Site-by-Site Analysis

Apologies to our friends at Gizmodo and Lifehacker for making them our guinea pigs, but Gawker is one of the only site networks that actually publishes the number of page views each story gets. With that information and some info from Gawker and Maximum PC’s media kits we were able to paint an (admittedly) simplified picture of the price-per-Digg for a selection of stories on various sites.

Gizmodo

Gizmodo articles frequently hit the front page of Digg, usually thanks to some sort of Apple-related coverage, or, say, spy shots of Google’s Android phone. And in our study, Gizmodo had one of the highest Digg values we saw. We attribute this to the fact that the stories we surveyed were of interest to a wide variety of readers, so people actually read the articles they Digg, and this translated into real-world page views, which of course translated into advertising dollars. The average value of a Digg on Gizmodo hovered right at $2.76, the highest of any site we looked at.

Lifehacker

Lifehacker’s awesome how-tos and productivity tips appeal to the more focused type A personalities among the Digg community. While Lifehacker stories don’t benefit from the dogpile effect—where lots of people mash Digg on stories that they don’t necessarily read—they do have a dedicated following among the Digg elite. Average value of a Digg on Lifehacker: $2.05.

Kotaku

Gamers are undoubtedly familiar with Kotaku, Gawker’s gaming blog. With beaucoup console coverage every day, Kotaku constantly delivers on Digg’s front page. Unfortunately for Kotaku, many of its stories suffer from the dogpile and have lots of Diggs, but not many page views. The average value of your Digg on a Kotaku story is a mere $0.80.

Maximum PC

Finally, we come to Maximum PC. Because we have the benefit of having access to raw data for our site, we’re able to isolate traffic that Digg’s responsible for from inbound links for the rest of the Internet. We pulled our typical ad rates from our online media kit, and were able to calculate an approximate value for each Digg of $1.27.

 So, what have we learned? The main thing is that even though your Digg clicks have very little perceived value to you, they do have real monetary value. By participating in a large social networking site like Digg, you essentially hold the keys to a vast amount of traffic, which you can push to sites whose content entertains or informs you. So use that power wisely!