Among the Digg community, a certain plea for a pictures section has been gaining steam over the last month or two. To this day, Digg has still not mentioned it in their plans.

Now a Digg user has changed all that by creating a site called DigPicz . It is #1 on the actual Digg.com as well as a few other social media sites. The site looks nearly identical to Digg itself, and there is no word yet on how long a C + D will take to arrive for the new site’s creator.

A 301 redirect will do the trick once that eventually does happen though as dig picz is sure to get a few thousand links over the next few days, and is a really great example of “entire site link-baiting”.

The creator of the new missing pics section has explained how he built the site, using Digg’s API. Check it out here. As a bonus, he is going to release the full source code for everyone. Hopefully Digg.com does take the hint and get their own picture section set up but until then this guy is going to be seeing tons of traffic and links.

In the end it was a very creative idea addressing a common problem within a large community and then using that community to spread the word about a temporary solution.

It shows the true power of viral marketing as that site was literally just created yesterday. I think it is inspiration to start thinking more viral with every article, campaign and website you create because nothing can send your free message out faster and more effectively than word of mouth.

With the new “Submit and Blog it” feature on Digg, we can hit two birds with one stone.
Lately I have been thinking about what makes a story viral, particularly on Digg or Netscape. I have been studying a lot of the top users on these sites and I notice one of two common things. The first is a lost cause because it has to do with the age of the user’s account, some of the top users on Digg have been there since near the beginning and have submitted a lot of top stories over that time.

The second type of Power Digg account I have noticed, and the one we will be focusing on, is the newer Digg user that still has lots of stories gone hot. I have found that some of these guys are actually submitting tons of stories each day from top sites, and I’m sure the webmasters in that crowd slip their own stories in with the lot. And I don’t mean they are submitting 3 stories a day, I’m talking about hitting the limit every day (if there is one). Beyond commenting and being active, beyond having lots of friends on digg, having a lot of stories hit the homepage is an important factor in creating a power account.

Here is how we can create an additional stream of income while creating a power user on Digg at the same time. I will give the instructions in the simplest way possible, assuming you will be starting from scratch.

1. Setup a domain with either a Wordpress, Typepad, Live Journal, or Blogger blog.

2. Next, with a fresh or your current Digg account, edit your profile. At the bottom you will see “Edit Your Blog Info”. You will need to enter your blog URL and login/pass to the blog.

3. Now there are a number of things you can do. While I suggest you are actually active in the community - digging stories, adding friends with like interests, commenting etc, that is not what this piece is about. So now I am going to assume you are going to be doing these things with your account. Now it’s time to get busy - start submitting good, entertaining stories or pictures and do it by the boatload. Make sure 90% of the sites you are submitting are authority and also make sure each piece of content is strong. This is for two reasons - the first is because you obviously want to get a high submit/hot ratio on your account. The second is because every story you submit to Digg now, you will be blogging on your new domain as you hit submit. The better the stories you pick and choose, the more likely you will gain fans and rss readers.

4. Choose “Submit and Blog”. After entering the title and description, you can select to submit your story and blog it.

This will submit the story and bring up this box so you can edit or post as is straight to your blog.

5. Now you will have an account submitting stories and a new blog with mashed up news like this one http://www.yearofthedollar.com which I just plugged into my digg account. Now it will be up to you how you market this blog, whether you mix in original quality content, how many of them you make etc., but since we are all trying to get a power account(s) for ourselves, then why not have an additional stream of income on autopilot as well? I do suggest you submit tons of stories everyday, it is really not too hard to surf google news and pick out a few dozen hot new stories to submit.