The Digg Effect, part 3: what does it do to your advertising revenue?
I recently had a blog entry hit the front page on Digg. When the heavy traffic arrived my server locked out the blog directory and I lost about 20K hits! I do not know why this occurred but it was a simple enough fix to make and once I found out about the trouble (I was busy watching a movie at home) I had the blog back up in a few minutes.
Here is what my web server reported to me in regards to being Dugg to the front page:
Average daily hits: 110
Average daily hits while front paged: 12K
Average daily advertising impressions/clicks: 110/8
Average daily advertising impressions/clicks while front paged: 12K/12
* These numbers do not include errors (404/403) or bots hitting my site.
Now, some of you might say, "Oh man, I got to get my blog Dugg to the front page too!" You might want to hold back on that thought.
Yes, Diggers do give you a lot of hits over a short period of time but... Diggers do not click on advertising. Why is this important? Because, if your site is advertising supported you will find a "Digg Effect" hurts you much more then it helps you!
That's right, if your site is advertising supported getting Dugg to the home page hurts you!
"But, how can all that traffic hurt," you ask? Simple. Because Diggers do not click on advertising you will find your "click-through" ratio (or CTR) drops into the decimal range. The CTR is a prime factor in getting paid by the company who puts advertising on your blog. If you have a high CTR you get more money and better ads showing up on your site. If your CTR drops very low you will find the money drops with it.
I've been using Google AdSense for well over a year now, even before I had a blog. In that time I've seen my revenue numbers fluctuate highly based on CTR. There was one day where I only had about 35 impressions but 1 click. This resulted in about $6.00 in advertising that day and a rate of $200 per 1K impressions! It would have been nice to see the impressions run up to the roof that day...
Another day I had 12K impressions but only 45 clicks. This resulted in about $0.12 in revenue.
I do not know how AdSense figures out what rates to pay it's members but what I have learned is that you are much better off with a small number of visitors who click on advertising links then a large number of visitors who don't click on advertising links.
During the recent front page hit on Digg I tried to log in on an hourly basis to both my web server and Google AdSense to see how my numbers looked. It's just terrible to see thousands of hits coming in and at the same time seeing your expected revenue drop.
It's also highly irritating to look at the ads that are attached to your Dugg article and see that they have zero relation to it.
I posted an IT joke story, you might think the associated advertising would have something to do with IT? Nope... The advertising that appeared on the page had no relation whatsoever to IT!
I find this very interesting as my blog covers several topics and the other entries in my blog either generate generic "learn to blog better" advertising links or links directly associated with the category the articles fall under.
My Pokemon articles get Pokemon ads. My programming articles get programming ads. My amusing story about NetFlix gets... advertising about renting movies! So why can't my most hit article get ads that are related to it?
I do not know what advertising *is* being clicked on as Google does not tell. I do not even know which blog entries are generating clicks either. Though, I am now learning about "channels" in Google AdSense that I can create to try and track down where the clicks are coming from.
I'm not going to worry about getting "front paged" on Digg anymore and instead I'm just going to go back to focusing on having fun and providing information that my loyal readers want to read. Blogging for money is not a good reason to blog. It's nice if the advertising helps pay the web server fees but $300 per day in advertising revenue (which I would need to quit my day job) is just not in my future!
37 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Yea i know what you mean, ive had 1 story hit the front page, my bandwidth went through the roof, and yet only got like 2 clicks. Its just not worth it. Great article!
Looks like you’re screwed then ’cause this was posted on the front page of digg.
Maybe you could somehow check the referrer of a hit, and if it’s from digg, leave out the ads, so Goodle doesn’t even know about them? Not sure if it can even work that way though.
I’ll click on a ad ;).
Hope it helps.
I think you’re oversimplifying how much you get paid for click. If somehow you get an Adsense ad for ‘mortgage loan’ on your site and someone clicks, you’re going to get paid a lot more than for an Adsense ad for ‘cheap green widgets.’ I think there are a lot of factors, one of which is CTR, but not the only one. And you forget that with inbound traffic and links, your PR may go up, causing higher placement in the SERPs, which causes an increase in actual ‘ad clicking’ traffic. Which can make you more money.
I’d just be weary of making such strong statements. But then again, maybe you are trying to get “Dugg,” it seems you have very relevant, high-paying ads in the sidebar right now…
Now I know what this magic CTR means!
;-)
I think there are two different things to be considered when driving traffic to your site:
– short tern improvements
– long term improvements
Short term improvement is that you get a short increase of traffic that may (or may not) generate direct revenue, while as I see it the long term effect is much greater: interlinking with other sites. If you have a good article and you point a lot of users to it, sooner or later someone goes “Uhm, nice article let’s link to it.” and from thereone you will have a constant income of hits (even if as few as 2 every week), people will start finding your article even months later.
Hi there, after reading your article I would just have to disagree with what you wrote. The blog placements on this site are not optimal and hence the low ctr. I have gotten a few diggs before and one of them even earned me up to $60 for the day it was digged. And just like Jason said, the inbound links will help a lot in your SERPs which is a crucial factor to get ’steady income’ from search engines. There are more pros than cons unless you are on a bandwidth limited hosting solution :P
I think this also holds true for Reddit.
I clicked on some ads just to support you on this one :)
You also get more overall site exposure – which is always good. I really wouldn’t complain about getting on the front page of Digg – thats not what causes lower EPCs – it just causes lower CPMs.
http://www.berecruited.com
I think its a good article, not completely true but good… i think it would be really helpful for a site that has some content and not just 1 or 2 articles… i clicked on some ads to help u tho…
Yeah but at the same time there’s something to be said for people who find your blog and go, oh, wow, this is a neat place, and bookmark it–future add ins. Plus, since digg is rated high in pagerank by Google, it also makes your Google results higher-i.e., when someone searches in Google, you’re higher to the top because of the digg links. Not too bad in the long run, just sucks for that day or two.
Müsste man nicht eigentlich nach Clicks bezahlt werden? Wäre das nicht logischer als Clicks/View?
I agree. This is not entirely accurate. When I was slashdotted and on top of reddit, I made money eventually. 2 things will hurt you, bad ads (meaning bad targeting) and bad placement.
Thanks for the article. I quoted it on my blog tonight and linked back.
http://www.caffeinemarketing.com/
Yw for the click.
Awesome article. I’ve noticed the same effect, and I don’t like it (But I DID click on one of your links this time)
:o)
Your goal should be to get more links to your site and subscribers to your feed(s).
Those are worth way more long term than what you gain in the short term from clicks.
Thanks for the heads up with this article.
Words of advice from the experienced are always appreciated!
Though I am intrigued by Rife’s above comment.
I had the same thing happen to me. Over 30K of hit in a weekend and 12 clicks. Ouch! However, I did notice my RSS feed went up and over all more people are hitting my page every day. I’ll take the massive spikes in traffic because my server can take it and I’m into the ‘long tail’ thing.
The advice on ad placement from some of the other comments was good, I might have a at that. Getting ready for another big surge in traffic.
Many Digg users have some sort of adblocking software (like the Adblock FireFox extension) so they do not see the ads at all. Even if they wanted they could not click on the ads…
I clicked on a ad for you.
Though it is a good article,it has some flaws.You should utilize that traffic.you should not post adsense in that front page article.Atleast 10% of visitors are going to visit other posts also.you should also optimize adsense colors to the page colors.1 click in high traffic sites = 10 clicks in low traffic sites.Best of luck.
I really dont pay attention to Adwords anymore. I kind of tune it out
I clicked :)
Digg users are techies.
Techies are smart enough to block ads.
If you want clicks on ads, you should blog about something that morons who don’t block ads would read about.
Try blogging about Nascar, or AOL.
Use PHP to hide the ads if the referrer is Digg.
Interesting take on it, I think most users probably digg their own blogs to get that ad traffic but this surely puts it in place.
BTW the reason why Digg users have a low ad click rate is because Digg users are more tech savvy and the majority are blocking ads, while others have trained their eyes to ignore the ads. Contextual advertising is no longer viable, and as such its time to move back to image ads.
And a joke for you (since you were talking about the joke entry anyways):
Q) What do you call cheese that’s not yours?
A)Nacho Cheese (not-chor Cheese). [corny joke]
“Digg users are techies”??? hahaha I’m surprised half of them manage to turn their computers on.
As some of the other commenters have said, the placement isn’t good – at 1440 x 900 I can read this entire article, and only see the first advert in the bottom right corner.
The ad quality is terrible too, but you can chalk that up to adsense spam on this subject.
Richard’s idea sounds good, but I’d definitely play with placement and topic first.
*”Another day I had 12K impressions but only 45 clicks. This resulted in about $0.12 in revenue.”*
Maybe I am reading that wrong, but that translates to an average of $.0026 per click (or 1/4th of a cent). Google’s minimum bid on AdWords, if I recall correctly, is $.05. While no one knows how much Google shares with publishers, it is doubtful that it would be that small of a percentage for any ad. I wonder if this means your site is showing a lot of PSAs. That would contribute to the low earnings.
As others have also said in this post, your ad placement isn’t great, and I personally wouldn’t except high CTRs… plus, links on Digg do have other effects. And at least one person in your comments has reported seeing an opposite effect from being dugg.
Henestly I think its a ploy.Ide be like oh crap..and oh well..
we all love the #’s game and the thought of getting that many hit….him nice With no complaint!
thanks
Marginalized posted this very interesting look at The Digg Effect. Check out the short exerpt below and click continue reading to see the whole thing.
I recently had a blog entry hit the front page on Digg. “But, how can all that traffic hurt,…
I recently posted a link back to my blog on both Digg and Netscape to see what would happen. The results were not as shocking as you might think… until you factor in StumbleUpon!
The entry I linked to with both news aggregators was The Three Letters.
Well, I’m a digger but I’m gonna click for ya!
[...] zählt, ist also nicht die Quantität der User – tatsächlich haben einige Blogger in den Staaten haben beispielsweise erfahren, daß besonders viele User, etwa durch Digg, in der [...]