A recent article on a top Digg user who ‘sells’ his services comes as no surprise. In fact, he is only one of many who gain a financial reward from selling their influence, not just on Digg, but across the social media spectrum. How much would you pay to get to the front pages of Digg? Would you pay anything?
….charging up to $700 per article for his/her promotion, and if a particular item reaches Digg’s home page, he/she gets another $500……paid promotion is just a fact of Digg. It’s not a surprise, and users who have a real problem with it, will likely just find another site to read. Besides, is this really that much different than paying PR staff to push your message?
It is no different to PR however, from my perspective, it’s a no brainer – my money is better spent elsewhere. Traffic from sources such as Digg, Stumble Upon and other social bookmarking sites generally don’t convert. If it is going to cost me around $1000 to hit the front page, and I make a profit of $20 from every sale, I will need 50 sales to break even. If you can achieve a 10% conversion rate that would require 500 visitors to break even.
Admittedly a front page on Digg will result in far higher traffic flows. However, conversions from Digg and Stumble Upon can be as low as 1%. To break even, I would need 5000 hits. Frankly, it’s not worth the effort. There may be other advantages to getting that front page hit, however the ROI makes very difficult to justify the cost.
That same $1000 could generate 1000 hits in a PPC campaign (at a $1 per click) with a conversion of at least 10%. Now I am making a profit. I know where I am spending my money, and it’s not on Digg!
