Huge amounts of page views

[Orange]

If you put an article on digg.com theres a chance it will get popular and you will get 1000's of visitors to your page in one day.. say 10,000. I would see that to generate me about $100 in adsense revenue. And maby allot of new people coming back to your site and reading pages in future.
So i was wondering if a good technique for getting hits would be to focus on getting good bursts of traffic like this.. rather than focusing your time on seo and things like that. I know It would only be once in a blue moon you make it but if you did it all day I could see it being very lucrative.
Do you think this is a good idea?
Do people already do this?
Also what other sites are there that I could have a chance of generating loads of views really fast... Like you could... make loads of youtube videos and you might have a 5 million youtube views hit on your hands. If you spent loads of time trying specifically to do this im sure it would work....
yeah
Thanks.. woul dbe nice to hear your thoughts.

[sidsavara]

The downside of digg traffic is that the old CPM numbers need to be thrown out the window. Digg/Stumble/etc traffic typically does not convert. They are drive by visitors, but you do get some residual links from people who read the digg article, plus a boost from being on the front page Google juice wise.

Let's say you get 10,000 visitors from Digg. Probably less than a thousand will come back If you look at my traffic spikes from getting stumbled, getting on the front page of hacker news (smaller news site) etc, I retain maybe 10% of those visitors - the rest just saw something fun, dropped by to read it - and left.

[Chris Cade]

I wouldn't toss out the old SEO approach. If you can take top spots for your primary and some longtails, that alone can be more than enough. I personally use a comprehensive traffic strategy that I'm always adding to - and having top SEO spots is bringing in about half of the traffic I generate.

So even if I stopped all of my paid advertising, JVs, article marketing (new for me), etc, I'd still have a good amount of highly targeted free traffic.

[Daniel Roach]

While you do get a great spike from social media sites, there is one part of this strategy that I personally wouldn't feel comfortable with and that is the return visitor rate. Putting aside Adsense, you would have to make certain that your site provides enough value to actually get any returning visitors from digg or StumbleUpon. I'm not saying that your site doesn't do that, but as was said previously, social media visitors are just passing through and rarely come back as regulars.

I know that I personally wouldn't want to gamble on the occasional Digg surge to bring me return visitors because, if I found that my site wasn't valuable enough to them, correcting the problem and getting another surge to test would take far too long and wouldn't give me the best bang for my buck.

The theory is sound, but I know that I wouldn't use it. Then again a risk is always worth taking.

[Vanessa]

read a good article from Redeye VC on the value of the digg effect on internet start up companies thinking that getting dugg or a social media spotlight will be enough to jump start their company marketing efforts.

Only it doesn't work, for B2C companies at least.

It was referred to as "the cocaine like high and subsequent crash of the Techcrunch effect"

So while a positive reception from the blogging community is valuable -- and can generate a lot of initial activity/interest and a nice looking Alexa chart -- it is not the only ingredient in your ultimate marketing success. When I see a post-launch consumer Internet startup, I basically look for a few simple things:

Usage Growth -- how many unique users are visiting/engaging with your site and product, and how is the rate of growth evolving

Virality -- I believe a viral product is one where a consumer's basic usage of a site/product brings new users (and therefore additional utility) to the site/product. Going viral is not adding a tell a friend button.

Engagement Level -- Do your visitors actively engage in your site? How long are they there for?

Repeat Usage -- Specifically, how often do people come back to your site.

Read the full post here: After the Techcrunch Bump

[Chris Cade]

Originally Posted by Vanessa

Engagement Level -- Do your visitors actively engage in your site? How long are they there for?

This is a number I've been paying close attention to. When I see a source providing average times of 5-20 minutes, even if it's just 2-3 visitors, I pay attention... that tells me a highly targeted audience might be waiting.

I almost never see that from StumbleUpon traffic.

Digg on the other hand, has been giving me some great targeted traffic. Not a lot of it, but it is the kind that stays on-site for quite a while and therefore creates raving fans. And raving fans tell their friends.... and that creates great virality like Vanessa talks about.

One thing I *strongly* suggest, and especially when trying to target Social Media for traffic - utilize an on-EXIT popup. Give people a chance to get some value from the site, then offer them something free and an invitation to return.

Too many people make the mistake of having an on-enter popup - most people have a knee-jerk autoclose response ("Let me get to the page I was watching. Leave me alone.") But if you let people exhaust their site visit first, then they can have a feel for whether or not the popup offer is going to generate value for them.

I pretty much never offer anything but free stuff in a popup... overdeliver on the value and build the relationship first.

Once I implemented an on-exit popup I've seen a consistent 400% increase in optins for the last 6 months. Now, whenever I create a site I usually try to think about the best way to utilize an on-exit popup that creates genuine value for my visitors.

[jpmcgrew]

I'd prefer lower numbers, higher conversion rate. I don't like seeing a bounce rate of 80%. That's worthless, in my eyes. But if all you want is adsense revenue, then it might work.