

Ask HN: Help Get Each Others Startups on Digg? - mstefff

Hey,<p>This idea came to me this morning. Most of us are in the same boat, or at least trying to get there. We all have or are considering perusing startups - mostly web-based ones. Promotion is obviously one of the hardest issues to tackle in the process. I've been a big fan of this community for a good amount of time - mainly because we all have the same focus, and we all contribute so much to help each other. I think, and this is not just for myself, that we should all promote each others sites on Digg - for simple, and effective promotion. Lets make it a precedent for members to post their startups and on top of the constructive reviews and criticism we offer, we can help move the site up Digg for free exposure. Why not?<p>Again, please don't think I'm doing this just to spam my site around. Of course I'd love the exposure but I truly think we could help each other out with this; as we do with everything else.<p>If you like my idea, please Digg my site below. And feel free to start posting similar links.<p>Thanks,
Mike<p>http://digg.com/tech_news/Streetread_Google_Reader_meets_Wall_Street_3
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brk
I think you'll generally find that Digg is a big waste of time in terms of
promoting a site. It takes a reasonable amount of effort to get anywhere near
the front page, and then when you do you get a crush of mostly unqualified
traffic from users who are not likely to ever visit your site again.

Self-submissions and "Digg groups" rarely ever work to elevate you above the
bowels of the "Upcoming" pages. One of the things that Digg seems to be
particularly good at is detecting this sort of activity.

Your time is better spent improving your app and promoting it where it is
relevant. Wait for someone else to take an interest in it and let them submit
to Digg/Mixx/etc.

~~~
mstefff
I agree completely, but getting there is a decent start and does help
circulate promotion. Why not help each other out?

~~~
brk
Yes, it's helpful. Just like buying a lottery ticket theoretically means that
you stand a chance to win $x^n.

If you can get some interest, then by all means go for it. I just think that
you will find that the "exposure" is worth less than the effort required to
gain it (and I recognize that the effort is low).

~~~
mstefff
Well I've gotten plenty of exposure, I just thought the small effort might go
a long way. Plus like I said, it just seems like a good boost we could help
each other with.

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pedalpete
Dugg it, I think I saw you somewhere else a few weeks ago, metafilter?

A stumble question for anybody who knows. I was getting a bunch of traffic
from Stumble Upon and decided to throw up a digg button. Of course, it was
late and I didn't test it properly, so it essentially broke my site and nobody
stumbled it anymore.

Once a site has been stumbled once, and not thumbed up, is there any way to
get it going again?

My site is www.hearwhere.com

------
gabrielleydon
Start with Stumble Upon. Less work and more traffic.

~~~
mstefff
How do you get a site popular on Stumble Upon - just get tons of people to
favorite it?

~~~
gabrielleydon
pretty much. There's no "front page" to get to on stumble upon. Every person
who thumbs the site up essentially forwards the stumbled page to everyone on
their friends list. Interesting sites propagate through stumble upon very
quickly.

~~~
mstefff
Yea my last site got "stumbled" a bunch of times. Serious amount of traffic
but I read that you really are only getting half of what your stats say
because of how the software works. Not sure. Still good though.

------
gojomo
Do Unto Other Social News Sites As You Would Have Them Do Unto You?

To try to vote-stuff Digg would be to condone vote-stuffing of News.YC, too.

Alternate suggestion: just submit your site here for peer review. Include a
Digg-this button on your entry page, as appropriate. Then those moved to Digg
it will... without any unseemly quid-pro-quos or voting bloc behavior.

------
ruslan
Dugg! :)

~~~
mstefff
Thanks!

