Digg Terms of Use

[derMemo]

Excerpt:

Digg / Terms of Use

you agree not to use the Services...
[...]
to submit stories or comments linking to affiliate programs, multi-level marketing schemes, sites/blogs repurposing existing stories (source hops), or off-topic content;
[...]
to advertise to, or solicit, any user to buy or sell any products or services.
[...]

Some internet pages and blogs say, they will ban everybody, who uses digg in a social bookmarking way or digging there own stories regularly. Can veterans confirm or deny that?

edit: The guitar blog already got blocked on digg I think. At least I can not find it there anymore.

[derMemo]

Something on StumbleUpon by Caroline:
Social Bookmarking Can Kill Your StumbleUpon Traffic! | Caroline Middlebrook

[cmiddlebrook]

Although StumbleUpon is different to Digg because it has a ratio built into its algorithm that will automatically weaken the effectiveness of every stumble to the same domain and will eventually ban any domain that is over stumbled, with Digg and all the other social news sites that have a voting component the deal is usually this...

Think about the content you are submitting. Most websites have aff programs, adverts and so on and that in itself is not the problem so long as the story / content you are submit provides real value to the users. If you're teaching something, breaking news, putting up something funny, whatever it is.

The trouble with Digg in particular is that they are quite a hostile crowd and they are very savvy. They will spot from a mile off a weak story with a flimsy article that has been lifted from EZine articles. That doesn't mean that you can't submit content from your niche sites to Digg, but that you're going to have to put in a bit more effort than just quoting a stock article.

Last year Ed really emphasised good content and I'm not sure why he hasn't said much about that this year but that is what it boils down to. If you provide great content then submit away (but be careful with StumbleUpon!) but if you're just using stock articles then be prepared to get banned.

Oh and creating multiple accounts is of course against the TOS of just about all sites, including Digg and StumbleUpon.