LifeDev Describes Reddit Effect Using Metrics

By nickwAdvertising

I noticed some traffic coming in via an interesting post on the Reddit effect (a social bookmarking site akin to Digg), and noticed that they were using Performancing Metrics to analyze the traffic data.

I use Performancing Metrics to handle my blog analytics. It’s really robust and easy to set up, not to mention it’s free. I was able to break down my traffic statistics by the hour.

Its an interesting read, and Reddit though not as newsworthy (clearly not trendy enough for fickle digirati…), seems to be sending a lot of traffic to sites that make it’s homepage..

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10 thoughts on “LifeDev Describes Reddit Effect Using Metrics”

  1. With del.icio.us (and Technorati i.e.) the tagging is crucial. You get the long tail traffic from the tags not from the most popular page. Also i.e. Google jumps on the tags but/and has a delay.

  2. I’ve used reddit for quite some time with success on my blog, although like any social bookmarking site the traffic tends to disappear shortly thereafter.

    It spikes and that’s about it. Sustaining it is another story.

    reddit seems less tech-focused than digg.

    reddit also is less news-focused, so more personal posts, how-to posts, etc. will work.

    The best success I had was a post about real estate and selling my house (it was a sidebar on my blog which is focused on entrepreneurship). It hit the front page of reddit and over the course of 3 days resulted in about 3,500-4,000 unique visitors.

    Most of them are gone now. *grin*

    Still, I think reddit is probably the BEST social bookmarking site for smaller blogs since it’s consistently helped me increase traffic, even with smaller spikes, and I think if you target correctly you can sustain more of that traffic.

  3. @Kevin: It depends a lot on the tags. Send your del.icio.us RSS feed (all or just a blog specific tag) through FeedBurner and use the ping option. Then also claim your del.icio.us feed at Technorati (bookmark the given Technorati link before). The same with Flickr or whatever service gives you an RSS feed and the possibility to claim it on Technorati.

    Important is to fill the del.icio.us notes field with a nice excerpt of the article. The del.icio.us extension for FF helps a lot.

    I am also splicing my recent Flickr pics into the del.icio.us FB feed. Every picture description contains links to an article or/and my main page.

    Set it up once and it will work forever by itself. Again, efficiency depends on the tagging. The services do no wonders just by them self, you have to find out which services work best for you. In my case del.icio.us brings link reputation and Flickr brings traffic.

    My example from the last weekend how I managed to hit the high interest period:

    Event: local Christopher Street Day parade on Sunday noon with about 80,000 visitors.

    • a small announcement a couple of month back
    • an extra in-advance article covering the CSD
    • taking pictures at the start of the CSD parade
    • preparing the pictures
    • uploading them to Flickr and to some different relevant Flickr groups
    • Publishing three articles (a series)
    • Bookmark the articles at del.icio.us
    • Creating a group “CSD Hamburg” on Flickr with some nice text on the front page
    • Invite some people to the group
    • Publish a follow-up article the next day
    • Leave some comments on other blogs

    The revenue for all that work were 7,000 visits since Sunday afternoon which is a lot for a German site. The funny thing is that Google even claims to have indexed the articles while I was still shooting 🙂

  4. I would to. I never really have used the sites. I knew about them a bit but in my limited time I never really went around on them. Then Marcus mentioned it in his blog about simple tips to get traffic and I started posting some links on del.ico.us.

    I wonder how effective they are.

  5. Thanks for the write-up Nick!

    Yeah, as of yesterday (not including today’s frontpage of Reddit traffic) I’ve now got 560 people tracking the feed. It’s pretty amazing. Granted, a lot of those are with FF live bookmarks, so they are kind of in “feed trial”, but still… 😉

    Thanks for the great stats program! It’s been really helpful.

  6. I would like to read some in-depth article about the actual advantages and disadvantages of all those social bookmarking or recommendation sites.

  7. To be dugg has more cache but on a pure personal use level reddit looks one to watch

  8. I’ve had more success with Digg than Reddit, although I guess it could be because of how popular digg is iself…

    if anyone has cracked the ‘reddit code’, now would be a good time to share and have yourself labeled the expert.

  9. and for those with an interest in Reddit, Alex from Juxtaviews sent me this short interview with the founders yesterday.

    I have to say, with Digg being so damn noisey now, im pretty keen to explore other such things..

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