Submitting a great story to user driven content site Digg is a great way to get a lot of attention very quickly. The key to garnering such attention is to submit an interesting story that will get "Dugg up" and appear on Digg's homepage. Until now. For just $20 plus $1 per Digg, User/Submitter will pay its network of Digg users to Digg up your story or shameless promotion.

How well does it work?

Last week, I created a blog entry with a discount coupon for our USB temperature sensor product. I then posted this shameless self-promotional item on Digg in the tech deals section. A little before 6p on February 21st, I purchase several hundred "Diggs" on User/Submitter -enough to make the tech deals front page. User/Submitter sent out my Digg request to its network of users. If, after 48 hours, you do not receive the number of Diggs you've paid for, the balance of your purchase is refunded. Here's how the next few days played out for this experiment:

February 21, 2007
6:00p -- 2 Diggs
11:14p -- 2 Diggs

February 22, 2007
9:56a -- 38 Diggs
1:16p -- 46 Diggs (one user comment added: "sweet! thanks for the tip")
3:28p -- 51 Diggs
5:24p -- 51 Diggs

February 23, 2007
8:59a -- 55 Diggs
11:36a -- 57 Diggs
4:27p -- 59 Diggs

February 25, 2007
2:57p -- 62 Diggs

On February 25th at 3:55p, I received an email from PayPal indicating the remaining Diggs I did not receive were refunded to me. Perhaps my Digg submission could have been a better offer or included a more interesting story about a creative use of a Temperature@lert device, but from a purely functional perspective, User/Submitter did not live up to its recent hype. So far, the discount coupon has not been used.