7 Surprising Reasons Why You DON’T Want To Make The Digg Frontpage
Let’s face it. Almost everyone wants to get dugg. After all, who wouldn’t want to get thousands of hits in just a few hours. But is there a dark side to being on the digg front page? Read on to find out.
1. Your server can’t handle the traffic
We all want to get to the Digg front page for the server busting traffic that comes along with it. But if you are running your site on a cheap shared hosting account, chances are the server might simply collapse due to the heavy load. Sitting on the front page will be worthless since no one can visit your site (and click on your ads). Even your regulars will be unable to view your site.
Worse still, you might get banned by your web host for crippling their servers. One reader of mine reported that his host deleted his entire blog, along with his one year worth of content. And get this, he never backed up his Wordpress data. Sigh.
2. You will be buried
If you’ve gamed the system and somehow made the front page, Digg users will surely take note and bury your site (bury brigades). It will have a negative impact on your brand and future success on Digg.
You can even have your entire site banned, as John Chow did, and it took him a long time to build back his reputation. Who says you can’t do the same?
3. You get the Digg SmackDown
So now you are attracting tons of traffic. But not all will agree with what you have written, especially if it is something controversial or goes against someone’s beliefs. Be prepared for hate mail, a backlash from the Digg public and even threats (in the most extreme of cases). The anonymity of the internet makes these harassers feel right at home.
It doesn’t need to be a backlash either. Someone with a high traffic blog might link to your post saying how much they disagree with you. It could hurt your image, or just might work the other way around with a bump in subscribers. 
4. You will be branded as “unprofessional”
So finally you’ve been dugg. Woohoo! You’re gonna tell your readers about it, but most of your blog subscribers have probably followed the Digg link so they know all about it. Even your regular readers might raise an eyebrow at these sort of posts.
It just goes to show how unprofessional you are. Regular readers might be forgiving, but then again some subscribers might decide to leave your blog.
5. Spammers will target you
Not all visitors to your site are scrupulous. Some might have come to harvest your email address, bombard you with spammy comments, or you might wake up one day wondering why you are receiving tons of Viagra offers.
I’ve had my message box flooded with these types of offers right after I’ve made the front page of some social sites (not Digg however). 
6. You get banned from Adsense
So maybe you’re generating 200 impressions a day, and getting perhaps a few clicks here and there. You haven’t withdrawn your AdSense earnings and hope to save up enough for that special blog theme you’ve been eyeing. Then suddenly your website generates thousands of impressions out of the blue and receive a lot of clicks (although Digg users are said to be ad blind – better to serve up CPM ads).
It’s sure to raise a red flag at Google. This happened to me, although I didn’t get banned but I did get Smart Priced. My CTRs were very high despite earning as low as 1 cents per two clicks.
Although it’s rare nowadays, Blogtrepreneur even got his adsense account banned.
7. Your content will be scraped
If your article receives attention, be wary. I usually find my article plagiarized all over the internet in forums, spam blogs, feed scrapers and the like. Although most provide a back-link, you might run into issues with duplicate content on search engines.
Most of these sites steal your bandwidth by hotlinking the images in your post. Some don’t provide a link or acknowledgment at all, and it’s painful to see your content plastered with adsense ads with not even a single penny in your pocket.
What are your experiences with Digg? Have they all been great or have you also experienced the dark side of getting dugg?
*Author’s Note: Mushfiqur Rahman is also the author of Gamer’s World. Edited by Blog Bloke.
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Is it just me, or did I forget to include an intro paragraph? Love the editing that you have done BB, especially the #3 Digg Smackdown.
You’re welcome, and might I add stop writing such great posts. You’re making me look bad.
Not to revisit old posts but WHERE is the post about backing up your blog? I’ve searched and can’t find it. Sorry Bloke but I never made the switch to Wordpress, I’m still in Blogger. I had the back-up on my old computer but it was lost when the computer died. Now with this new one, I have no back-up what so ever. Help!!
Hope you are doing great. I recently came into the 21 century with the purchase of a LCD flat panel screen t.v.. Can’t take my eyes off it!! I never knew Miami Vice had such brillant colors.
There’s a lot of work that went into my blog and I’d like to save it to a disk. Just doing a computer back-up and not saving it to a disk doesn’t help because computers die here, often. It’s the humidity. Teri in Costa Rica
Hi Tica,
I think BlogBloke is a bit busy right now. Although it’s a long time since I used Blogger, I guess the option is in your template section where you can download your template file to your hard disk.
I would have gladly given you more specific instructions, but I can’t access Blogger.com since their server is down.
Mushfiqur Rahmans last blog post…E3 2008 At a Glance, Big Three Press Conferences: Part 2, Nintendo & Sony
Mushfiqur Rahman reply on July 19th, 2008 11:16 am:
Alright, Blogger is now accessible.
You have to got to Settings>Layout>Edit HTML and download your template from there. However, Blogger lacks the functionality to backup your articles.
In that case, I recommend visiting http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41447 and http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/11/back-up-your-blogger-blog/ for more info.
Mushfiqur Rahmans last blog post…E3 2008 At a Glance, Big Three Press Conferences: Part 2, Nintendo & Sony
Mushfiqur Rahman reply on July 19th, 2008 11:21 am:
Hi sweety. Here we go. This is the post I think you are looking for:
http://www.blogbloke.com/backup-your-blog/
It will show you options for downloading your posts.
Mushfiqur is also right about downloading your template from your Template Layout section.
Blog Bloke reply on July 19th, 2008 3:10 pm:
Wow, this post really opened up my eyes and brain….
There is negative impact if you does not prepare..
All i think this time is, a front page is the best thing in my blogging but……
Awesome post……
Open me…..
I’m not too much into Digg, but now I will make a point of staying away from it. Everybody wants to get on Digg’s front page, but I didn’t know so much negativity could come from it!
My effort to make the Digg frontpage failed miserably.
The best I got was 72 Diggs, and I didn’t submit that article.
Mushfiqur Rahmans last blog post…Nope, MGS 4 Won’t Make It To The Xbox 360. Or Will It?
Mushfiqur Rahman reply on July 20th, 2008 5:23 am:
7. Your content will be scraped
You can already see this in action at http://ah-seh-chim.blogspot.com/2008/07/blog-bloke-blog-about-blogging.html
BB, do something.
Mushfiqur Rahmans last blog post…E3 2008 At a Glance, Big Three Press Conferences: Part 2, Nintendo & Sony
Hmm, he seems to be mirroring my site by scraping my feed. I tried to leave him a message but there’s no working comment link that I can find. All I can think of right now is clicking the “flag” button on Blogger’s top Navbar and hope for the best.
Blog Bloke reply on July 19th, 2008 4:08 pm:
Nine + hours later, the HTTrack Web copier was still going at it. Can you turn off copying links? I never let it finish. Where does it save it? Can you copy “the mirror?” copy onto a cd? Does it take a ton of space on my memory?
Maybe I’ll just kill a forest and print it…
Hi Teri. Send me an email and I will try to help you. If it’s taking a (very) long time then it’s probably your internet connection. Try letting it run overnight while your sleeping — remember about watching the kettle boil.
Blog Bloke reply on July 19th, 2008 7:29 pm:
Never really stopped to think about it. Digg is something I joined when I started blogging but now have ignored them.
Curtiss last blog post…Going Niche with this blog
Nice post Mushfiqur. You know I only got a dig account at the beginning of this year so that I could share stories that I liked. But with the advent of FriendFeed, I haven’t signed into digg eversince.
I never considered Points 1, 5 and 7 before thanks for pointing them out. One can never be too careful !
Jaffers last blog post…Thus speaketh I
Thanks Jaffer, it’s after a long time that I see you at the BlogBloke
Mushfiqur Rahmans last blog post…Nope, MGS 4 Won’t Make It To The Xbox 360. Or Will It?
Mushfiqur Rahman reply on July 20th, 2008 5:25 am:
I have a VPS and made it to the digg front page! Guess what the server still couldn’t handle it!
Really, a VPS couldn’t handle it? What Webhost are you using?
Mushfiqur Rahmans last blog post…Nope, MGS 4 Won’t Make It To The Xbox 360. Or Will It?
Mushfiqur Rahman reply on July 20th, 2008 5:26 am:
yes, the usally i do is dig the subpage and otomatucly the frontpage get index by google (look natural) just mny trick.
fort point “1″ i think its good if we get lot of trafic, right?
I haven’t really been using digg too much.. But I totally hear you on the things that can happen once you reach that high-point. It’s like all of a sudden everyone gets jealous at your success and all they want to do is bring you down (hey, it’s kinda true isn’t it?). Just look at ProBlogger’s incident yesterday (I won’t link to it here b/c I don’t want to intrude)… He was banned from StumbleUpon. Luckily for him, it didn’t last very long. He took positive action(s) to care for his brand and reached out to his community to do the same….
BB, I must agree with you especially the #7. If I were to do the same, at least I’ll put a link back to the specific posts where I found the text.
Jul 18th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
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