As Internet marketers we’re always looking for traffic for our sites. Be it for our own product like Niche Podcasting (yea shameless plug) or for products we’re promoting as affiliates. Social Bookmarking sites like Digg have long been taunted by folks in the Internet marketing community as a great way for getting traffic.
An Internet marketer whom I respect a lot, Steven Wagenheim wrote a great post on the Warrior forum titled “The Hype Of Social Bookmarking“ about his expereices with social bookmarking sites. His conclusion was it just wasn’t worth the effort for a marketing perspective. Another of my favortite Internet marketer’s, Lee McIntyre, agreed adding that sure you can get traffic but it converts very poorly. What good is a flood of traffic that doesn’t convert into traffic?
Another problem that I see with trying tap traffic from sites like Digg, is that diggers don’t dig marketers much and they’ll bury you in a second if they get a whiff of marketing.
Just recently, I wanted to digg a cool article from an Internet marketers blog (not mine) and I got this URL has been banned message: 
This guy is not a spammer. He is a well respected member of the Warrior forum and he always conducts himself with what I like to call honest/no-hype Internet marketing. Yet, I’m assuming he tried to use Digg for a promotional campaign and it got him banned.
Granted I do not know the specifics of what happened to him. But, that is why you have to be so careful when using these bookmarking sites.
So, lets see…I have to worry about getting branded a spammer by the users, if I don’t the traffic I get from these sites is crap (in terms of converting into buyers). Hmmm, I’m agreeing even more with Steve’s post about the hype of social bookmarking.
