Digg Podcast Portal worthless to most Podcasters!

When I saw Digg add a Podcast Portal I was pretty happy about it, but as the weeks have went on I can see that it is no better than iTunes, Podcast Alley or any of the other sites that rely purely on show popularity to present podcasts to listeners. When the site launched I was excited that they had jumped on board and even encouraged my listeners to Digg the show

Lately though I have come to the conclusion that for all the traffic Digg gets very little if any of that traffic in the way of downloads or pure referals comes from that site.

It should come as no surprise that Diggnation has 14979 diggs and dominates the top of their own portal. You also have a handful of shows that continue to dominate the top of the list as they do on all other sites that have this vote for me mechanism.

Don’t get me wrong some of those shows are really great and deserve the attention they get, but for the average podcast producer these sites continue to add little value to those listed beyond the front page.

I looked at the stats on inbounds from Digg, the inbounds are a total joke and I highly doubt the Digg podcast site has contributed to a single new listener on my show. In fact if you found our show on Digg and became a subscriber drop me a line. This article and the nature of it will likely drive a 1000 times more traffic to them then they will ever drive to me.  

The same goes from other podcast directories that continue to do nothing but promote the same podcast month after month on their front pages. Not sure about you but thats become pretty boring to me, those type of site do nothing to help potential Podcast listeners find content that they are interested in.

The fan boy directories will be self perpetuating and the majority of podcaster will learn that the vote for me over here approach to expanding their listener audience will not help build audience numbers for those podcasts that are down in the grass. Sadly the podcasts that are on the back channels of these vote for me sites are adding real value to those subject specific audiences yet get very little link love from said directories.

My advice to podcasters is this, look at the directories you are listed in and figure out if they are doing anything to build your audience or giving you equal exposure on the front of their respective websites. If they are not find sites that are and support them in your shows.

Disclaimer: As most of you know I do run a Podcast Community and my ideology is pretty skewed in trying to give each podcaster a equal shake at getting exposure. After all I am a podcaster first and foremost and like to think I fight for those shows that are terrific but do not get exposure on fan boy type sites.