Ok I have a story to share… one I been telling for a while for fun and always meant to post but just never gotten around to it.
I used to be addicted to try to make the front page of digg… but I often had trouble hitting the front page. Sure it would happen every other month or so but it took a lot of work. Then in 2007 one month I made it 5 times… including 2 times in the SAME DAY on Feb 21st 2007:
So how? How can one website all of a sudden become attractive to the digg users who normal HATE anything that looks close to a internet marketer…. or SEO….
BUT digg users LOVE Linux and hate Microsoft.
Well I made one simple change. I swapped out all ads for more… digg user friendly images. In particular I changed the leader board ad for a “I love Linux” banner and the square on the right to a image of a guy peeing on Microsoft.
Here you can see ShoeMoney.com normally:
and now if you were to come from digg.com:
There are a lot of lessons from this that I still apply today. Changing your website or landing page based on where your visitors are coming can help make a huge impact on conversions.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2476 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 129 comments… read them below or add one }
Very cool idea! I did not know that digg users do not like microsoft
You are wrong. most of them prefer windoZ((
I think I learned that in the Shoemoney System a week or two ago. I actually have tried some things using that principle as a basis. Digg users really like Apple and Linux, so stories praising one or the other really seem to take off.
That is such an odd change, I don’t many people would ever consider doing that for such results. It’s very eye opening though
haha. good post.. I can see a lot of pages switching to love Linux / hate Microsoft layout
Very interesting insight Jeremy,
I guess we’re going to see this kind of thing become more and more prevalent in the next few years. It would be great to deliver facebook style ad personalisation to the individual within any blog – that would be really powerful.
See this is what pisses me off about you Shoe. You do these things and I always say to myself, now why the heck didn’t I think of that!
Brilliant.
I know you’re doing things right now that I won’t figure out for about a year. I need to get into the Shoemoney mind….
Well and to be honest…. back then I was worried digg would have banned me for something like that… now I dont really see the value in digg traffic anyway.
So what was the incentive (payout to you) for the additional traffic? What was the plan for the traffic? More subscribers?
Was this just a see if this works and figure it out later ideas?
Probably lots of clicks on the Peeing on Microsoft image to see if he really was peeing or just posing, but what was the payoff?
Did you pull more subscribers on an opt in?
I know a campaign that pulled 25K unique off of FARK doing something similar… but no cash from the traffic.
The lesson is you can pull traffic…. but the payoff?
There was no cash motivation…. The biggest value of hitting the digg homepage is that it really gets you out there (or did) to the mainstream press. Lots of mainstream press people have contacted me because they found my website via digg.
Also I was trying to beat Neil Patels record of making it 3 days in a row.
It is all about the game indeed.
p.s. gotta love that microsoft-pissing-action image
Umm…how did you do the change for visitors from Digg, technically I mean?
Interesting… Do you personalize images for users coming from any other sites besides digg? Is it just the ads or do you tweak anything else? I wonder what digg’s rules on cloaking…
The ads were kind of a no brainer…. CTR from digg users on ads was like… 0% anyway so it just dilutes my CPM.
I never did anything else…. I have seen some things that say like “welcome digg user” and stuff like that but ironically I have never seen those pages make it to the homepage.
Dude, you can do it anytime you wish to now. I would be happy if I could do it even 1 years from now
That’s so f*cking bad ass and genius! Gotta love Shoemoney.
It’s interesting to see how two changes can change the way normal surfers view your website
That guy p*ssing on Microsoft is too funny.
Wow. Epic.
Volk im still waiting to see your shoemoney system entry
Was the swap made just for Digg users or was it for your entire page for a short period of time? Java script?
That rocks though. That’s truly knowing your demographic!
just for people coming from digg
Genius lol
Didn’t hurt that you had “WebTickle” submitting!
Rule #1 – if you do not have a power account then make sure you have some who does submit for you!
Didn’t hurt that you had “WebTickle” submitting for you!
Digg Rule #1: you are do not a “power user” have someone who is, submit for you.
50% FP ratio always helps!
Well he only submitted like 1 ?
Actually 3 of the 6 that you are showing were submitted by “WebTickle”.
I am not saying the changes you made would not appeal to the DIGG audience. No doubt the DIGG crowd hates MSFT ect….
I am also pointing out for those that may not be aware that one of the biggest factors of hitting front page at DIGG is the submitter.
WebTickle as of today is still at a 55% front page ratio. That’s up there with the VERY TOP of the entire DIGG community.
Even with your page changes if a newbie submits your stories 0 most likely hit Front Page –> IMO.
a) Get a power user to submit your content
b) Give your content the best chance of succeeding; you have chronicled in this post that you did exactly that.
Kudos to you for hitting both those very important criteria.
Awesome post
, i like the ads, especially the one where the guy pisses on MS, ouch! epic. Digg used to me good for me but didnt worked as good as yours. I dont see much value in it today.
I like the new change in this blog..
Whats up with the “home grown in Lincoln Ne” on the top right anyways
eh!
Too funny. So if you want all your traffic to come from porn you need some boob shoots in your side panel?
now your thinking
Very funny. I remember you telling this story at Elite Retreat.
To echo one of the earlier commentors question:
How did you do this from a technical standpoint? Since we know you’re on Wordpress did you use a plugin or have to custom code it?
I will do a followup with some code
Good to know. I’ll be awaiting that post.
shoe can you show us how you we’re able to swtich banners base on the traffic?
is there a plugin for that
thanks
I will do a follow up with the code… its pretty trivial to implement. Especially if I can do it.
It’s just a matter of catering to your target audience.
Great. I try to do this tactic too but more on reddit as oppose to digg. I would be interested to see how you do this on the technical side.
wow crazy move lol… PS: love the new design
and the loading speed
This is a very neat little trick. I can’t wait to see your next post. Greg Ellison
The traffic may not be valuable but is there any value from an SEO point of view from having more links from a high page rank site? Or are web developers likely to check digg more often and again therefore link? Or just simply not enough to really matter?
There is some seo value to it because so many places syndicate the front page listings which directly link to your site.
It actually has huge SEO value sometimes, and doesn’t even require that you get any diggs.
Surprising that something that silly can have such a big impact. You really tapped into a sensitive nerve with Digg users. How did you figure out that Digg users love LINUX and hate Microsoft? Please share some of your research techniques.
As both you and Frank Kern said in the webinar earlier this evening, if you can make your users happy and entertain them as well …..
Did you do split testing? Did you have 50% of Digg users end up on a “regular” page and 50% end up on an “Digg-optimized” page?
If not, we cannot completely know if the hypothesis is true.
Brilliant simplicity.
Such a great idea. thanks for sharing.
thank you for your post.
I’ve met some “Sick” people in my life but Shoe is just one of the best. I mean how on earth can you come with such an idea … I just laughed my pants off while reading this post.
Digg is great social network to use however many people fail when it comes to marketing and hitting the front page and there’s several reasons to that.
I remember when I started my online ventures I took a digg, stumble upon and delicious.com approach to see if anybody would stick to my blog, I was just trying to test several audience but really failed back at that time.
Why?
Digg is a lot more than it appears to be, it takes a lot of friends and you need to be damn active to manage to get your site on the front page. Anyone can test this.. Just have a look at what sites make the front page of Digg daily, and not only that but what users manage to get “Front Pages”, They the same old users, well a new one is popping up every day but slowly getting into the shadow. LoL.
I’ve failed for the same reason. There were a few people that had armies behind their backs that would vote, rate and comment on their submissions just to make everything look natural to digg’s algo. Sometimes I felt as if MrBabyMan, MakiMaki from DoshDosh.com and several other top users were hired by digg actually to bring the best content on the front page (I might be wrong though).
Anyways you’ll need an outstanding blog/site, it better be something related to funny/news/entertaiment if you want to make the front page and these are not the only ingredients.
(I’ve only managed to get 5 stories on the front page of digg, they were from 2 of my blog that are sold now) The conversions did interest me back at that time, but to be honest they were horrible. I was monetizing my blogs mainly with adsense and Clickbank which apparently won’t work ..
Evelina
All you need to do to have success on digg is read digg…read your favorite webites (not facebook)…and submit content from your favorite sites that you think people on digg will like…stuff you think might get dugg for whatever reason.
Wow this is awesome. You never cease to amaze me with your quirky online experiments, Shoe.
And can’t wait for your April fool thingie. Should be great.
Epic stuff. Waiting for the code.
That is neat fun stuff…. I just realized that people also like Linux and hate Microsoft. I am a Microsoft user though. I usually submit my articles about Mayweather and Mosley in digg and I usually only get 3 diggs… (Sad)..
I hope in the next quarter I can find a good strategy similar to yours. Thank you!
Is this all true, seriously I doubt it. I mean is Digg running some hate Microsoft campaign?
This is a very good way I have not even thinked about this.
Ahah! That’s classic! Sneaky, but smart
But what’s the point? social traffic converts like crap.
Again… its good if you want some mainstream press or pick up some rss readers
I am shocked this worked if it is true. I don’t think I will be able to get as far out of the box as Shoe does, EVER!
Haha, very clever.
How did you figure out those facts
?
Now we start seeing people doing some nasty things with microsoft logo on digg
I think that is a very clever tactic. However I question if this will work for everybody. This is sort of like the Youtube thumbnail situation. Where people try and try to get more views to their videos by figuring out how to insert their own thumbnail. They may get a lot of views, but that doesn’t mean that the video they produced is worth watching.
Like some one else mentioned social traffic can be terrible, especially nowadays. I think if some one were to utilize this landing page method that you have tried, they would have to make sure their content is stellar. You don’t want people digging up bs. ( Did you get the joke???? ).
this genius idea) will test on my english seo blog, maybe it will work)
Nice idea. And i didn’t have Microsoft, and i use Digg.com
That’s a great idea shoe, honestly that’s what you call thinking outside of the box
.
You achieved this back in 2007 and letting us know in 2010? Great!!
Anyway, I’d also like to know how you did that banner thing.