The Digg effect is often dubbed as every webmasters dream, and hey, let’s not kid ourselves for a second here - getting an influx of traffic to the point where your web hosting will struggle to keep up is something that can bring some of us close to tears . Others will run through a forest wearing nothing but their underpants, and others will resort to climbing trees and doing back flips on a main road. Many webmasters are often unprepared for the sudden surge of traffic Digg can bring, and will consequently miss out on having their content in front of thousands of visitors.

This is why ensuring your website is up to scratch before trying your hand with Digg is absolutely paramount, and because I love you all so much I’ve gone ahead and written up 10 ways to survive the Digg effect. Here they are!

Most shared web hosts will not be able to support all the traffic Digg brings in, regardless of the amount of bandwidth included in your plan. This is simply to do with the fact that catering to such a large number of guests will use up a considerable amount of system resources, and will eventually bring other websites on the server to a crawl. I’d strongly suggest checking out MediaTemple who have engineered a ‘Grid Server’ solution especially for traffic surges. Most dedicated servers and some VPS should also be able to cope with the traffic surge.

WP-Cache is a life saver, and will improve the performance of your website while under extreme pressure. Upload WP-Cache to your plugins directory, enable it in Word Press, go to options, select ‘WP-Cache’, and it should run an automatic configuration. It should also provide you with instructions on rectifying any issues you may have.

Installing a PHP Accelerator such as eaccelerator will boost the performance of applications currently running PHP. If you’re unsure as to how to do this, your web hosting provider should be able to help. Eaccelerator has been known to reduce server loads by around 40%.

Use ab to run a stress test on your website before submitting anything to Digg. This will help give you an idea of how your website will cope under pressure.

If there’s any unnecessary images and other media on your website, get rid of them for the time being. This will help ensure things remain smooth, and will assist in keeping your bandwidth usage to a minimum. Alternatively you can turn images into text links while you’re running your Digg campaign.

Let’s be honest here. The crowd of websites who employ hopeless web designs are simply digging their own graves. Sites with no flare are constantly surfacing, and quickly drowning in the online world, and taking advantage of this situation is far easier than you’d expect.

You would have noticed that I recently had a brand spankin’ new, unique and rather beautiful Word Press theme made up for the blog, which is pretty much why I’ve been slow to post lately. Yeah, the old theme was nice, it was simple and provided easy access to everything, but truth be told it was merely there to fill up space while we got this one in motion. I’m not much of a fan of free templates and have had to force myself to temporarily adopt them in the past. It’s my opinion that every website should have its own unique identity, which is what drove me to contact Richard at DesignedMagic.

The amount of passion and talent Richard has for his work is unbelievable and his dedication to customer service is simply unmatched. A good majority of the designers I’ve dealt with seem to change their attitude when you hand over your money, which is without question, the complete opposite to what DesignedMagic is all about. Aside from staying up into the wee hours of the morning making minor modifications to the theme (modifications that most other designers I’ve dealt with would be annoyed and slow at making), Richard went above and beyond the call of duty a lot of the time all of the time, often adding things in he thought would compliment the feel of the theme (hows a free logo sound?). I strongly suggest you contact DesignedMagic if you’re after a new look, because I’m extremely confident you’ll understand what I’m talking about after you deal with these guys.

Back on topic, a fresh look is within itself an opportunity to attract more visitors. You’re gifted with the chance to rectify the mistakes in your current template, while implementing various features aimed at either monetizing your site, or further increasing the percentage of recurring visits. It has the potential to promote user activity and add significant value to your website, and that is exactly why I took the plunge.

Let me ask you .. If you were applying for a potentially high paying job, would you go dressed in a potato sack or a suit? Let’s hope you sided with the suit here (PLEASE - someone wear a potato sack and take a picture) because you’re seeking to impress your interviewer. You see - the fact of the matter is that this same strategy needs to be adopted and applied to your website because your visitors are interviewing you - so to speak. They’re here to determine whether your website is worthwhile to continue visiting, and before they’re even in there, they’re blinded by a red background with yellow writing. Or maybe they’re lost in the dungeons of your pages because they cannot locate a navigation bar. Maybe they’re immediately turned off because your design isn’t as compelling as your competitors?

It’s no secret that you need to wow your audience in order to succeed, and while it’s true that you could probably get away with having some killer content and a cookie cutter theme, I guarantee you it will eventually catch up with you, especially when your competition realizes that they can capitalize on your mistake.

So what exactly defines an excellent design? In my opinion, the following;

These are the essential ingredients in producing a design your audience will positively respond to. Do keep in mind, that depending on your selected niche, you may need to do things a little differently, however these points should be considered the framework and foundation of your web design.

Take myself for example.. I know a good majority of blogs use free templates because the back end itself is often free, so adopting a different approach to the scene is important in effectively branding myself. This theme captures the attention of the reader (it caught yours didn’t it!), and consequently creates a lasting impression. It allows easy access to every available part of my blog, through the appropriate positioning of items backed with a simplistic colour scheme. These are, in my opinion, the most important factors in defining what a good design is.

Ever banged your head tirelessly on a wall in a darkened corner until you saw tiny rainbow coloured elves after you experienced a sharp decline in traffic on one of your online properties? Well maybe you’re not as bad as me, but it’s natural for a webmaster to experience displeasure and even a feeling of failure after a fall in visitors – heck it’s exactly what drives a lot of people to abandon shop. However for the record, every single website on the internet that receives genuine visitors, will at one point or another experience this kind of slump, whether it be in response to online or offline factors.

A true entrepreneur can turn a disadvantage into an advantage, and while I’m no Donald Trump – I can definitely say to you without an ounce of doubt in my mind, that a lack of traffic can be transformed into a positive thing. For starters you’re handed a golden opportunity to re-evaluate your entire operation, and effectively locate and correct the root of the problem. Depending on your personality traits, experiencing a backlash from your visitors may be enough to ignite a savage fire of ambition and motivation, which when handled correctly can be absolutely paramount in getting you over the line and beyond.

Evaluating your website correctly is extremely essential in ensuring its continued survival, and while sometimes blunt honesty can hurt, it’s often just what the doctor ordered. There’s an entire series of checks you can perform in order to rectify the issue that’s sucking the traffic away from you.

1. Re-evaluate your colour scheme, layout and overall website accessibility.

When going over your design, it’s best to keep an open mind. Ask yourself if your visitors are getting lost in your layout, or whether the colour scheme may be driving them into the open arms of your competitors. Ask a friend or two to give their opinions.

2. Ensure your website is compatible with the major browsers.

Make sure you check to see whether your website is compatible with the major browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

3. Ensure all links and forms are correctly functioning

A lot of the time, broken links are enough to scare visitors away. They undermine your credibility as an expert in your field, and portray your website as amateurish. Make sure you click on every link and submit every form to ensure they’re working correctly.

4. Test your loading time.

With a ton of web hosts springing up over night, it’s sometimes difficult to determine which one is suitable for you. Employ a third party website uptime monitor and pay attention to the speed of your website.

5. Re-evaluate the relevance and quality of your content.

As much of a cliche as it might be, it goes without saying these days - Content is king, and a lack of quality or relevance is without doubt enough to completely destroy your website.

6. Determine your sources of traffic.

A lot of the time you can pinpoint where you’re lacking by locating the source of your traffic. Compare your statistics to statistics captured when your website was receiving an optimal amount of visitors, and visit the websites brining in a reduced number of traffic in a bid to understand and further solve the situation.

7. Check if all images are loading correctly.

Browse your website in the hunt for broken images. A lot of the time, like broken links, broken images also reduce your credibility with your target audience, and can therefore be very damaging.

8. Re-evaluate your niche.

Is your niche dying out? Sometimes you need to be honest with yourself, and bail out before your target audience is diminished. Alternatively, one can attempt to revive the market but introducing an innovative and highly desired service, product or feature into their website.

9. Wonder over to the competition.

Have they introduced something into their site that may be thwarting your attempts are increasing your traffic flow. If so, it’s time to apply some camouflage paint and get down to good old business.

Remember to seek the advice of some friends, and even visitors as gathering a series of opinions is unquestionably paramount in ensuring you hit back twice as hard. Consistency is key is the online world, and those who continue to get up after every fall, and capitalize on every success will emerge as the winners.

Some of us operate our websites passively, and aren’t really required to make regular updates, while others consider updating, improving and further monetizing their online property a full time career. Then theres the guys who sit in between the two - that is - those who regularly make updates to their website without really considering their online properties to be full time careers.

Regardless of whenever you make your updates or modifications, effective time management will ensure your producing an optimal productivity output in a shorter time span. As of lately, I’ve been employing and enjoying the benefits of a few strategies designed to ensure my content sits at the highest quality I can possibly produce. These strategies revolve around how my time is managed. Heck, what’s next is a solution to eliminate sleep from my life and I’d be able to run the world.

I usually tend to overload myself with mental notes, with about 30% of these notes being forgotten and unknowingly replaced by the hype much larger ideas can often bring. This is exactly why I’ve began making physical records of everything that I’d usually try and remember. Aside the obvious benefits, doing things this way allows you to further process your ideas and even subconsciously expand on them.

While making records of your thoughts and putting cutoff dates to them is without doubt absolutely paramount in ensuring you’re making the most of your available time, it’s important to understand that time management goes much further beyond this.

If you operate a website that continuously produces fresh content, then doing things such as pre-writing your articles gives you an opportunity to expand on your thoughts and further improve the flow of your ideas, while removing the pressure of producing your content on the spot. I’ve recently began writing up draft articles, which I continue to pick at until I’m satisfied that they’re of the highest quality and thoroughly express my full thoughts and opinions.

Establishing a list of short and long term objectives and focusing on achieving them will ensure you remain on course and consequently steer away on wasting time on items of irrelevance. I’ve recently compiled a list of milestones I’d like to reach in the next six months. These include:

- Publishing unique, well written content pitched from a unique angle.
- Reaching the 500 RSS Subscriber mark.
- Taking the unique visitors per day from xxx figures into the xxxx figures.
- Establishing a solid list back links in the mid xxx range.
- Publishing at least 155 blog posts in the next six months.

Don’t be afraid of aiming high - if you’re willing to dedicate yourself to ensuring you reach and even exceed these objectives. Listing a set of objectives is the first step in a series of planning and scrutinizing your website - a step often followed by a strategic plan designed to ensure these goals are met. Throughout the life of this blog, I’ll be detailing how I plan to reach these figures, with comprehensive reports on how my marketing attempts have panned out.

I cannot stress the importance of planning the direction you want your project to accelerate in. This in the past has been key to my success. It injects motivation, defines success itself, and pretty much holds your hand as you reach the pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow.

In an era where technology permits us to establish a fully functional website at the click of a few buttons, many webmasters are witnessing their projects hopelessly die out, often before they even get off the ground. A whopping nine out of ten or 90% websites will inevitably fail. What’s even more alarming is that a good majority of these websites could have quite easily prevented their downfall by employing some very simple strategies into their overall model. Here they are, in no particular order;

1. Lack of goals and direction.

Many webmasters often share a profound interest in a particular subject, which fuels their motivation to fork out money, and invest time into producing a website - and while this is nice, it’s simply not enough to keep you going. You need a sense of direction. Where do you want to go with your website.. Are you in this to pull in some extra money, or do you want to keep this as a hobby? If so, how will you sustain web hosting and other miscellaneous fees?

2. Lack of advertising and promotion.

While your passion and ambition may be overwhelmingly strong, a sense of marketing is required to survive in the online world. You need to take a step back, and determine how you plan to market your website. Check out my following blog post for some more information on this.

3. Lack of patience and commitment.

If you plan on doing this right, you need to have patience. In the past, especially when I was first starting out, I was quick to give up on a few concepts that could have been very profitable because I had a lack of patience. You need to have patience, as you would with an offline business (regardless of whether you intend to generate a profit with your website). You need commitment to get through the periods where it seems that the online world seems to ignore your property.

4. You have not submitted your website to Google.

Sure there’s other search engines, and as much as I dislike the idea of one corporation with such dominating control over the internet, I’m simply saying it as it is. Especially for the newer websites, Google can potentially make or break you. It’s best to make a submission to the big four (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask), and get started with some SEO optimization.

5. You are unoriginal.

Content is absolutely everything on the internet, and when you find yourself in a position where you cannot generate unique content, then you’ve got a rather large problem. Why would people head on over to your website when they can pickup a lot more with your competitor?