rijit (email | website) submitted:
I write to a tech and gaming blog daily. Try as I might, I could not get readers to my site through the normal publishing means of pinging. So, I was looking for an alternative, something quick and easy to promote my articles as I posted them. I decided to check out sites such as Digg, Reddit, and del.icio.us that allow you to share bookmarks with others. Most of these sites have a grading system of some sort, allowing members to grade your link. Using these services can bring in a small amount of traffic and with some luck, yes it takes luck, it can bring in huge amounts of traffic. Over the past few weeks, using Digg and other sites to promote my blog articles, I received around thirty to forty readers to each article I promoted.
Not to bad really for a quick link to my articles. Imagine my surprise last week when another site linked to one of my articles from a Digg I posted, bringing me over seven thousand readers to one article. I was shocked! The site that picked up the link was I-Am-Bored.com. This article was well over a week ago and I am still receiving traffic of about thirty to fifty readers a day from the link to my article.
If your articles, stories, etc are well written and cover a good topic, these kind of bookmarking sites can be a boon in traffic for your site. I Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us every article now, I am a firm believer in services such as these, though they do have their down side. Users of these sites also have the option to score your bookmarks negatively as well,thereby burying your article on these sites.
I have found as time goes by and your site receives more traffic from these site, the better your score from the community. The community, on most of these sites, is allowed one point per user to score your bookmarks as good or bad, so no one person can completely bury your link.
If your looking to get new readers and you have not used bookmarking sites before, it is a good way to self promote without a lot of work. After all thirty to fifty readers per article is no small feat for an unknown writer writing a tech and gaming blog.
Gordon wrote: