Subverting Digg and StumbleUpon Just Became More Profitable
A while back I remember reading about this site that allowed you to game Digg and StumbleUpon called Subvert and Profit. It has been covered on Valleywag, Techcrunch, Search Engine Journal and even Wired just to name a few big news sources.
Pretty much all of them agreed that the service was doomed to fail from the start. Most said they would get so much legal hassle from StumbleUpon and Digg that it would never make it. Well yesterday they quietly changed their pricing structure a bit. It now costs $2.00 per Stumble or Digg and also the users are now getting paid $1 per. That looks like a 100% increase on both sides.
I recently shot a email to the owners to ask where they were based out of and how many users they had. They replied that they were U.S. based and had over 10,000 users now.
I have talked to some friends who have used their services and they say that it works very well for stumbleupon but so-so for digg.
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I know it sounds old fashioned but I prefer to and get Stumbles/Diggs the old fashioned way. Not that I’m any good at it but I don’t like the idea of paying somebody to say they like something that they don’t.
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I just saw a story on the homepage on 32 diggs, thats even with the latest algorithm changes. It was buried straight away because it was clearly spam but I think it was S&P.
With the latest changes it makes S&P even more effective because none of the votes are from your friends.
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I would have thought that they would also get shut down sometime in the future and so in the end its just a get rich quick scheme or temporary income.
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S&P gives you the best CPC cost money can buy. If you use SU. As for Digg, of course it got buried because with digg it’s not the story that counts it’s who submitted it. On digg you can submit any kind of crap - if you are a well known digg member. If not, you may have the greatest news, you still won’t get nothing.
However $2 per digg - that’s too much. Socialmoneytraffic offers diggs, stumbles and shouts for only $0.75.
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What an insane idea. I hope their business fails.
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So that’s $20k for 10,000 stumbles or diggs? Please - I’d rather get a billboard. Maybe they’re raising prices to keep afloat.
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Sometimes it sure helps to get a boost at the start just to get things going.
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You don’t pay $20k for 10000 stumbles. You pay way less. And if your story is good enough it will get from 100 or 200 stumbles/diggs to 1000 by itself because of the snowballing effect. What sites like SubvertandProfit and SocialTrafficMoney give you is the possibility to get noticed. After that everything depends on you (your post that is). You can get to 10000 stumbles just by paying for 1000 or even less.
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How good would that traffic really be? I am really just curiuos.
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I think they are based out of New Hampshire, but I may be wrong.
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Do you have to stumble/digg everything, or can you just pick which ones you would actually like?
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So, are there operations legal? They are ruining SU and Digg reputation of people’s choices.
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I would never use a service like that, if it can be called a service at all. I would rather have 1 visitor who has some interest in my content than 100 who have been tricked.
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You mean how good would the Digg/SU traffic be? That’s a discussion that has been done into the ground, Digg is massive but not sticky; SU is slightly stickier.
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Oh really, re-read it please and say it again!
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Yeah, $2 is pricey… esp. if your article could be buried in a heartbeat.
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So true, you get it way cheaper on DP, and you only need to start with 100-200 then it’s the snowball effect
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yeah but what if these people have no idea you existed? at least this way they get a chance to see if they are interested in your content. i’m not going to use them but i can see the value
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No one’s forcing anyone to use this service, but it’s available to you if you want. I see it as another way to promote/advertise your site. If you want to do it this way, fine. If not, that’s fine too.
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Can you get penalized by SU or Digg for this?
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interesting. Not that I like to brag, but I do have a plugin that can help with your DIGG/SU traffic conversion, i.e. once you are on DIGG or SU it will ask visitors from those sites to give your article in wordpress a positve vote.
Becky
P.S. Jeremy : you never gave me the plug you promised !
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Isn’t this just a clever search marketing product? Advertisers pay for getting the word out about their product, sellers/content providers get paid to push/show the ads and an affiliate program rounds out the offer. I don’t see why would they get shut down or sued?
Regards.
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hmm this is the first time I’ve heard of a service like that.
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I’m sure the traffic is pretty nice for what it is. It’s not like the traffic from digg is all bots or something.
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Never use this service, because Stumble-upon is an ebay company and PayPal is an ebay company. They can track all payments to that ebay account and delete all the accounts that payed that person. And how can they allow him to use paypal even?
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You would be surprised at the sites/companies that use this service. Some big names use it
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I heard about this service at a web forum and after spend with advertising, I tried to be at the other part and get paid for stumble and digg to test the system. I had to stumble 3 urls to get $0.50 and digg 1 url to get $1. After a short time they stopped to show links for me and I can´t get my money, cause the mininum payment is $10.
My thoughts are that they have lots of users registering every day, after the user gets the minimum payment, they stop listing urls and get all the money for the company, instead of share with the users.
I´ll be waiting for new links for me, maybe I´m wrong. But in the middletime, I won´t advertise with them.
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Any traffic is good traffic. Digg and Stumble users don’t convert that well, but I’ve seen more rss readers and consistent traffic levels from getting Stumbled. No, it’s not the best, but I rather have it than not have it.
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i am not sure they will be able to push articles on digg as much as they used to. Take a look at this article from Msaleem about the recent events on digg
http://muhammadsaleem.com/2008/01/24/from-revolt-to-resolution-in-12-hours-or-less/
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Seems like using Adwords would be cheaper to drive traffic. But I would like to hear if anyone has experience there.
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“Any traffic is good traffic.”
Until it crashes your server.
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That means that Digg is at least semi-successful in thwarting services like these. I wonder what kind of system SU has in place to combat this.
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I can’t seem to get any money from adsense. Is there somthing wrong with my blog.
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Paying for votes…it is just like that RSSxplosion site…
-Mike
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isn’t stumbleupon an ebay company? and isn’t paypal an ebay company? THEY USE PAYPAL TO RECEIVE MONE! anyone else made that connection?
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Has anyone tried this service? It sounds like a good way to get an unnoticed post stumbled - but only if it’s a good post.
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lol why would you buy 10,000… it can take as little as 50 diggs to get to the frontpage, so that would be $100. If your story is good it will go on from there.
If you think from shoes after post neil patel charges $10k$20k for a front page digg subvertandprofit is sure worth a try.
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I wrote about this last month on my blog, and haven’t heard much since then. This is the first I heard about their increase in reward money for diggs/stumbles and cost per vote. I’m not sure what to make of it.
I don’t like the idea of asking people to “vote” for your submissions. However, those at S&P have actually done a really good job of “hiding” the users from the stumble/ digg people to prevent them from being banned from the service, and they should be praised.
I don’t think S&P will fail, but I don’t think they will grow much either. I honestly don’t think it’ll have much affect on the ranks of the submissions they are paid to post, either, simply because those that people will not like will just be buried, and those that people do like will be promoted up even higher.
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you have to positively rate everything they tell you to rate in order to get the money.
You can then go back and change your vote if you would like.
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I agree. Any traffic is good traffic. With that said, some traffic is better than others and will carry a higher conversion rate.
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I just wrote a post about this last month, but this is the first I heard of the price increase.
I don’t think this is the right way to go about getting votes, but I must admit that buying votes in order to get on the front page in order for people to give you a chance should be effective if you have good content. After all, nobody can digg you if they can’t find you.
I don’t think Subvert and Profit are going anywhere, although stumbleupon and digg are desperately looking for user patterns so they can identify who is participating so they can ban them from the service.
I don’t think they’re really hurting the system as much as I had originally thought. They give the advertiser a chance by placing them on the front page by hiring others to vote for them. And then, the digg or stumbleupon community have an opportunity to either raise them up the ladder if they like their content, or pull their rating back down if its crap.
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I cant think of any law that would make it illegal. If you make your site rely on user input you’re going to have to deal with it.
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Honestly, this system is a foolishness! Pay for votes? Come on!
Besides that, maybe you get traffic from Stumbleupon or Digg , but that traffic have a poor conversion rate, so you will be wasting your money so that a lot of techies and geeks are visiting your site without a real benefit.
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Social Zombies will kill them. SocialZombies.com
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There isn’t anything wrong with doing a little marketing. You don’t think the big boys do this kind of stuff? They most certainly do.
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Any FREE traffic is good traffic. This whole thing sounds shakey. I have a feeling those diggs will soon lose their value.
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Personally, I’ve hit the Digg frontpage on the very day of my launch but I have to say that StumbleUpon is working even better for me and, as far as the digg effect is concerned, I have to give my host credit for handling everything perfectly.
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They may have been sued if they had the word “digg” in their URL but in this case, I doubt that legal action will be taken against them.
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Yes, but as a result of the fact that 100 people who are not interested in your content have stumbled, you gain exposure and may receive more than a few visits from people who actually are as a result.
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I would love to hit the front page
I saw my traffic spike one day more than 20 times normal traffic due to stumble. My conversions were nearly zero from the traffic though. That is why I was curious. I have seen shoe’s stats on the blog but was curious as to others recent results.
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I think traffic would answer that. Just a quick look it appears that your list of top rappers is all wrong (you forgot Tupac and Gang Starr and included a female). That is probably killing your adsensesability.
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you did a few comments above.
so digg is the way to pay/play. sometimes these big companies don’t share info because of bureaucracy. And some people have more than one email from what I have heard.
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I used this. So far it works well and deliver what I’ve been hoping for, but they still need to improve their toolbar as it still tends to get buggy and forgot to record what has been clicked.
Colin Joss
East Lothian, Haddington
United Kingdom
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I never have heard of this yet but it could be worth a try, is anyone getting banned from digg or stumble for using this tho?
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I’ve been getting paid from them since they started. Easy work and a nice little bonus sent to my PayPal account.
Can’t say I would ever pay to use the service though.
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They might have 10,000 members but they are not so active on digg. We tried their service out a few times and are very dissapointed.
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Kids please keep spending your time with these sites, getting traffic that don’t convert and tons of additional site readers while making no money. Thanks , it leaves the money making to the rest of us!
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I think you hit it right on the head for both sides, Nice comment.
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Yes, it is true. I did write a post about making money with your blog which was stumbled so much that I am gettint at the day 8000 unique visitors which had increase my google adsense earnings dramatically.
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Shoe, you are right - there is no way these guys will last. Also, it is a bummer that there is stuff out there like that - the spammers will jump all over it and it will lessen the usefullness of Digg and SU
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Yeah, there is another program called PIQQ.us. I have some special invites as well. Its a great way of gaming digg.
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I want to try socialmoneytraffic.com. They have just launched. Anyone knows anything about them?
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Well I am going to try it, anything that could help, helps right.
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You have to stumble/digg five stories/sites for 1$, while they earn $10…
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