like, 30 diggs.)

I made the Upcoming News page and stayed there for a while, which was pretty cool. I was at 67 Diggs, 68, 69. I went away to engage in some parent-like activity. I came back five minutes later, and my post was gone.

Gone.

I was mildly upset. Not horrendously so, but a little bit. I’d had a good run, and I’d had some pretty decent traffic from being on the “Upcoming” page. It was definitely going to make a good blog post.

Then my very smart husband asked a very smart question.

“So where did it go?”

As we all know now but definitely did not know then, it went to the front page.

So, in answer to all of your totally awesome emails, here’s the scoop.

I received just over 22,000 visitors in about 6 hours. I’ve received about 6,800 today so far, compared to a normal day which has an average of 800-1000.

My subscribers went from 150 on Sunday to 297 today. It will be interesting to see how many people stay. I’ll definitely keep you posted. (Hi, new people! Stay, please!)

As of this writing, the post received 545 diggs.

Interestingly, I actually received a fair bit of traffic from Reddit. I’d only been there for the first time earlier that day, where I’d submitted 9 Steps To Rockstar Marketing. Someone else submitted this one to Reddit, and a lot of people came.

Yes, Digg commentors are brutal, but it really helps to have people like Jon and Dave kicking ass and taking names on your behalf.

Fine. Whatever. What’s the top secret advice?

Get thee a network. People came because other people told them to come. That’s it.

Oh, yeah. One other thing. Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, you were thinking of launching a campaign to make the front page of Digg. I have a few extra tips. One, invest the three extra dollars and get good hosting. My site did not crash because Chris assured me the entire Western world could visit my website and I would keep happily trucking along. For all I know, it takes 100,000 or more to make any site crash, but I feel better knowing mine didn’t.

Two, you may not want to admit to 20,000 people that you were on welfare, that you and your husband can’t agree on where to live, and that you take issue with a religion that has 13,000,000 members. Just an idea.

Request for input: Speaking of online networking, my very good friend Shane, of Shane & Peter, is looking for some info. He was a total naysayer and argued that you couldn’t get any real home business gigs online. Then several people proved him wrong. It would be very helpful if you could click here and leave a comment with your experiences, if you have any. Even if you’re on his side, which I’m not, go leave a comment anyway.

Still not subscribed? You have to! All the Diggers are going to leave and I’ll be left with no-one!

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By Naomi Dunford