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Stumble upon Stumbleupon Tutorial

Hi Empath ! Here is the promised post on Stumbling. The following is a collection of text of some 60 posts of various blogs. One month ago, I put it together in order to print it for offline study.

Actually the help function of Stumble Upon should be sufficient. However nowadays (2008 January) in blogger circles big traffic hopes are rising and they see SU mainly as a purpose to get traffic.

I personally stick to the rules of SU and found SU as a source to find blogs, sites and infos I would not have found with Google for instance. Because sometimes you know, what you are looking for, but at other times you only know, that you miss something and don't know what it is, and then this is the point when stumbling becomes a real great tool. Surfing with Stumble Upon develops quality of surfing, you make new friends, get votes (reviews) on what you 'stumbled' and on your profile. And it's addicting ! (Warning :-)

So, I do not take blame or glory for the following written stuff. Sorry, the collection might be a bit lousy and messy. It's supposed for offline reading, so maybe you too might just copy it and print it, to read it more easily.

Wish you well !

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Posted by Neena on 10/28/07 in Social Networking, Traffic:

When I first started blogging I had no idea what StumbleUpon was. I quickly learned the basics, installed the toolbar, “stumbled” a few articles, and had a few of my articles stumbled. Sure, it was fun. And the spike in my blog traffic was great when my articles got stumbled. But beyond that I didn’t see much potential to gaining consistent blog traffic, so the novelty slowly fizzled.

But, I discovered that Fred at Newest on the Net is compiling an Ultimate List of StumbleUpon Articles. So, this was a good reason to give StumbleUpon a second look. And, boy, am I glad I did. There is so much potential there that I did not see the first time around!

The Basics:
I am not going to delve into the basics of StumbleUpon. Much of this you can find out on the site in their help section. After you install the toolbar, you can start stumbling. Every time you hit the stumble button, you will be taken to a new page in the categories that you defined when setting up your profile. You then rate the page with a thumbs up or thumbs down. The more you stumble and rate, the more personalized your stumbles will become so you should find your stumbled content to become more and more interesting. This is where I stopped previously. Fun, yes. Increase blog traffic - hmmm.

Harnessing the True Power of StumbleUpon
The true traffic power of StumbleUpon lies behind the “friends” function. I never thought of StumbleUpon as a traditional social networking site - but it really is just that, with a twist. In StumbleUpon you can add friends just as you do on other social networking sites, But choose your friends carefully - the maximum you canhave is 200. (Of course, you can add and delete at will.)

Picking similar minded stumblers as friends is important to success with StumbleUpon. When you choose someone as a friend - you will see an updated list of all their stumbles. This gives you a pool of articles and new blogs that you may find to be interesting. You will also get that person’s attention, and they may come over and check out your site. If you stumble some of their articles, hopefully they will take note, read your blog, and stumble something of yours. This is where the viral nature of StumbleUpon takes hold. The more you stumble, the more attention you will get.

As with anything else, this process takes time. You cannot expect overnight results. Focus on StumbleUpon for a set amount of time everyday. Do this for a month. Be generous with your stumbles. Anytime you read a post that you like on any blog, use the social networking/share this button at the end of the post or the thumbs up (or down) button on the StumbleUpon toolbar. If you are the first to submit the article you will have the opportunity to tag it and write a short review. Take the time to do this and do it well.

When the author sees that his/her article has been stumbled, he/she will most likely press the infobutton.gif (infobutton) on the StumbleUpon Toolbar. Here he will find the identity of the person that submitted his article, as well as others who have stumbled it. He will then probably click over to your site and possibly reciprocate.

The result: Your traffic is sure to increase.
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Your Responsibility to Your StumbleUpon Friends

Posted by Neena on 11/8/07 in Social Networking, blog

Ever since I wrote my Using Stumble Upon to Increase Blog Traffic Article, I have made a conscious effort to make the most of the StumbleUpon service.

Recently as I was happily stumbling through the blogosphere, I had a moment of uncertainty. You see, I blog in two different niches. Over here I blog about blogging. And at my other site - A Mom’s Life at NeenMachine.com - I blog about parenting stuff.

Now, most of my StumbleUpon friends are bloggers, but only some of them are parents. My non-parent StumbleUpon friends would not be interested in an article on say, potty training. I certainly did not want to send unrelated stumbles to my StumbleUpon friends.

Thankfully, StumbleUpon has thought of this issue and (see the highlighted text below) will only send your friends pages that you have rated that are FILTERED according to shared topics. Whew! That is a relief.

According to the StumbleUpon help section:

What are friends? (and do they influence my Stumbles?)

To quote the devs: “Adding a friend is essentially subscribing to their content. You will stumble upon pages they have rated, filtered according to the shared [topics] displayed on that person’s profile.“

A friend is someone whose pages you like. By adding them to your friends list, you will start to receive pages that they like when you Stumble!

Note that it is not necessary to actually like a person in order to make them your friend! Neither is it considered necessary to ask their permission when adding them to your list of friends.

Whether you choose to make their acquaintance, on the basis of your shared interests, is entirely up to you!
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I’m sure many of you enjoy the benefits of large volumes of traffic from StumbleUpon, but do you take the time to find out who gave you those thumbs up and stop to thank them? If not, then read on to discover why you should.
Basics of StumbleUpon Traffic

There are a number of factors that determine how much traffic is sent to any particular submission. It goes something like this:

* More thumbs up votes = more traffic
* More thumbs down votes = less traffic
* Thumbs up from new stumblers (to your domain) = more traffic
* Thumbs up from non-friends = more traffic
* More reviews = more traffic

There’s a couple of things to note here. Firstly, the StumbleUpon algorithm takes into account the ‘friendship’ factor. If you have the same people stumbling your stuff every time, while that will still drive traffic, over time it will diminish. What really seems to send the avalanches of traffic are a large number of thumbs up votes from people that haven’t voted for pages from your domain before.

Secondly, when people review the page that helps too and of course that also shows that the person has not only clicked the thumbs-up button but taken the time out to write something special.
Why Thank Stumblers?

Well first of all, it’s just a nice thing to do isn’t it? But there are other self-serving benefits also:

* Not many people do it, so you’ll stand out
* It reminds people that you exist
* It encourages repeat visits to your site
* It could transform a one-off visitor into a long term one

I receive very few thank-you emails from Stumblers so I am pretty sure that I stand out simply because I do it. A large number of the people that I thank email me back. Now I don’t know about you but quite often when I’m stumbling I tend to be in a very trigger-happy mode and it’s click-click-click-thumbs-click-click-click…
Stumblers are Trigger Happy

Even if I stumble across a really good blog post, rarely do I stop and take a look around the rest of the blog. I do at other times, but not often when I’m stumbling. If other people do that too, then think of the potential readers that are being lost. I’ve said before that large spikes in Stumble traffic do not result in a similar spike in RSS subscribers so I know that I’m not the only one who stumbles in this manner.
Bring Those Stumblers Back to Your Site

But by sending a simple thank-you note it gives you the opportunity to make a direct connection with that stumbler. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people I thank look at the note and scratch their heads wondering who on earth I am!

That can trigger a guilt reaction and they may then feel compelled to check me out to remind themselves just what it was that they thumbed-up. Putting my url as a signature in the email helps with this.
But Why Bother?

It seem like overkill, after all it’s just one person right? True but it is a very special person…

* Somebody who has already demonstrated that they like your content
* Somebody who is willing to vote for what they like!

Wouldn’t this person be very valuable as a regular reader? I have been thanking my new stumblers on a regular basis for weeks and I know it pays off because I get more stumbles to my posts as time goes on and the traffic from StumbleUpon just keeps getting higher.
How to Identify Your Stumblers

I have a simple daily routine which goes something like this:

1. I use analytics to check if I got Stumble traffic the previous day
2. Assuming I did, I check which pages had the most views that day
3. I visit each page, click the “Reviews of this page” button and look at the Stumblers
4. I scan the avatars, and pick out the ones I don’t recognise
5. For each one, I look at their profile (here’s mine), I send them a message, and if we have similar interests I add them as a friend.

Note, that I only thank my new stumblers. Some people vote for me a lot and I really appreciate that but I’m sure it would get pretty annoying if I sent them an email every time! So I only do it once.
How to Identify the New Ones

The human brain is a remarkable thing. Our brains work in images, not words, not names. Studies have shown that you can be shown thousands of images very quickly and them some days later be able to identify which images you had seen before. In other words, I recognise the avatars of people who have stumbled me before and a new one will stand out.

It’s not fool proof of course but here’s a tip - look at this picture:

past messages

This is what you see when you click the “Send a Message” button. See that link that says “past messages”? Click that and it will show you a history of any messages you have sent to that person before.

Sometimes I’ll find somebody who I thanked several weeks earlier and I didn’t recognise the avatar so by checking this I can be sure not to annoy people.

I don’t manage to catch them all using this method. Somebody could arrive at my blog, start looking through the archives, give an old post a thumbs up and I’d never know about it. However a lot of the time that thumbs up to an old post can start sending a fresh stream of Stumble traffic which triggers more thumbs up and suddenly this old post is appearing in my Top 5 posts in Google Analytics. Then I take notice and can thank those people.

It’s the 80-20 principle at work here. This method takes me around 5-15 minutes a day depending on the amount of StumbleUpon traffic in any given day, I probably reach 80% of my stumblers and I am rewarded by a constant stream of new Stumble friends, subscribers, thumbs up and traffic.

So, do YOU thank your stumblers?

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1. Boost Your StumbleUpon Traffic With Outbound Links

2. 5 Essential StumbleUpon Power Points

3. 7 Reasons Why StumbleUpon Traffic is the Best on the Planet

4. Who Else Wants to Learn an Advanced StumbleUpon Secret

5. The Ultimate Guide To Leveraging StumbleUpon

6. Choose Your Audience: The Uncaring Social Media Crowd or Your Loyal Readers?

7. 9 Things Wrong With StumbleUpon

8. StumbleUpon for Computer Dummies

9. A Comprehensive Guide To StumbleUpon

10. Using Social Media Arbitrage to Drive Traffic With StumbleUpon

11. Build Super Links and Traffic With StumbleUpon

12. StumbleUpon Addiction for Business Research

13. A Quick Traffic Driving Tip With StumbleUpon

14. A Definitive StumbleUpon Guide: Driving Traffic to Websites

15. How to Use StumbleUpon Like a Pro

16. StumbleUpon the Best Pages on the Web

17. How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog

18. Building Your Blog With StumbleUpon

19. StumbleUpon Traffic Bounce Rate is Amazing

20. Getting Started With StumbleUpon - Using the Toolbar

21. How Important Is StumbleUpon?

22. Rethinking Links

23. Using StumbleUpon to Increase Blog Traffic

24. 5 Top Resources for Stumblers Outside of StumbleUpon

25. 3 StumbleUpon Traffic Myths Debunked

26. StumbleUpon is a Goldmine For Writers

27. The Magic of StumbleUpon’s Recent Reviews Page

28. StumbleUpon Gamed By Paid-To-Stumble Service

29. StumbleUpon Optimization: Leveraging Photo Stumbles for More Traffic

30. How to Increase StumbleUpon Traffic?

31. Building a Large Audience for Your StumbleUpon Account

32. Don’t Buy Traffic, Use StumbleUpon

33. Lingering Taste of StumbleUpon Traffic

34. Is StumbleUpon Traffic Worth Getting?

35. Revealed: 16 Different Personality Types of StumbleUpon Users

36. StumbleUpon Mathematics for Stumblers

37. 25 Reasons You Get Thumbs Up

38. StumbleUpon Launches Stumble-Thru Site Specific Stumbling

39. Before Submitting Your Story Make Sure That…

40. The Secret To Massive Digg/StumbleUpon Traffic Without Spamming

41. Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic Than Digg

42. The Why, How and Who of Marketing on StumbleUpon

43. StumbleUpon vs. Digg - Sharing Traffic

44. My StumbleUpon Friend

45. How Important Is StumbleUpon?

46. Centralizing Your Social World

47. How Do You Become A StumbleUpon Power User?

48. StumbleUpon Quintuplet From The king Of Blogging Gobshites

49. Claim Your StumbleUpon Blog Through Technorati

50. StumbleUpon Is Your Trump

51. Making a Power Account On StumbleUpon

52. 8 Reasons I Prefer StumbleUpon

53. StumbleUpon’s Fantastic Ability to Drive Traffic

54. Increasing Your StumbleUpon Audience

55. Beginner’s Guide To StumbleUpon

56. How To Run A Successful StumbleUpon Advertising Account

57. The Secret Features of StumbleUpon

58. Increase Your StumbleUpon Network

59. Writing For StumbleUpon

60. 5000 Stumbles And Counting

61. How to Get StumbledUpon

62. StumbleUpon Visitors Not Identified By Analytics

63. StumbleUpon: Exposure That Lasts

64. How To Set Up A Domino Effect of Traffic

65. The StumbleUpon Experiment

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1. Boost Your StumbleUpon Traffic with Outbound Links

It is well known that StumbleUpon can drive a huge amount of traffic to your website and there are numerous posts in the blogosphere about writing for StumbleUpon, ensuring you get plenty of thumbs up votes, and ideas for post topics that are sure to get stumbled lots. What I haven’t seen mentioned is the value of using outbound links to increase your StumbleUpon traffic.
StumbleUpon Tricks for Savvy Bloggers

In my links roundup that I posted over the weekend, I highlighted a StumbleUpon tips post from Big Bucks Blogger. The first tip in that post is to stumble the pages that link to you. In this way you drive more traffic to the page containing your link and thus you hope that some of that traffic comes back to you via the link on that page.

Therefore it makes sense to me to make a point of linking out to other blogs in your post. If the blogger that you are linking to is a savvy StumbleUpon user who uses the above technique, then they may well see your post come through their analytics program as an inbound link and then stumble it for you, to get more traffic for themselves.

Making the Most of this Technique

1) Link to People Who Use StumbleUpon
Linking to Wikipedia may be great for your visitors but that’s not going to get you any extra stumbles! Make a point of linking to sources who stumble. Who is that? Bloggers for a start. I’ve seen a great many posts about StumbleUpon from all over the blogosphere and anybody that makes such a post is probably a StumbleUpon user themselves.

2) Make Your Post Stumble-Worthy
It’s no good just dumping a load of links on a page that offers little else of value. For example, I have started posting a weekly favourite links page and that might be useful to my visitors but in itself, that not does constitute a high value post that is worthy of a stumble. These outbound links have to be intertwined into your best quality material for the technique to work. This analysis of top stumblers gives some interesting insights and what they like and don’t like.

3) Create LOTS of Links
If you have a choice between posting 5 articles with 2 links each or one article with 10 links, go for the latter. You might be thinking that it’s better to spread those links around several posts in order to get traffic to more of your articles but that won’t be as effective. Much has been written about the possible ways on which the StumbleUpon traffic algorithm works.

Nobody really knows but one thing we do know is that every thumbs up that a page receives leads to more traffic. The more thumbs up you can get to a single post the better that post will do. The reason this is important is because if you get enough popularity on a single post, you might hit the buzz page which can then send floods of traffic your way, far beyond the normal levels.

More Reasons to Link Out
Aside from the potential traffic that you can get from StumbleUpon using this technique, linking out has other benefits too. This technique advocates linking to people who are likely to check their stats and notice the link. Even if they don’t stumble that particular post they may well come and check it out to see who is linking to them. If you have posted some good quality content then you might just pick up a new reader.

But there’s more! It’s great to have other bloggers as readers because they can do what you are doing - linking! You never know when somebody that you have linked to may just link back to you in the future. The more blogs you link out to, the more you get yourself out there into the blogosphere and the greater chance you have of getting noticed.

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Using StumbleUpon To Connect With People In Your Niche

Recently I introduced the idea of connecting with people in your niche and one of the avenues that I suggested you explore was Social media. I did not mention StumbleUpon in that post as I wanted to dedicate a little more time to it.
Using StumbleUpon as a Social Networking Tool

A lot of people use the SU toolbar just as a discovery tool, and that is of course what it was designed for so there’s nothing wrong with that. But behind the toolbar lies a Social Networking tool that sometimes goes unnoticed.

The toolbar offers a number of ways in which you can find people directly interested in your niche. Before I get to the people part, first let me show you just how you can Stumble upon just the topics that relate to your niche, rather than all the interests that you may have signed up for.

Channel Based Stumbling

Every submission to StumbleUpon is categorised in a number of ways. Firstly it is sorted by type - pages, videos, photos etc. Secondly it is assigned a channel which is a choice of the interests that StumbleUpon allows you to pick and lastly, it is tagged by users.

By default, when you click the stumble button you can get any kind of submission that matches your interests. The default is set to ‘All’:

stumbleupon channel all

The first thing you can do is change the channel. If you click the little triangle next to the ‘All’ you can select a different channel. You can filter on the type of submission and you can select from one of the interests you have chosen. So for example, I have chosen the Entrepreneurship channel in the screenshot below:

stumbleupon

So the very first thing you should do is look through the available topics to see if any of them directly relate to your niche:

This then allows you to select that topic as the channel and every time you hit Stumble you will be presented with something from that topic.
Keyword Based Stumbling

Not all niches correspond neatly to a StumbleUpon topic but you can also do a keyword based Stumble. Drop down the channel menu again and look for the search option:

Click that icon and you’ll get a popup dialog into which you can enter search terms. Now your channel is changed to the phrase you typed in:

I’m not sure if the results are based on tags or on a general search of the content of the page. Both I should imagine. So now you have a way of using StumbleUpon to look for all sorts of content based around your particular niche. Now let’s dig deeper and see how we can reach the people who are interested in these pages.
Reaching the People Behind the Stumbles

First of all, every page has been submitted by a StumbleUpon user (at least I think that is the case - not sure how that works for paid Stumbles). As you stumble, the toolbar will change to reflect the user who submitted that page. Here we can see that somebody called ‘ghelms’ submitted this page about sausage making:

Click that user’s profile. If they took the time to submit the page you can be sure of their interest in the subject material. In actual fact you could skip this step and instead, just click on the icon that shows you the reviews for the page:

Now this takes you to do the all important StumbleUpon submission page for the content you were looking at. There are several important pieces of information to look at here:

* Who Submitted the Site - At the top right of the page is a box showing who submitted the site.
* Who Liked the Site - The bulk of the page is dedicated to showing you who gave the site a thumbs up. All of these people are saying ‘yes, I’m interested in sausage making’!
* Reviews of the Site - Anyone who submits a review will also appear in the thumbs up section but this section highlights those people who take the time to leave a review rather than just clicking the thumbs up button.

The submitters and the reviewers are your key people - these are the people who not only use the toolbar but actually use the site as a networking tool. If you can connect with these people and provide them with content that they like, they are likely to give your content the same treatment.
Making the People Connection

So now you have a way to find the people who have shown an interest in your niche. StumbleUpon allows you to add friends like many other social networks but unlike most others it has a restriction - you can only have 200 friends. That does not limit the number of fans that you have - but you personally can only befriend 200 others which means you need to choose wisely.

When you click on somebody’s StumbleUpon profile you’ll see something that looks like this:

Examining The Tag Cloud

Look over to the right and scroll down to the tag cloud. This is a great way to get a good feel for what this person is about. Most people have a wide variety of interests. What you want to figure out is if this person just happened to have a fleeting interest in your niche two years ago or if it is a major interest for them.

The tag cloud will give you an idea of this. This cloud shows all the tags that this stumbler expressed an interest in. By clicking on a tag you can see just what they thumbed up that fell into that category. Take note of how many there are and most importantly - the date. If the stumbles are recent that’s a good sign but if they are from a long time ago this user has probably moved on.

The About & Friends Tabs

When you first click on a user profile you are on the Favourites tab. An often overlooked part of the profile are the About and Friends tabs.

Many people forget to update their About page and they have nothing but a profile picture. Those that use SU properly may have a link to a site they own and show any StumbleUpon groups that they are a member of. This gives you a better idea of what they are about.

Next click on the friends tab. How many friends does that person have? At the time of writing I have 44 mutual friends and I’m a fan of 44 other people. So I still have room for over 100 more friends. You are looking for people who have some friends but are not yet at their limit.
To Friend or Not to Friend?

So why add people as a friend on StumbleUpon? When you click on your own profile, your default home page shows you all the latest stumbles from your friends. If you select friends with similar interests to yourself then this page will become a nice source of interesting content for you.

When you are mutual friends with a StumbleUpon user you can send pages directly to them. By carefully selecting your friends and limiting them to only people who are interested in your niche you can be more confident that they will be interested in your content.

Personally I dislike this feature and I wish I could turn it off because it tends to get used mainly by people asking me for a vote on something.

Here is something else you can do - remember the channel surfing feature I mentioned earlier? You can select the ‘Friends’ channel and then you will only be shown sites that your friends liked. This does two things - firstly it brings you more great content related to your niche but secondly it allows you to give thumbs up to your friends submissions.

If they check who stumbled their submissions (I check all of my blog posts for stumbles daily) they will start to see your name popping up - this alerts them to your presence which is the whole idea of this post.

If you happen to be in the Internet marketing niche, check out my profile and add me as a friend :-)

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5 essential StumbleUpon power points

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

I really like StumbleUpon. So much so, I thought I’d make a list of 5 essential things you ought to know about StumbleUpon…


I’ve only been on StumbleUpon since may 2007. And in that time, I’ve attracted some interesting friends and reviewed some interesting, funny, informative and sometimes amazing websites and ‘blogs.

What makes StumbleUpon unique amongst the other social bookmarking services is the extended dialogue you’re able to create out of reviewing a website or ‘blog.

By joining StumbleUpon and committing to making the effort to vote and review stuff, participate in forums and exchange personal messages with others, you’re able to do 3 amazing things: build trust, build reputation and build respect.

Yes, you can do some of that with Digg, maybe. But on StumbleUpon, there’s so much more you can do. So here’s 5 essential things you ought to know about StumbleUpon:

1. The sense of community is a real draw. There’s so many ways to connect with people, and the way in which people are matched by tastes is just great.

Not only can you just idly browse from one person to another, but you can use the People tab, or the Browse People button. And then there’s the Forums, where you’re drawn together not just by interest, but specific topics, too.

If you’re active in the Forums, then there’s added exposure to be gained. By picking Forums that either just interest you, or you’re a specialist on the topic of, you can gain some traction and become a voice of information and authority.

Don’t waste this opportunity. Go find those Forums that suite you most and join them!

2. Reviews are like a currency as well as being an endorsement. If people like you, they will Review you. So you can Review a person the same way you can Review a website or ‘blog, which involves adding some Tags.

Think of Reviews as being Testimonials, which are a brilliant endorsement, often used in the business world to great success.

If you’re found under a Tag, chances are, the person looking for stuff under that Tag will at least be interested in your stuff. If they see that you’ve got Reviews and they include that Tag and other related Tags, you’re more relevant to their needs.

Providing these personal Reviews is a sign of friendship. That’s not always the case, but in general, that’s what you’re going to see, even if it’s just a simple: “Hey, this guy rocks!!!”

If you’re going to Review anyone, do it with style and make it count. When I provide a Review, I make sure I’m actually saying something about that person. I also take a look around to see what their top Tags are, or I ask which Tags they’d like me to add into their Review.

This way, you’re adding a huge amount of specificity. And a key peripheral advantage is that if you’re providing a quality Review, you’re also saying a great deal about yourself, too. Principally, that to get your trust and respect will be paid in dividends.

3. Building trust and reputation is an integral part of the StumbleUpon experience.

Right now, I’m staying quite focused on SU’ing (voting on and StumblingUpon) websites and ‘blogs that are related to the themes of my own ‘blog. The advantage to me is that my Profile becomes a good source for strong, related content, which I’ll be linking through to my ‘blog at some point.

There does seem to be a vague correlation between the number of Fans and the number of Reviews, but this doesn’t always hold true. In some cases, the ratio is deeply skewed one way or t’other.

What is known is that those people who have hundreds of Fans are the kind of people than can bring considerable volumes of traffic to a website or ‘blog.

The reason for this is that on your personal web page, you have four tabs, the first of which is What’s New, where you’ll find what your Fans are adding Reviews and Tags to. Here’s where the influencers get their Reviews seen and than shared.

By voting on and adding Reviews and relevant Tags to the websites and ‘blogs your Fans are adding Reviews to, you engage in an indirect dialogue. You’re essentially agreeing with their choices and actively endorsing them.

But this isn’t to say you should provide positive Reviews for the sake of it. This is about respect and trust, not eliciting favour and fawning adulation.

Additionally, if you’re gunning to build and manage Personal Brand, you could do much worse than StumbleUpon.

4. Making a Vote count is what StumbleUpon is all about, and in the main, most people will either Vote thumbs up or thumbs down. Only a few will elect to add a Review, and even less will add Tags.

If you Vote a website or ‘blog down, there’s got to be a reason, so write a Review. If you’re able to articulate your reasons clearly and in an informative style, you’re doing other SU’ers a great service.

This is another essential building block of trust, reputation and respect — what you don’t like can be as important and telling as knowing what you do like.

5. Spammers beware! ‘Coz within the cogs & wheels of the ever-moving StumbleUpon machine are the hooks, snares and traps that catch the people foolish enough to try gaming the system.

If you try submitting your own content, you’ll get a surge in traffic once or twice. But after that, the traffic you get will diminish and eventually, you’ll just get nothing.

The algorithms employed by StumbleUpon are smart enough to see what’s going on and will eventually work against you.

However, none of this precludes you from SU’ing your own stuff from time to time. But if you’re posting stuff every day, you will not benefit from this practice.

Being nice and playing by the rules is much more beneficial than looking for ways to cut corners to drive traffic to your website or ‘blog.

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7 Reasons why StumbleUpon Traffic Is the Best on the Planet

27 Comments Filed Under: StumbleUpon, Social Media, SEO 2.0, Web 2.0, Google

Do you think Digg or Reddit is the place to go nowadays? Never used StumbleUpon until now? You should, both as a user and a webmaster. Users get highly relevant content that matches their preferences, that’s the way of social browsing. Webmasters get substantial and steady traffic. Especially new and small non-profit blogs like mine can get a regular, even daily traffic boost. That’s not all though to say about StumbleUpon, it’s not just any traffic, it’s the best and most targeted traffic I have ever seen!

Let me present 7 reasons why StumbleUpon traffic is the best traffic out there:

1. Lowest bounce rate on the planet! The bounce rate (you can check it in Google Analytics) tells you how many users just ran away instantly after landing on your site. Even very targeted Google traffic has a bounce rate of 70, 80% which means that 4 out of 5 users won’t read your page and hit the back button. The bounce rate of StumbleUpon: Approx. 30% !!!
2. New visitors: StumbleUpon traffic means over 95% new visitors, new visitors that are really interested in your topic not just any visitors.
3. Most pages/visit: This number tells you whether a reader just clicked on a post and then went ahead somewhere else or if s/he just kept on reading more on your site. StumbleUpon users visited 2 pages per visit. That means they read the article that was stumbled and then clicked on the homepage for instance to read more or at least to check what this blog is about. Other traffic sources reach 1,5 pages/visit.
4. Steadiness: There is no server outage caused by StumbleUpon! Digg can mess up your server, cost you much money and damage your reputation. StumbleUpon traffic comes in steady recurring bursts, SEO 2.0 has been stumbled several times by now, 5 articles have been submitted by users, but one particular post has been stumbled repeatedly. It means that every time a user decides to “like” this post you get a burst of traffic, which in my case is 100 - 200 visitors, not much you might argue, but for a new blog like mine that counts 200 visits without social media it’s substantial.
5. No flames: Digg and Reddit users hate you for no apparent reason because those services force topics upon people whereas StumbleUpon just sends you those who like your topic anyways. I noticed that I was dugg by the stupid flame comments “you suck on the internet” on my post. StumbleUpon users in contrast behave like surprise guests because they stumbled into your party in a way. So they don’t offend you. On a side note: I was submitted to Reddit and was buried in an instant, probably for being a SEO.
6. International traffic: While Digg is predominantly white, middle class Americans and Europeans StumbleUpon even brought me some of the rare users from Africa. This is a truly varied international community.
7. Instant traffic: While new blogs and sites won’t get any significant traffic from Google, StumbleUpon can jump start your blog. My blog was stumbled on day two of SEO 2.0 at a time where Google sent 2 visitors per day. The first significant traffic from Google began to pour in after two weeks but still amounted to 20 - 30 visits. After a month I received more traffic from StumbleUpon alone that from Google’s organic search.

Conclusion: If you set up a new blog or site that targets a niche, you are on shared hosting and you do not want your hosting bill to skyrocket or you are non-profit anyways try to target the StumbleUpon audience and skip the “you suck on the internet” mobs of Digg and Reddit.

Also do not concentrate on Google. Google does not send any significant traffic to new sites to prevent spam. So only older authority sites can built upon organic Google traffic.

If you rely on commercial success concentrate on StumbleUpon first and then go on to other social media when you can afford the 300$ hosting bill and your success makes you immune against flame comments of the mob. Instead of the mob following the lowest common denominator choose the smart mob of StumbleUpon and other social browsing services.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.


stumble upon traffic is great, but I can see it being abused by some people. on blogcatalog there are people who ask for stumbles from other bloggers just to generate more traffic. If people just stumble a blog or website without actually reviewing it, this can hurt the way that stumble upon (and social bookmarking) works. if enough people do it, it could become disastrous. but I agree, stumbleupon is great!! I just don’t want to see it getting abused

turtie, you are right that with success every platform also faces abuse. fortunately SU has some basic and advanced checks and balances to render those abuse attempts useless.

In fact a blog like mine that is successful on SU without any asking for votes is the proof that with the current SU ranking those sites get popular which truly deserve it.

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4. Who Else Wants To Learn An Advanced StumbleUpon Secret
Date September 5, 2007
One More Black Hat Stumble Technique

Did I catch your attention yet? I sure hope I did, especially if you happened to stumble upon this page (pun intended). If you’re still catching up on the basics of making the most of the wonderful service that is StumbleUpon, read up on my Ultimate Guide to Leveraging StumbleUpon.

Now that you’ve done that, It’s time to play with the big boys and talk about an advanced stumbling technique that involves Technorati and Stumbling other people’s blogs. Confused? Wait…wasn’t I supposed to get other people to stumble my blog to get more traffic? Theoretically, yes, the more stumbles to your landing page, the more traffic you will get. However, traffic garnered from Stumble Upon is usually inconsistent and comes in gradually decreasing waves. For example, you may get 1000+ visits the first and second days of your flagship stumbled post, but the traffic decreases dramatically to 50-100 visits at best, by the end of the week.
Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

One of the things that I love about humanity as a race, is our ability to create ingenious situations to problems we face. In that spirit, I’ve expanded on a technique first mentioned by Loren Baker of Search Engine Land. It takes only 3 steps, and should give you a consistent stream of traffic till you rinse and repeat.

If you’ve written linkbait worthy material, it’s very likely that you’ve already got other bloggers commenting or referring to your post on their own blogs. These posts often are not ‘discovered’ as being stumbled, and there is a good opportunity to maintain downline stumble traffic to your blog, by stumbling those of other bloggers that have written about you.

* Go to your Technorati reactions and sort by ‘authority’ to order the list of blogs that link to you in descending order of linkbacks.
* Visit the appropriate post that mentions something about you or your blog and ‘discover’ it via the ‘thumbs up’ button in StumbleUpon.
* Insert appropriate tags referring to the main keywords used by the blogger that’s referred to you or your blog, and proceed to submit your stumble

Continue to promote the newly stumbled page to your friends and you will see a stream of downline traffic coming from the referring site for another week!

That’s it - I hope the technique works out for you, and do let me know what results you achieve after implementing it. You can also add me as a friend on StumbleUpon in the meantime

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5.Ultimate Guide ot Leveraging StumbleUpon
Black Hat StumbleUpon Tactics

I’m not going to argue about ethics in stumbling here - how you get your traffic is up to you in the real world. That said, if you already have a successful blog or website, stick to white hat promotion methods. Black Hat Stumble Upon strategies come in 2 flavours: Instant Traffic and Residual Traffic.

There are three methods that currently work to influence (or game) StumbleUpon votes

* Digital Point Stumble Forums - This should be your first stop towards getting instant traffic to your posts. Simply start a thread or participate in an existing one to exchange a ratio of stumbles. For example, you can stumble 1:6 - meaning that for every one stumble you do for another user, he or she will return six for your posts.
* StumbleXchange - Aiming to increase the efficiency and equity of voting for stumbles, StumbleXchange provides a bartering system for users. You return someone’s stumble and get your posts stumbled in return.
* Avuw - A similar system to StumbleXchange that provides an equitable system for stumblers to exchange votes.
* Authority Site Stumbling - If your post has been linked to by an authority site, stumble their post regarding your’s as well and get thousands of visitors from referral traffic. Props to Loren Baker came up with this awesome sneaky tactic

I’m afraid I can’t link to StumbleXchange or Avuw, so I’ll leave it up to you to search for them through Google.
How to Build a Power Stumbler Profile

The strength of each of your StumbleUpon votes works in the same way exponential math does. StumbleUpon uses a couple of factors in its algorithm to determine the value of each stumble, but there are two main factors that users can influence.

* Reciprocal Addition of Friends - Adding friends to your StumbleUpon profile increases the power of each stumble. Participate in friend exchange requests on Digital Point to build up a significant group of friends, that you can rely upon whenever you are in need of stumbles.
* Personal Profile Reviews - Positive reviews of your personal Stumbler profile can reflect positively to the quality and quantity of traffic that is directed to your website or blog post. This is especially important in establishing residual traffic, which can trickle in weeks after your post has initially been stumbled.
* Contact Top Stumblers - Getting in touch with the Top Stumblers in your niche can be very advantageous in driving massive amounts of traffic to your site. As your authority increases with the number of reciprocal friend additions and profile reviews, you will also find other stumblers contacting you for exchanges, as you become one among the Top Stumblers.
* Provide a Stumble Button for Each Post - It’s simple to do and your readers won’t thank you enough if they’re accessing your post from a computer without the StumbleUpon toolbar.

Viral Tactics to Increase Stumble Traffic through Wordpress

With over 3 million users using StumbleUpon worldwide, sometimes you cannot afford to not show-off your stumbles with pride.

StumbleCrumble is a Wordpress plugin that allows bloggers to show off their latest stumbled posts in their sidebar. Popularity breeds popularity, and this may lead to even more stumbles for your post inventory.

The improved Share This plugin modified by Ian Fernando adds support for Stumble Upon for your blog’s readers. Given that most stumblers have a severe case of ADD (I know I do), the easier you make it for them, the better :)
On a side note, StumbleUpon also offers a Facebook application that shows the most recent stumbles on your profile. You can check it out here
Mistakes You Should Avoid When Using StumbleUpon

Stumblers are a like the “channel surfers” of the web. If they don’t like the design or content of your website immediately, they’ve got a trigger happy clicking finger that’s itching to stumble the next random site. When you have such fickle traffic, you have to ensure that you’ve got your bases covered, such that you don’t turn potential subscribers or repeat visitors away:

Here’s a list of easy to follows Don’ts of using StumbleUpon:

* Don’t lead stumblers to your blog or websites main page! This is akin to committing Stumble Suicide - Instead, direct them only to the relevant post you would like a massive amount of traffic for.
* Plastering your landing page with Adsense and other advertising units is not recommended. Stumblers will only perceive your website to be spammy, and will not contribute a single cent to you. You can kiss that low bounce rate good-bye if you do choose to employ Adsense with StumbleUpon.
* If you’re expecting a significant amount of stumble traffic, clean up the look of your blog and make sure that it is visually appealing. Always position content that has ‘call to actions’ above-the-fold.
* Don’t rely on buying stumbles to gain traffic. If you are buying stumbles through StumbleAds or Subvert & Profit, position your strategy to only provide the initial momentum your campaign needs. Rest assured, natural stumble traffic will bring in the rest.

How to Win Friends and Influence Stumbles

Notice the catchy sub-title? Building a Stumble Team involves some hard work and diligence in finding individuals that are relatively in the same niche as you are. The Digital Point Forums are always a good place to start in finding individuals that are willing to have a mutually beneficial stumbling relationship.

Of course, if you want to befriend with Top Stumblers you’ll need to do a little more than ask for a friend exchange and a review. Following the same rules as asking for link bait will give you good leverage for establishing a relationship with Top Stumblers. Be respectful, do not beg, and provide value back to them by stumbling topics that they are already interested in. Provide real feedback and genuine praise by writing them a stumbler review, and you’ll be sure to catch their attention.
Closing Comments on StumbleUpon

When leveraged correctly, StumbleUpon can easily become a killer source of traffic to your website or blog. I love using the service daily, and it has helped me promote this blog very well. While I don’t make any real monetary gain off StumbleUpon traffic, I gain in other aspects such as Alexa Ranking, Brand Promotion, and Reader Retention. That said, I hope you’ve enjoyed my complete and ultimate guide to leveraging StumbleUpon - Please spread the word about this post by stumbling it now.

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6.Choose Your Audience: The Uncaring Social Media Crowd Or Your Loyal Readers?

A brainchild of Mohsin, born on September 13, 2007
bookmark this on del.icio.ussaved by 2 other people

If you are new to bogging, you know the pains you take to get others to respond to the content you create with so much love. The lack of audience is sometimes discouraging and makes you wonder why in Holy Ghost’s name did you start a blog?

Although, the audience builds up in due course if you persist long enough, sometimes targeting your content at a particular group of your audience does pay off.

I have noticed that the visitors coming from social media sites are very unhelpful and unresponsive. They are a mean lot. They consume the content and leave without so much as leaving an encouraging comment, subscribing to your feed, or er.. clicking on your ads. While it’s good to welcome any kind of visitors in a hope that your content gets more exposure and more people benefit from it, your first priority must be to identify your real audience and write particularly for them.

You know who they are. Your subscribers, your readers, and your commenters are your community, and they deserve the best you can offer to them.

When you slowly build a community, you naturally realise the needs and demands of your community. But, do you make a special effort to keep your community happy for what it gives to you?

I’ve seen blogs (won’t mention which) that, after having hit the Digg front page, completely ignore their readers and put all their energy into creating more Digg bait to get to that magic spot one more time, while their readers wonder what the hell happened.

It’s devastating for a blog to forget its readers in its selfish expedition to gain top spots on social media sites. When a blog loses its community, it goes crashing back to where it started.

Just to put everything into perspective, I get a high dose of StumbleUpon traffic every day, but it hardly helps my blog move a single step forward. Stumblers never subscribe, or even leave a comment on any of the posts. One of my posts got a thousand stumbles in a day, but this landmark didn’t affect my subscription statistics and total comment count one bit.

On the other hand, yesterday I got five visitors from Authority Blogger forum, and two of them left a comment on my posts.

And guess what? My subscription count was up by five!

If even the ten percent of stumblers had responded at all, they would have left 100 comments, and umm.. how about all of them subscribed?

Sounds unreasonable, no?

If you are on the verge of making a vow that you’ll never again write anything to attract social media traffic, STOP! That wasn’t my intention. You can write Digg bait, Stumble bait or whatever bait as often as you want, but don’t overdo it. Don’t fall in love with the huge surges of traffic. They are temporary, and will be gone before you blink. Focus, instead, on your readers and continue to deliver the quality you are known for.

Your community is the backbone of your blog, and helps you achieve your goals. While social media traffic is just a glimpse of the bright future that stretches ahead of you.
Related Posts


Actually, this is what I’ve been telling myself. I’ve read from everywhere that we should subscribe to SU because of the more than decent traffic it brings, but so what? What I want isn’t just traffic from one-time-only-VISITORS. What I am trying to achieve is a community of loyal READERS.

But I guess there’s really no short cut to that :) And, argh.. Don’t even talk about the ads! LOL.


CHESSNOID, I am myself a stumbler and I know I don’t stop long enough on a page to comment, and so do other stumblers. It’s not like SU traffic is useless. But considering the huge numbers it comes in, only very small percent of SU traffic ever comments or takes the time to explore other pages on a blog.

If you are new to bogging, you know the pains you take to get others to respond to the content you create with so much love. The lack of audience is sometimes discouraging and makes you wonder why in Holy Ghost’s name did you start a blog?

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7.9 things wrong with StumbleUpon

Thursday, 23 August 2007

So I thought to myself: now that I know 5 good reasons why StumbleUpon is pretty good, maybe there’s some stuff they’ve got wrong? And like most Social Networks out there, StumbleUpon isn’t flawless…

The problems with StumbleUpon aren’t too deeply ingrained or self-defeating, like those 17 things wrong with Google’s Blogger.

I tend to fling myself around the web, looking for the best Social Networks. So after many near misses, I signed up to StumbleUpon on May 19, 2007.

9 things wrong with StumbleUpon

1. So we have comma-delimited Tags, but then if you add in a Tag made up of more than one world, the tag becomes hyphenated. Sort of like del.icio.us Tags, only marginally better. Either the Tags are comma-delimited or they’re hyphenated. Having both doesn’t seem to make sense.

2. Are they Groups, or are they Forums? Well, from the look of things, they’re neither. In fact, they’re more like ‘blogs. If they’re intended to be like forums, then they have a lot of features missing. Anyone who’s on the likes of SitePoint forums, Digital Point forums, or even SlashDot know what forums should look like.

For example, there’s no pin posts, you can’t reply to a post, there’s no proper threading and no WYSIWYG editing. All of which are staple features of any fora. The weird thing is, WYSIWYG editing is to be found elsewhere within StumbleUpon, but just not in the forums.

3. So I’ve clicked the People tab and I see a bunch of people listed with those geographically the closest first in descending order. Now what? Surely there are more people? But where are they?

I’m pretty sure there are, but there’s no pagination, so I’ll never know. The same happens when you click on the: “Browse people” from your Profile page. There’s no option to view more.

4. Where’s the preview option for emails? Where’s the preview option for anything, for that matter? Since there’s no global WYSIWYG editing, you have to type in links as HTML within the message. And if you get your code wrong, you’re stuck.

5. How do I see how many people have voted for something I’ve submitted to StumbleUpon? I can see the Reviews, but I’d like to know the number of thumbs up and thumbs down those articles get.

I did ask about this, but the the short answer is, there’s just no way to know. I suspect that such features are reserved for the paid-for StumbleUpon Ads service.

For those like me who probably won’t run a serious-minded advertising campaign on StumbleUpon, but do like to keep a track on what succeeds and what doesn’t, this is a real bind.

6. Why tell me how many recent Visitors I’ve had if I can only see the last 10? Why can’t I see the full list of most recent Visitors? Sometimes, I like to thank them, or go see what they’re up to. But because the 11th visitor onwards is out of the list, I’m out of luck.

7. The weird character encoding often seen in titles that include apostrophes, double angled quotes et cetera. A minor issue, some might argue, but it’s just intensely annoying and makes titles almost illegible. Annoyingly, there’s no option to edit the title after submitting.

8. I’m probably singling out StumbleUpon a little unfairly here, because others make the same amazingly annoying mistake. From inside Preferences, there’s the Country option. Why can’t I see England in that list? I assume UK is the option I’m supposed to choose. Sadly, there is no such Country as UK.

I’m not UKese, I’m English and I want to choose England as my Country because that’s the country I’m from.

9. Pictures of ‘cute’ cats. To be banned with immediate effect. Not strictly a problem with StumbleUpon, but lamentable none the less.

And finally, as fellow SUer Kate pointed out in a late night Skype chat: there’s no such thing as the perfect system.

And by extension, there’s no such thing as a perfect Social Network. But with the likes of StumbleUpon around, we’re getting closer…

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8. StumbleUpon for Computer-Dummies

If you still don’t understand how and why joining StumbleUpon is a critical social bookmarking network site after you’re done reading this post, please share your comments, questions and issues below! I’m learning along with you!

My quest to learn more about SU started last month, from the post introducing our $200 Free PRWeb.com Press Release. My stats showed a dramatic and immediate new #1 top referrer. Stumble Upon…and, I had no idea how and where that came from. So, I asked and found my answer (in the comments). My very first vote/positive website review and brand new spanking friend Mark who literally ‘Stumbled Upon’ EmpowerWomenNow.com. I actually never knew Mark before than, and now we’re good friends.

But, this whole social bookmarking stuff blows my computer-dummy brains out of wack!

So, I asked some dear colleagues and friends, and go figure Dan and Jennifer of AskDanandJennifer.com came to my rescue with the most simple, cut and dry instructions, and explanations that got me started.

[Side note: Yes, it’s ironic that I ask my dear blogging friends/turned mentors about this internet marketing technique, since you can “Ask Dan and Jennifer” literally anything and they will answer! Check out their tagline: “Dating, relationships, love and great sex…get Your Questions Answered!” Oh, BTW, here’s some shocking poll results you *have* to check out. And, look at how many people entered the poll!! They have a huge following and StumbleUpon is only one of their many internet marketing techniques they utilize on a daily basis. Thanks guys!!]

So how does StumbleUpon really work?

* You basically join and download the StumbleUpon toolbar.
* Then, you hit the stumble button, which will show you a random site that someone gave a “thumbs up” to.
* If you like the site, you give it your own “thumbs up” with the ‘thumbs up button’
* Or, you can thumbs down
* The webpages will ultimately adjust to what you like, and don’t like according to your past stumbles. So, the more you stumble and rate different websites, the more relevant your options come up.
* When you browse any website on the Internet, you can vote with a thumbs up or down. If nobody voted it yet (submitted it to the StumbleUpon database) then it’ll pop up and ask you about it. This is how you submit your own stuff or your friends’. [Just like Digg or Netscape…which I haven’t really tried yet…one at a time].
* Stumbling your own site is futile in the beginning, because you can potentially get a few hundred hits, and then a few over the coming months.
* Just like my MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, you browse each community, and “add friends” to start giving them a ‘thumbs up’ or “stumbling upon” them.
* By creating a network, and actively stumbling others, they will begin to take notice and ’stumble upon’ your stuff too.
* Your account gains “street cred” the more you stumble, vote, and have more friends in your network.
* THEN, your votes count a lot more (Get a lot more traffic from StumbleUpon)

Critical StumbleUpon reading materials you must read for a complete understanding:

[Note: It’s taking me almost a month to finally feel confident of posting about StumbleUpon now, that I “get” it, so, please be patient with yourself.]

* This comprehensive tutorial from Maki at DoshDosh.com

* John Wesley of PickTheBrain.com has been using StumbleUpon as a power user for some time and shares some great insights

* And, just when John learns how well StumbleUpon can work, be aware because you can lose your ‘Top Stumbler’ status if you do and share something extraordinary. A must-read warning post!

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9.

A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon: How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website

I’ve been experimenting with StumbleUpon for the past few months and have had several pleasant experiences. It’s simply an incredible viral means to drive a large amount of sustained traffic to any website over a period of time.

I wrote this mini guide on StumbleUpon because I thought StumbleUpon had enormous potential in maximizing brand exposure while fitting nicely with a long term site building strategy.

Included are some personal observations on using StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your website, as well as some strategies you can adopt to retain StumbleUpon visitors while monetizing your website.

What is Stumble Upon?

Stumble Upon is a social website which allows its users a new way to experience the Internet. Instead of searching for specific items on search engines like Google, Stumble Upon users only have to tag specific personal or professional interests and then ‘channel surf’ the web by simply clicking on a button on Stumble Upon tool bar.

Upon doing so, they will be randomly directed to specific websites which adhere to their lists of interests. Users can then choose to tag the webpage they are on or give it a ‘thumbs up‘ or ‘thumbs down‘ to indicate if they want to see it again.

Users can also use the Stumble Upon toolbar as a form of social bookmarking. By surfing the web and tagging or submitting specific websites, each user can keep track of which websites they like and share it with others.

How do I get started with Stumble Upon?

You can get started by installing the toolbar, which is compatible with I.E. and Firefox at Stumble Upon’s website. After which, you can check to see if your website is already listed on Stumble Upon. You can do this by visiting this page and typing in your site’s URL.

sureviews.jpg

If your website is not listed, you can start using your newly installed toolbar to tag and review it by clicking on the blue thumbs up symbol which has “I like it!” next to it.

This will open a pop-up panel which allows you to categorize your website, write a short description and tag with specific keywords. Following which, your website will be included in Stumble Upon’s database and will show up when other users with interests similar to your tags use the Stumble Upon toolbar to surf the internet.


Why should I use Stumble Upon?

Stumble Upon is known for its ability to generate massive amounts of traffic to a specific webpage or website that’s been stumbled. If you just wrote a great article or created a website which offered creative and useful content, you’ll want as many eyeballs on it as possible.

Once your website gets stumbled, it’ll usually start to immediately receive visitors from all over the world.

This allows you:

1. Generate rapid exposure for a specific website, brand or concept.

2. Establish a reader base for your blog very quickly.

3. Gain numerous backlinks from StumbleUpon visitors with websites.


What type of traffic can I get from StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is different from a search engine, which offers very targeted traffic that matches keyword searches with the content on your blog.

On the other hand, the very nature of Stumble Upon invites open exploration of various websites which are loosely tagged by other users and hence may produce weak targeted traffic with specific characteristics.

My experience over the past few months has led me to the following conclusions on traffic from StumbleUpon:

* Diverse demographic. Visitors from StumbleUpon come from many countries from all over the world, though 40% of my traffic came from North America.

* Very low Adsense or contextual CTR. Why click on an ad when you can stumble to the next site in a few seconds?

* Good web design is important for StumbleUpon visitors. The average time spent on a web page can be less than 10 seconds. They tend to look more than they read.

* Fickle RSS subscribers. My feed subscription doubled when certain posts received a lot of traffic but 50% of the readers unsubscribed over the next few days. This will vary depending on your website.

* Not all websites are made equal. Video, Humor, Web 2.0 and eclectic websites do extremely well with SU. Some friends with video websites and Boing Boing-ish blogs usually retain at least 25% of Stumble Upon visitors after a spike in traffic.

* Traffic is long-term. I’m still continuing to receive traffic for specific webpages that I’ve stumbled several weeks ago.

How can I ensure repeat visits to my website?

The very nature of channel surfing is to assess with one glance and determine if the channel is worth watching. Similarly, Stumble Upon visitors are people who will evaluate your website instantly and decide to either continue browsing or stumble ahead to the next site.

Stumble Upon users are generally attracted to interesting news, good site design and unique content/concepts. Making sure that these elements are all present can ensure that you receive a thumbs up as well as repeat visits to your website.

Here are some points which may help you to improve the rate of repeat visits from Stumble Upon visitors.

* Content Depth. Your website should be full of content that cannot be digested in one single visit.

* Ad Saturation. Your website should not have too many poorly blended ads, which makes it look amateurish.

* Site Design. Your website should be visually appealing, with an attractive site design.

* Exclusive on-site materials. Your website should offer tools or in depth material which can only be accessed from your website.

* Feed/Newsletter Subscription. Your website must prominently ask visitors to subscribe to your blog feed or newsletter for updates.

* Branding. Your website should have memorable branding or an easy to remember URL.

How can I use Stumble Upon to increase my blog feed/newsletter subscribers?

It’s very likely that your blog will experience a mini spike in feed subscription, which may decrease gradually with time. Your goal is to retain these subscribers and make them a part of your reader base and community.

While there is no definite method that guarantees success, here are some ways which will increase the likelihood of converting Stumble Upon visitors into feed subscribers.

* Ensure content quality. Try to only stumble the best content available on your website.

* Enable and offer email subscriptions. Providing an alternative subscription option can be very helpful for different types of visitors.

* Offer subscriber-only benefits. A classic trick to use if you want to build up your marketing list or feed subscribers. Give away free videos, eBooks or other materials that are only available to subscribers.

* Welcome new visitors. You may want to include a welcome message to all stumblers if you notice that your web page is being heavily stumbled. Wordpress users can install the What Would Seth Godin do Wordpress Plugin which encourages all new visitors to subscribe to your feed.

* Use signature links. Include links at the end of your post which push for readers to subscribe for updates.

* Produce great content after stumbles. It’s very important to put out great content after you’ve been stumbled. Perhaps something similar to what received a large number of stumbles will be appealing.

* Increase the comments on your blog. A blog with a large community will encourage participation, which motivates a reader to return to your blog.

* Hold a contest. Everyone loves winning free stuff or money. By offering tangible benefits, you can convert one-time traffic into a continuous stream of repeat visitors.

How many visitors can I get from Stumble Upon?

Expect an average of 100+ to 8000+ daily unique visitors for a specific web page that is stumbled. I’ve stumbled several post pages on Dosh Dosh as an experiment and the best performance was 2000+ visitors in 6 hours for a very short post on Dovetail.

The number of visitors slowly petered out as the day went on. I’m actually amazed that it received so many stumbles because the article in question was only a short news piece. Perhaps this indicates that brevity appeals to Stumble Upon visitors.

According to this article at SEOmoz, Stumble Upon outperforms Netscape and all other social networking websites by sending 12000+ visitors to a specific webpage in one day. The article in question was buried in Digg so there wasn’t a way to make an actual comparison.

A graph of the number of visitors to SEOmoz in the early half of 2006.

stumbleupon.gif

What determines how much traffic I receive from StumbleUpon?

There are so many factors which may have an impact on the number of visitors you receive from Stumble Upon.

StumbleUpon does not openly reveal the traffic algorithm they are using and these are just some factors which I think will positively affect the amount of traffic you receive.

* No. of StumbleUpon users who thumbed up or tagged your webpage. This is by far the most important factor, in my opinion.

* No. of users in your network. A wider reach might translate to more influence when it comes to tagging or thumbing webpages.

* No. of StumbleUpon friends you have. Perhaps this increases the authority or strength of your stumbles.

* No. of profile reviews and thumbs up you currently have. May legitimate you as a user.

* Types of users who tagged or submitted your website. Are they power users with a lot of Stumble authority?

One can assume that the easiest way to increase the number of visitors you receive Stumble Upon is to exponentially increase all of the above factors.

Here are some of my observations following various experiments on several websites.

* You need other Stumble Upon users. The traffic you receive partly depends on other users submitting and reviewing your website. I’ve noticed that when other users review or submit a specific post, it usually receives traffic immediately.

* Self-submission and review does not necessarily lead to SU traffic. A blog of mine did not see enormous traffic until it was thumbed, reviewed and tagged by other users as well.

* Your Stumble Upon profile plays a role. Hypothetical, but perhaps the number of SU friends, the range of your network, the number of stumbles you’ve done and the number of profile reviews you’ve gotten determines how much traffic directing authority you have.

* Broad tagging helps. Try using tags that are more general and less specific. For example, some tags which have worked for me are ‘weblogs‘ , ‘internet‘ and ‘money‘.

The fact that you’re limited to five tags per submitted item suggests that you should use terms that are more general, and hence more likely to be searched for or stumbled by SU users. Very unique tags may work but I’ve not gotten much success when I used them.

Are there any ways to game StumbleUpon and increase the traffic I receive?

Update (October/07): I have used StumbleUpon extensively in the months after this guide was written and I would like to announce that I no longer fully endorse the tactics listed after the dotted line.

Although some of them may still work to get you some visibility or traffic, they are limited in many ways and do not fully utilize StumbleUpon’s potential.

Instead, I highly recommend reading my article on why it’s not important to become a top stumbler along with my piece on StumbleUpon networking to learn how you can more effectively use StumbleUpon for your personal or professional needs.

Always remember that focusing purely on getting traffic out of StumbleUpon is a limited perspective. It is enormously powerful networking tool. Also, instead of trying to game StumbleUpon, focus on how you can create content that works well with it.

Wanna find out what I’m stumbling these days? Here’s my StumbleUpon profile.

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Tactic #1 - Building your network, personal and site profile.

One way of doing this easily is to use StumbleXchange, a website that allows users to exchange stumbles for each other’s websites. You’ll need to sign up and stumble other member’s websites in return for other members thumbing and tagging your website.

stumblexchange.jpg

This expands your reach and social profile on StumbleUpon and number of reviews for your website. I’ve noticed that this can help to increase the number of visitors to your website, but the effects may die down after some time and so the benefits of participating in StumbleXchange are not consistent.

Do note that StumbleXchange’s model potentially violates StumbleUpon’s TOS. It has also been said that StumbleUpon is aware of users exchanging stumbles and has oddly enough, approved of the StumbleXchange website.

For references on this issue, see here and this Digital Point thread for more info on StumbleXchange and StumbleUpon.

Do also bear in mind that StumbleUpon explicitly forbids reciprocal stumbling (stumble me to get a stumble in return) or incentive-based stumbling of any sort.

More details from their Help FAQ:

StumbleUpon does not allow personal accounts to be used for the purposes of incentivization or promoting sites. This would be considered a breach of our Terms.

The practice of sending PM’s encouraging or inviting other stumblers to rate/review sites in exchange for reciprocal reviews/ratings, monetary, or any other form of reward is strictly forbidden.

The practice of actively soliciting a rating or review for a site is also forbidden. Should you receive a PM, or encounter forum postings that breach this rule, you are encouraged to report this via feedback.

Accounts participating in such practices will be deleted and banned, and the related sites deleted and banned from the system.

A cleaner and simpler alternative would be just to network with high profile StumbleUpon users by adding them as your friend or reviewing their profile. This can help you win a few friends while increasing your social profile on StumbleUpon.

Tactic #2 - Collecting Stumbles and getting listed on Stumble Buzz.

Another point to consider is that you want to get your site on the Stumble Buzz webpage, which is something like the Digg homepage. Websites which consistently receive positive stumbles will move onto this homepage.

Here’s a screen grab of Stumble Buzz:


To get on this homepage, you’ll roughly need around 300+ positive stumbles. Here are two ways which might help to increase the number of visitors you get.

* Form a Stumble team. Get fellow bloggers to seed your webpage by stumbling, tagging or reviewing it. This is more focused and faster than using StumbleXchange.

* Include a Stumble Upon button on your webpage or blog post and encourage your users to use it. Like the smart Digg buttons, visitors can choose to stumble the webpage if they like it. Might be redundant because most stumblers will surf with the toolbar on.

Tactic #3 - Stumbling websites that link to you

Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal wrote about how to build super links and traffic with StumbleUpon and mentioned this very cool trick.

Let’s take a recent example. Say someone like John Chow linked to me yesterday in a post, what I’ll do is that, I’ll visit his website and stumble his post and get other users to do the same.

Thousands of StumbleUpon visitors will visit his blog and read the specific post. They’ll then visit my blog through the link in his post. The end result is that I’ll eventually get traffic by pushing stumbles towards his website. Sweet.

How do I monetize Stumble Upon Traffic and make money from it?

From my experience, Stumble Upon visitors are known to be averse to contextual ads, hence the low CTR and ad earnings. There are however, a few other ways which you can monetize the massive amount of visitors.

* CPM advertising. Idiot-proof and easiest way to monetize your website. Get a good banner company that pays you a good CPM rate. Also try private ad arrangements and negotiate for specific CPM rates.

* Use affiliate banners or affiliate text links within content. I would suggest cloaking the links to improve your CTR.

* Video advertising. Revver allows you to put up videos and get paid whenever anyone clicks on ads within the video. GUBA will also pay you money if anyone signs up with their website through your embedded video. These are just two examples of numerous video-based affiliate programs you can use.

* Monetized image hosts. Several image hosts allow you to earn money whenever anyone clicks on a thumbnail which leads to the full image on their website. Great for picture intensive sites or blogs. Here’s a list of image hosts that pay.

* Use subscription based monetization. An example of this is an online magazine, business networking community or forum which offers a premium section for paying members.

* Buy sponsored stumbles. You can run an advertising campaign with StumbleUpon and pay 5 cents for every targeted person they send to your website. You can target according to personal interest, history of rating similar sites, location, and demographics such as age and sex. Very useful if you’re focusing on long-term monetization strategies and plan to build a community such as a social networking site or niche forum.


One should also take note of StumbleUpon’s suggestions on content monetization in their advertising FAQ:

Some content doesn’t work well with StumbleUpon. A hard-sell offering little introduction or supporting information will seem out of place to StumbleUpon’s community members. Remember that they’re using the service to find something new, something different. Pages that contain little more than a list of ppc or affiliate links also will not perform well.

What are some other essential resources on StumbleUpon?

I have written two other articles that will be useful if you’re interested in using StumbleUpon for your website. I highly recommend that you check them out:

Five Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling

The number of StumbleUpon users who stumble your webpages has an effect in how much traffic you will receive in the long run.The other obvious benefit to having many friends is that your StumbleUpon experience will be enriched and more fulfilling.

StumbleUpon Optimization: Leveraging Photo Stumbles for More Web Traffic

This article on photo stumbling will offer some detailed tips on how you can use and optimize your images in order to increase the potential of receiving more stumbles and hence, visitors to your website.

The internet marketing and SEO community have come up with a steady collection of great articles about StumbleUpon. Some of them focus on how to increase traffic through StumbleUpon and others have examined how StumbleUpon’s sponsored stumbles compare to Pay Per Click campaigns.

Randy Fish on Stumble Upon’s Fantastic Ability to Drive Traffic.

Stumblers tend to have accounts at Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and others and more than once, I’ve seen Stumble traffic lead to a re-surgence of traffic to a particular site or page that Stumblers have given high marks.

Garrett French has a post on The Why, How and Who of Marketing in StumbleUpon:

If you're launching a site and have invested in branded content that's intended to convert viewers into linkers, subscribers or buyers then SU should ABSOLUTELY be on your list of places to advertise.

Allen Stern from Center Networks made a short study of StumbleUpon Sponsored Stumbles vs. Google AdWords:

I think StumbleUpon is a great alternative to click based traffic in the sense that you get a continuous stream of interested visitors. The traffic is qualified in the sense that the visitors said they were interested in your topic or category.

Tamar from 10e20 writes about How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide

Why should you look at into directing StumbleUpon traffic to your site? Beyond the obvious benefits of extremely targeted traffic, the traffic doesn't come all at once compared to a site like Digg. There's the inherent benefit of having that 15 minutes of fame? on Digg until it crashes your server. StumbleUpon traffic is generally much more gradual.

Neil Patel has a short post on Increasing your StumbleUpon audience:

Each user is given an audience number. The number could be 1 or it could be in the thousands. The overall goal is to get your audience number as high as possible because then when you stumble stories more people will see them, thus increasing your traffic.

Dan Grossman writes about his experience buying sponsored stumbles on The StumbleUpon Experiment:

The results? No sales, 96% of the visitors only viewing the landing page for the campaign, and none of them rating the site positively or negatively with the toolbar. That says to me that most people that see a commercial site, or a site that isn’t immediately interesting to them with StumbleUpon will simply move on and click the “Stumble!� button again.

Muhammed Saleem tells us that what content works best for StumbleUpon in I Wouldn’t Submit That to StumbleUpon:

While Digg, Netscape, and Reddit are socially driven news and content sites, StumbleUpon succeeds more in delivering content (i.e. media) than it does in serving important news items. The news items that I StumbleUpon are often old and outdated..

What I learned from this, and from my own voting habits on the content that was displayed to me is that photography, videos, humor, and other types non-temporal content generally tends to do better and has more of a chance of creating long-term traffic

Mike Bogo has created an Ultimate StumbleUpon resource:

Since Stumble has been sending many of us a huge amount of traffic, I thought it would be useful to find some resources on how to best make use of this traffic. This list will be kept updated with the best articles found.

Final thoughts on StumbleUpon

I love Stumble Upon for what it’s worth and it’s really the easiest way anyone can get hundreds of new visitors who are eager to learn more about your website.

While monetization is something that I am concerned with, I think StumbleUpon works best as a brand and link building tool. It’s ability for exposure across a wide demographic can also help to build online communities or a blog’s reader base.

Remember to stumble the websites or blogs you like because it’s a great way to help them get some much needed exposure.

Have fun stumbling!

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10.Use Social Media Arbitrage to Drive Traffic with StumbleUpon
April 18th, 2007 by John WesleyPrint This Post Print This Post

Everyone knows social media sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon can drive massive amounts of traffic to your website. IF you can get on the front page.

The problem is that most submissions drop like an anvil through the new queue without getting more than one or two votes.

I can’t tell you how to become a power user on Digg or Reddit. I’ve had some luck with those sites but no consistent success, and I have a feeling it takes more effort and social networking than most webmasters want to do.

What I will tell you is how I’ve used StumbleUpon to drive nearly 80,000 visitors to this website without dramatically changing my web browsing habits or pestering people to vote for me.

Although StumbleUpon doesn’t create peaks as high as Digg or Reddit, it does offer two significant advantages:

1. Consistency - When you make the front page of Digg or Reddit you get a huge surge of traffic for about a day with some lingering effects the day after. Three days later you wouldn’t know it ever happened (aside from the wonderful incoming links). StumbleUpon continues to drive traffic to your site for days, even weeks, after the initial surge.

2. Pageviews - Digg and Reddit users generally read an article and leave your site immediately, viewing an average of 1.20 pages (according to my stats). The average Stumbler views a significantly higher 1.80 pages. Apparently those curious stumblers read more articles and are more likely to become regular readers.
Social Media Arbitrage

Now that I’ve told you why you should want use StumbleUpon to your advantage, here’s how to do it. The method is relatively simple and I’m sure many others are using it. It stems from two observations:

1. The Social Media Snowball - I noticed that when a post becomes popular on Reddit, it is basically guaranteed to take off on StumbleUpon as well. When a post becomes popular on one social site, it’s odds of doing so on another site dramatically improve.

2. Great Content Gets Around - All the major social sites have unique communities with varying tastes. But that doesn’t stop them from loving the same content. An interesting article is an interesting article. If you can find a post Digg users love, there is a great chance Reddit users will love it too, and vice versa.

These two observations led me to the strategy of Social Media Arbitrage. Arbitrage is defined as, “The purchase of securities on one market for immediate resale on another market in order to profit from a price discrepancy.” For social media, this means going to the popular pages of Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, and submitting popular stories to other social sites where they haven’t been submitted yet.

It sounds too easy to work and this is partially true. It doesn’t work well for Digg or Reddit because 1) there is too much competition to submit to these sites. Most pages already are already submitted. And 2) the number of incoming submissions is so massive that even great submissions (from average users) are often ignored.

But fortunately, it does work well for StumbleUpon. If you always wanted to become a respected user but had no idea where to find great content to submit, this is the answer.
Becoming a Power Stumbler

I wrote this post because today I became a newly minted Top Stumbler. If you go to the Top Stumbler’s Page (as of 4/17/07) you’ll see my ugly mug, probably on the bottom half of the page (username: pickthebrain). All I did to get there is submit newly popular stories from Digg and Reddit as well every great post I find during casual feed reading. The StumbleUpon toolbar makes this incredibly easy.

To drive traffic, I also Stumble many of my own posts. Without fail, StumbleUpon sends at least a few hundred visitors over the course of the day. My friends with blogs have reported similar results.

Most people view social media as a form of entertainment and not much more. But if you’re already using it, why not expend a bit more effort and use it to drive traffic to your website?

Now that you know how it’s done, get out there and take away my competitive advantage!

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11.Build Super Links and Traffic With StumbleUpon
January 31st, 2007 by Loren Baker, Editor | 13 Comments

StumbleUpon, the web surfing social network, is hands down a long term traffic builder for blogs, online businesses, and Web 2.0 services.

For a quick overview of SU:

* Sites or users submit their URLs to StumbleUpon.
* StumbleUpon members can find these sites via random yet targeted web surfing called “Stumbling”, clicking on the suggestions of their SU friends, or via StumbleUpon Search which matches user generated tags and search queries.
* StumbleUpon users then vote on the sites or posts they find, with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
* The more thumbs up, the more people who see the site via StumbleUpon.

I make it a point to submit what I feel are some of the more original posts here at Search Engine Journal to StumbleUpon and let their members decide on the value of the posts. Usually, such submittals to StumbleUpon result in 400-1,000 referrals.

On occasion, the referrals hit the 2,000 or 4,000 mark, over the course of a couple of days, depending upon the voting by SU members.

The slower drawn out traffic is a nice alternative to Digg, as a top story on the front page of Digg can result in server overload as sometimes up to 10,000 Digg users could click over in the course of 15 minutes.

As a StumbleUpon member myself, I don’t only submit my own properties for reader review. I also submit blog posts and new sites which I feel are of interest to me and my StumbleUpon friends.

But why stop there?

One form of social media marketing which I’ve found to be quite useful is submitting the sites which link to Search Engine Journal posts and other properties to StumbleUpon.

Example:

1. TechDirt links to Search Engine Journal post
2. I see traffic coming from TechDirt
3. I go to TechDirt post and submit it to StumbleUpon with lots of good tags and info
4. SU users find that TechDirt post
5. SU users click on the link from that TechDirt post to SEJ
6. More traffic to SEJ

It’s a form of rewarding or surprising those sites with some extra traffic, perhaps some links which will help with SEO, and the end result is more referrals to my site from the site which originally linked to me.

In such practice, by submitting sites or posts which link to your site to StumbleUpon, you are supercharging those links by adding more value to your incoming links and the sites which link to you.
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12.Okay…I’ve promised at least 3 2 1 0 posts by weekend’s end, but I can’t get away from my StumbleUpon, after yesterday’s post.
Curious, who’s StumbleUpon your website or webpage/blogpost?

Mark of MBlair.net shared some quick notes to help us out once again:

he link format to check your pages in StumbleUpon is this: http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/

For example, I added the full URL of yesterday’s post at the end of the above URL, like this:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/empowerwomennow.com/news-women-

entrepreneurs/index.php/stumbleupon-for-computer-dummies/
StumbleUpon Research to reach your targeted “Friends”

I look at the bios, then briefly at their likes and preferences (I haven’t even filled my out completely yet).

But, the most “telling” aspect of a potential “Friend”, is taking a look at all their Stumbles.

In the drop-down box of suggested search options are:

* Entire Blog
* Pages I Like
o Pages We Both Like (if you are a Sponsor)
* Discoveries
* People I Like
o People We Both Like (if you are a Sponsor)
* Stumbles
* Tag Clouds
* List of “keywords and phrases” each webpage is categorized in

StumbleUpon is a networking haven for Business for the following reasons:

* You can develop critical joint venture partnerships.
* You can view trends and interests in your potential clients, by seeing what webpages they feel worthy on ’stumbling upon’, for example a great “how-to” guide, or a service catering to their needs,
* You can find matches on dozens and dozens of topics, such as “Entrepreneurialism”, age range, gender, or city and state. I can’t believe how many Toleodoans I found!
* I’m actively stumbling anyone I found who likes my resources, and finding that in my targeted searches, those I’ve stumbled are visiting.
* To learn how to attract a bigger network specifically for business purposes, read the Definitive Guide to using StumbleUpon for Business.

Aww…I’m blushin’ While writing this post, I got my own personal review, by a gentleman with thought-provoking questions…go figure, his ID: TheReporter reported nicely.

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13.A Quick Traffic Driving Tip With StumbleUpon

By Matt Jones on Sep 23, 2007 in Blogging Tips

stumbleupon_tip.pngI have been using Google Analytics to find out which source of traffic brings the highest quality traffic to Blogging Fingers and I discovered that it was Stumbleupon… but not from pages that are being Stumbled. This small amount of very high quality traffic came from the link to Blogging Figners which I put in the introduction on my public profile.

This link doesn’t send bucket-loads of traffic, it is only my 16th biggest referrer but the traffic quality makes it well worth the 1 minute of effort it took to add it. These are the stats from that traffic:

A very low percentage are new visits, suggesting these visitors are a small group of stumblers who visit Blogging Fingers repeatedly via that link. The important word being Stumblers. Forget the long time they stay on the site and PVs they create, Stumblers are the most valuable visitors a blog can have because of the traffic they can bring.

If you haven’t done this already, go to your StumbleUpon profile page and click “edit preferences” then “edit public profile” and add a link to your site.

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14.A Definitive StumbleUpon Guide: Driving Traffic To Websites
Sep. 4th, 2007 by Shaun

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is a social networking website that allows users to share and recommend sites they find around the internet. To get started using StumbleUpon you need to first install the toolbar on your internet browser which is currently only compatible with Internet Explorer and FireFox. Once you are signed up and have the tool bar installed you can begin “Stumbling” which is the term used for surfing the net using StumbleUpon’s tool bar. Stumbling is different than using any other search engine such as Google or Yahoo to find a website because the user is randomly brought to websites which complies to their lists of interests. Once the user arrives at a site they stumbled they can give the website a thumbs up which notifies (SU) StumbleUpon that you want to see more of this site or a thumbs down.

StumbleUpon can bring websites massive amounts of traffic and allows for your site to gain rapid exposure. Writing great content is key to getting more SU traffic, the better the article, the more thumbs up your site will get which results in more traffic. This massive traffic will allow you to gain a large reader base to your blog quickly and will help build some incoming links to your site.

What can I do with StumbleUpon?

I love the simplicity of StumbleUpon, click “Stumble” until you find a good site, read up on it for a bit then stumble again! It’s a simple wash, rinse, repeat process that can amuse anyone with half a brain for hours! Beware StumbleUpon is highly addictive :) .

StumbleUpon

-Conduct Research. Anyone who is conducting research or even just interested in learning more about a certain topic can leverage StumbleUpon to gain insight to anything that interests them. The sites included in StumbleUpons have gone through many levels of screening and have been filtered by thousands of info savvy nerds on the internet. The content found on StumbleUpon is normally high quality traffic. You will easily be able to find high quality content on any topic you wish!

-Entertainment. StumbleUpon will keep you amused for hours on end. Just make sure your settings are set to the topics that interest you and stumble away. Some of the popular topics around the StumbleUpon society include: humor, technology, videos, internet, business, health, movies and more.

-Produce ideas and content for your site. Simply type in a certain topic you are interested in and within seconds you will find information related to the topic you are searching for. This is a great way to come up with more content for your website or blog. You can use the snowball effect on this to, just start with one idea and branch out to many more using StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon will bring you to amazing sites that you didn’t know existed and will enlighten you on topics that weren’t even under your radar.

Traffic Analysis

Unlike Google, StumbleUpon will drive traffic to your site based on users who have interests loosely similar to the categories your site falls under. The users that stumbled upon your site weren’t originally looking for something in particular so the way that the visitors interact with your site will vary. If the content on your site sparks the attention of the stumblers then you can expect they will interact with your site. If your site is filled with dull meaningless content, you can expect the visitors to be leaving your site within the first 20 seconds or less. Here are some things that will help make your site more “sticky” for your SU readers:

* - Great site design. StumbleUpon users are instantly turned off by ugly, tacky, and confusing websites. Make your site easy to navigate, use a readable font, and visually pleasing colors.
* - Great content. If your site isn’t useful or worth reading you can expect the time visitors spend on your site to be minimal.
* - Great post titles. Make the title of your posts eye-catching. You have about 5 seconds to grab the attention of the stumblers and there is no better way to do this than using good titles.
* - Offer full feeds that can be accessed from anywhere. Make your RSS subscription clearly visible from all pages on your site.
* - Keep your ads minimal. StumbleUpon users are turned off by sites that are over-saturated with ads.

How much traffic will StumbleUpon Bring?

This all goes back to quality content, the better your article, the more thumbs up you will get resulting in more traffic. You can expect anywhere from 50-50,000 visitors per stumbled post. I know that’s not a very good estimate but it is really dependant on how many thumbs up you get which is the beauty of SU. I have had my site submitted to StumbleUpon a few times and I have had over 5,000 visitors from one article while a different article has received only 75 StumbleUpon visitors.

What determines how much traffic I will receive?

Well just like Google, StumbleUpon does not disclose their traffic algorithm they are using. We can make some simple predictions of what plays important roles in determining traffic levels. Here are some factors that most likely affect traffic levels to a site:

* - The number of StumbleUpon Users who gave your site the thumbs up. This is really obvious and probably the most important factor of determining traffic levels.
* -The more reviews a post has the more traffic it will receive. I have had posts with 10 thumbs up and only 1 review and got about 300 visitors. I have had posts with 3 thumbs up and 3 reviews and had over 500 visitors. I think it’s safe to say more reviews = more traffic.
* - The number of StumbleUpon friends you have. The more friends you have might increase your authority.
* - The activity of the StumbleUpon user. What I mean by this is how interactive the SU user is with his account, I’m guessing the more stumbling, the more sites rated, and the more sites submitted to SU the better chances your account will have greater authority.

None of these factors are guarnteed but we can assume they play some part in determining traffic levels.

How will StumbleUpon visitors interact with my site?

So far from all of the StumbleUpon visitors this site has seen the average time each visitor stays on the site is just under 2 minutes, (1:57). The average SU visitor looks at 1.79 pages per visit with a bounce rate of 32.77%. These are half decent numbers considering all of this traffic was free.

Increase in RSS subscriptions. The more traffic you have to your site the more subscribers you will get. If a post receives heavy traffic from StumbleUpon you will notice a mini spike in your feed count. After a few days your feed count might drop back to it’s normal numbers so the challenge isn’t getting more feed subscribers but to maintain them. If you wrote a post that sparked the interest of your readers then try to replicate that success the next day with another great post. This will help you keep your feed count up.

Increase of comments. More traffic means more comments. Follow this mini tutorial for more tips on increasing comments on your website.

People who found your site via StumbleUpon probably won’t be clicking on any ads on your site because they already use the SU toolbar therefor they don’t need any direction to finding a new site, they will just click the stumble button again. So don’t expect to make any extra money from Google Adsense if the majority of your traffic comes from StumbleUpon.

If StumbleUpon users don’t click on my ads how can I make money from StumbleUpon Traffic?

Like I said StumbleUpon users won’t need any guidance for finding any new websites so they probably won’t be clicking on your ads very much. This doesn’t mean you can’t make money from StumbleUpon traffic, here are a few ideas to get your income rolling in combination with your SU traffic:

* - Use cost per impression advertisements. This is basically the easiest way to ensure you are maximizing your advertising income in comparison to the StumbleUpon users who don’t click on your Google ads. CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) guarantees that you are making money with every SU user that visits your site.
* - Use affliate links in some of your posts. Your users won’t click on your ads but they will be interested in links within your post.

How Can I Increase My StumbleUpon Athority?

* -Get as many friends as possible. Don’t max out your friends list by adding random people, (SU only allows for 200 friends on your profile), add friends you actually have some sort of relationship with. Add fellow bloggers who know you and will add you to their friends list as well.
* -Get more reviews to your profile. Ask friends to review your profile. Another good way to get more reviews is to simply review other profiles. A lot of the time you will find that they will return the favor and review your profile.

5 Evil StumbleUpon Traffic Generating Tips

Note: I am not sure which of these tactics are against StumbleUpon’s TOS (terms of service) so participate in these activities at your own risk.

StumbleXchange Logo

1.StumbleXchange.com. This is a website that allows you to sign up, start stumbling other sites that have signed up as well, and in return you get stumbles from other members of StumbleXchange. I believe you build up credits in your account with this site; the more websites you stumble the more thumb’s up you get. I am not entirely sure how this system works because I don’t participate in it but I’m sure it won’t take you long to figure it out.

2. Scratch my back i’ll scratch yours. This applies in the stumbleupon world, stumble one of your friends pages and simply let them know and ask them to return the favor. This will generate a lot of traffic to your site.

3. Submit your Own content. If you think you are writing valuable content but it’s not getting the credit it deserves then submit your own stories to SU. You will get traffic and depending on the quality of the post you might get a lot of extra visitors.

4. Make several stumbleupon accounts and submit your own articles. If your worried about geting banned then have 4 or 5 accounts and take turns using them to submit your own stories. Doing it this way will make it decrease your chances of you getting banned.

5. Start your own network of friends who stumble eachother’s posts. This is probably the safest method on the list. Doing it this way will make it hard for StumbleUpon to detect your ring of friends stumbling each others posts. And best of all you never have to submit your own stories!

4 Simple (legit) ways to increase SU traffic

1. Send your content to your friends. The StumbleUpon toolbar comes with the option to send a certain page to anyone on your friends list. Maximize option by actually using it. Your friends will come across the content you sent them. This will lead to an increased chance of more reviews on that page and more thumb’s up.

2. Add tags to your pages. Tags are basically another word for categories. File your site under broad categories. Use one word tags like: humor, internet, blog, computer etc. This will maximize SU traffic.

3. Stumble any incoming links. If any website links to your site just simply stumble that page and you should get a few extra visitors to your site. More information on that topic here.

4. Be generous with your stumbles. The more sites you rate, vote for and comment on the higher the chances these website owners will return the favor and stumble your content.

3 Easy-to-make StumbleUpon mistakes

1. Improper categorizing. If your site has been submitted and is filed under the wrong category or tag you that’s an easy thumbs down for your visitors.

2. Using SU to only pitch your product or service. The moment your readers realize your websites only purpose is to sell a product or service they are already on to the next site.

3. Stumbling the home page. This mainly applies for blogs, if your readers are brought to your home page and not a specific post there’s a good chance your home page won’t capture their attention. Specific content-rich posts are what captures your readers attention.

2 Ways keep your visitors on your site longer

1.Offer subscribe-only benefits. For example, ” Subscribe to my daily newsletter for secret tips on increasing traffic”. This means the newsletter you have on your site offers special information only to those people who sign up.

2. Give your readers a place to go when they are done reading. For blogs the solution is simple: use the related posts plugin.

1 Thing to remember when using StumbleUpon

Not all of your content will get stumbled and drive tonnes of traffic to your site. If you are continually submitting your own content to SU on a daily basis you can expect your account and site to get banned. I have read countless times of users getting banned from SU for abusing the system.

Advertise With StumbleUpon

Possibly the only downfall of StumbleUpon is the ability to use SU to advertise your site via paid inclusion. StumbleUpon makes it incredibly easy, maybe too easy, for websites with a small budget to advertise using StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon only charges a fee of $0.05 per visitor. This works out to an amount of $50.00 CPM or (Cost per 1000 impressions). I have read about a few blogs and websites that have piggy backed on StumbleUpon’s campaigns to successfully launch their blogs or websites.

Advertise With Stumble Upon

$50.00 CPM isn’t incredibly cheap if you had to pay for every single one of those visitors, but if you remember what I talked about above and StumbleUpon’s ability to go viral by setting off a huge surge in traffic to your site this $50.00 you paid might result in tens of thousands of visitors to your site depending on the quality of your content.

For more information on advertising with StumbleUpon go here.

Other great StumbleUpon articles for more information on this topic!

How To Use StumbleUpon To Gain New Readers by You Need To See Dot Com

StumbleUpon is a very underestimated source of, not only good content, but new readers for your website. StumbleUpon is a relatively new service compared to Digg and Reddit, but it’s growing at an extremely rapid rate. In April they had 2.1 million users, today they have almost 3.2 million. That’s about 250,000 new users every month with 4 million websites stumbled every day.

StumbleUpon’s Fantastic Ability To Drive Traffic by SEOmoz.org

While these numbers are by no means overwhelmingly large, my impressions of StumbleUpon is that the traffic is fantasticaly well-targeted, savvy and looking for viral content. Stumblers tend to have accounts at Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and others and more than once, I’ve seen Stumble traffic lead to a re-surgence of traffic to a particular site or page that Stumblers have given high marks.

The Why, How And Who Of Marketing In StumbleUpon by Search Engine Journal

I’ve extended my research to include current blog thought related to marketing in SU, added my own meager experience and chopped up Camp’s suggestions for marketers to bake up this scrumptious guide to marketing with Stumble Upon.

My conclusion on StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon drives massive traffic to many websites and blogs. We all know how easy it is to generate some StumbleUpon traffic but the real challenge lies here:

-Triggering an organic StumbleUpon traffic surge. What I mean by organic is free (no paid advertising). If you write high quality unique content you will reap the benefits of these organic viral traffic surges.

-Converting your visitors into long term loyal readers. Anybody can get some traffic from SU but only the people who put effort into their site will keep these visitors as long term readers.

-Increasing your RSS subscription rate. This can only be achieved through high qaulity content and great site design.

-Encouraging reader interactivity with your site. This includes commenting on a blog, participating in polls on a site, purchasing a product or service and subscribing to a mailing list etc. A well designed site that is easy to navigate can accomplish this.

Now that you know how StumbleUpon visitors interact with your site make sure you monetize your site accordingly. Please feel free to add me to your StumbleUpon friends list, my account name is Shaunlow69. Keep in mind I try my best to return the favor for all people who stumble my posts ;)

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15. How to Use StumbleUpon Like a Pro

* Also try: StumbleUpon

Guide Note:This page contains information and tips on how to use the downloadable StumbleUpon toolbar.

Table of Contents:

* Introduction
* Step 1: Join StumbleUpon
* Step 2: Explore the Toolbar
* Step 3: Set Up Your Profile
* Step 4: Make Friends
* Step 5: StumbleVideo and StumbleThru
* Step 6: Enable SearchReviews
* Resources

Introduction

* StumbleUpon is one of the most fun and addictive ways to discover the web. The downloadable toolbar acts like a smart remote control. One click of the Stumble! button, and you'll be taken to a cool website that matches your interests. StumbleUpon also lets you rate and share quality websites based on your personal interests.

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Step 1: Join StumbleUpon and Install Toolbar

* Installing the StumbleUpon toolbar is free and easy to do. It is, however, only compatible with the Internet Explorer or Firefox web browsers. You can download these browsers by visiting the Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox homepages.

1. Go to the StumbleUpon homepage.
2. Click on the Join StumbleUpon Today button.
3. Enter your email address and birthdate.
4. Choose a username.
5. Type in the verification word into the field provided.
6. Set your privacy and information preferences by checking the appropriate boxes.
7. Click on the Join and Download Now button.
8. Click on the Install Now button. The StumbleUpon toolbar installation will happen automatically. (You may need to close and reopen your browser for the toolbar to appear following installation.)
9. Go to your email.
10. Open the verification email from StumbleUpon.
11. Click on the verification link.
12. Now you're ready to start stumbling!

Note: You can hide your StumbleUpon toolbar whenever you're not using it. Choose Toolbars under the View drop down menu of your browser and click on StumbleUpon to hide and unhide your toolbar. In Firefox, you can do the same thing by pressing Ctrl+F11 on a PC or Apple+F11 on a Mac.
Updating Older Versions of StumbleUpon

* StumbleUpon is always updating its toolbar and recently introduced new features to its profile pages. If you are working with an older version of StumbleUpon, consider installing the most recent version of the toolbar and switching your profile type to take advantage of StumbleUpon's wide range of features.

* To see which version of the StumbleUpon toolbar you have:

1. Click the Tools button in your StumbleUpon toolbar.
2. Select About StumbleUpon from the drop down menu.
3. Click Toolbar Version.
4. Compare your toolbar version to the most recent version listed in the StumbleUpon Toolbar Changelog.
5. A link to the latest version of the toolbar, should you need to reinstall it, is located at the top of the StumbleUpon Toolbar Changelog.

* To use the newest version of StumbleUpon's profile page:

1. Log into your account by visiting the StumbleUpon homepage.
2. Click this Try New User Profile link.
3. Click the Try it now button. (If you are already using the latest version of the profile page, this button will read, "You are using the new profile page.")
4. Your profile layout and features have now been updated.

Step 2: Explore the StumbleUpon Toolbar

* The StumbleUpon toolbar gives you all kinds of options when it comes to discovering, rating and sharing websites that relate to your interests. It even has a social component which lets you create relationships with like-minded stumblers by adding them as friends. The toolbar is fully customizable and easy to use.

Before You Begin Stumbling

* Before you beginning stumbling, you need to let StumbleUpon know what your interests are.

* The first time you click the Stumble! button in your StumbleUpon toolbar you will be taken to a page which asks you to choose the types of sites you would like to visit.

1. Mark the checkboxes next to the topics that interest you.
2. Click the Save My Settings button. Now you're ready to stumble.

* If you are not automatically taken to the StumbleUpon topics page the first time you click on the Stumble! button, you can reach it in the following way:

1. Log into your account on the StumbleUpon homepage.
2. Click the Home tab.
3. Click the Preferences link immediately to the left of the sidebar.
4. Click the My interests link underneath the Preferences header.
5. Select the subjects that interest you.
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the Save my interests button.

Stumble! Button


* With one click of the Stumble! button, you'll be taken to a site recommended by other StumbleUpon users that relates to whatever topics you've chosen. Click again, and you'll be taken to a completely new site.

* You will occasionally stumble upon a "sponsored stumble." This means that an advertiser has paid to bring you to their site. A sponsored page is indicated by a green-shirted person icon in your toolbar. You will not see more than one sponsored page per fifteen stumbles, and you will only see sponsored pages related to the topics you're interested in.

Thumb Buttons


* Use your Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons to indicate whether you love or loathe a site you've stumbled upon. The more you rate pages, the better StumbleUpon gets at predicting the types of sites you're going to like.

1. Click the Stumble! button in your toolbar.
2. Land on a page you like, click the Thumbs Up button. This page will be saved to your StumbleUpon list of favorites.
3. Land on a page you don't like, click the Thumbs Down button.
4. Land on a page you're indifferent to, click Stumble! again.

Send To Button


* The Send To button lets you email a link to a friend whether they use StumbleUpon or not.

1. Stumble upon a cool site by clicking the Stumble! button in your toolbar.
2. Click the Send To button.
3. Choose New Email Address or Import Contacts from the drop-down menu. (StumbleUpon allows you to import contacts for your Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail or Facebook accounts.)
4. Enter an email address or fill in the appropriate username and password for your email or social networking account.
5. Write in or the choose the address you'd like to forward a page to.
6. Fill in a subject line if appropriate.
7. Click Send.

Review Button


* The Review button lets you write a review of any site you stumble upon. Your reviews will help other StumbleUpon users decide whether a site is useful or not. You can help drive traffic to great sites or steer it away from bad ones by writing a review.

1. Stumble upon a site by clicking the Stumble! button in your toolbar.
2. Click the Review button. StumbleUpon will bring you to a Review page related to that site.
3. Click the Review this page button.
4. Write your review.
5. Add a tag (keyword that describes the site) from the drop-down menu.
6. Click the Add my review button.

Channels


* The Channels section of your toolbar lets you decide which of your preselected topics or types of media you'd like to stumble upon.

1. Click the Globe icon to stumble upon sites related to all of your preselected topics.
2. Click on the Film icon to only stumble upon videos.
3. Click on the Friends icons to only stumble upon sites saved by your StumbleUpon friends.
4. Click on the Photo icon to only stumble upon images.
5. Click on the Topics drop-down menu to discover other searchable topics or change your preselected topics by clicking on Update Topics. (The Topics drop down menu will read All as a default.)
6. Click on Search in the Topics drop down menu, enter a search term into the pop-up menu and click OK. You will now only stumble upon pages related to that search term. To return to stumbling upon all of your favorite topics, click All in the Topics drop down menu.

Favorites Button


* The Favorites buttons with the Star icon will take you to a list of all the sites you've given a "thumbs up" to.

Friends Button


* The Friends button will take you to a page with all of your StumbleUpon friends listed on it. It will also give you the option of importing your email contacts to find out who already uses StumbleUpon and who you might invite to become a user.

1. Click the Find your friends button to import your contacts from AOL, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook or Gmail.
2. Click the appropriate email service icon. (You can also enter the email addresses of friends you'd like to invite to use StumbleUpon by clicking "enter email manually.")
3. Enter your email username and password.
4. Click Find my friends.
5. Mark the checkbox next to your friends who already use to StumbleUpon to make them your StumbleUpon friend.
6. Mark the checkbox next to your friends who do not use StumbleUpon to invite them to use the service.
7. Click the Connect with friends now button.

Inbox Button


* Your StumbleUpon Inbox button contains messages sent to you by your StumbleUpon friends and the StumbleUpon administrators.

Tools Drop Down Menu


* The Tools drop down menu offers you several toolbar options and account shortcuts.

1. Click Report Last Stumble to report a problem with a site you've stumbled upon.
2. Click Toolbar Options to set your toolbar preferences. You can drag and drop toolbar icons, add shortcuts and configure your stumbling.
3. Click Profile Preferences to update your StumbleUpon profile picture, email, stumbling preferences and account settings.
4. Click Update Topics to update the topics you stumble upon. Simply click on the checkboxes next to the subjects that interest you, and click the Save My Changes button.
5. Click View Suggested Topics to see which subjects StumbleUpon thinks you would enjoy exploring. Click the checkboxes that interest you, and click the Save My Settings button.
6. Click Invite Friends to import your email addresses and invite your friends to try StumbleUpon.
7. Click Change Password to change your password.
8. Click Sign In or Sign Out to sign in and out of your StumbleUpon account.
9. Click Toolbar Guide to visit the "Getting Started with StumbleUpon" tutorial.
10. Click Help to visit the StumbleUpon FAQs.

Optional Toolbar Icons

* Some of the additional icons available via the Toolbars Options menu that you might consider adding to your toolbar include:

1. Profile Icon: Will bring you directly to your StumbleUpon profile.
2. Tag Icon: Will bring up a pop-up window which allows you to assign up to five keywords to a site (to make it easier to find later in a list of your favorites).
3. Search Icon: Will bring up a pop-up window that allows you to stumble upon only those websites which match the search term you supply.
4. Matches Icon: Will bring you to a page of suggested friends based on your location and profile's demographic information.
5. Network Icon: Will bring you to a list of a your friends and groups.

* In addition to being an amazingly addictive way to discover the web, StumbleUpon has a social networking aspect that allows you to make like-minded friends and influence people. Your StumbleUpon account includes a public profile page and even a blog where you can post short messages for your friends and other users to see.

How to Set Up Your StumbleUpon Profile

* To take advantage of StumbleUpon's social networking options, you will need to set up your profile to let others users know something about you.

1. Log into your account on the StumbleUpon homepage.
2. Click the Home tab at the top of the page.
3. Click on the Preferences link immediately to the left of the sidebar.
* Alternately, choose Profile Preferences under the Tools drop down menu of your StumbleUpon toolbar.
4. Fill in your name, email address and location.
5. Upload a profile picture.
6. Choose your privacy settings, stumble settings and whether or not you want your birthday to be displayed publicly.
7. Click Save my preferences button at the bottom of the page.
8. Click the Public profile link underneath the Preferences header.
9. Write a short description of yourself, select a color theme for your profile and select as many or as few things you'd like other users to know about you.
10. Click the Save public profile button at the bottom of the page.
11. Your StumbleUpon profile has been created. If you'd like to see your profile as the public sees it, click the View page as others see it button in the sidebar.
12. Edit your profile at any time by choosing Profile Preferences under the Tools drop down menu of your StumbleUpon toolbar.

Step 4: Make Friends and Influence People

* Making friends in StumbleUpon is different than in other social networking services. Friendships don't have to be reciprocated or approved. Adding someone as a friend simply means that you are a "fan" of the sites they've saved. The reverse is true as well. If someone likes the sites you've saved as favorites and shares your areas of interest, they may add you as a friend - making them a "fan" of your stumbles.

* Why make friends at all? The StumbleUpon toolbar gives you the option of only stumbling on those sites saved by your friends. This is a great way to hone in some fantastic sites that relate to your interests.

* To search your friends' favorite pages:

1. Click the Friends icon in the Channels section of your toolbar.
2. Return to searching pages saved by all users by choosing All from the Channels drop down menu in your toolbar.

Browse People

* If you don't know where to start, find friends by browsing StumbleUpon users by location, age, interest or marital status.

1. Log into your account on the StumbleUpon homepage.
2. Click the Home tab.
3. Click the Browse people button in the sidebar.
4. Choose the criteria by which you'd like to find friends in the sidebar.
5. Click the Search button.
6. Click on a users' icon.
7. Click the Add him/her as a friend button in the sidebar of the users' profile.


Connect with Friends via Email

* StumbleUpon allows you to import your email contacts to find out which of your friends is already using StumbleUpon and identify which you'd like to invite to use the service.

1. Log into your account at on the StumbleUpon homepage.
2. Click the Home tab.
3. Click the Friends tab.
4. Click the Connect with Friends button to import your contacts from AOL, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook or Gmail.
5. Click the appropriate email service icon. (You can also enter the email addresses of friends you'd like to invite to use StumbleUpon by clicking "enter email manually.")
6. Enter your email username and password.
7. Click Find my friends.
8. Mark the checkbox next to your friends who already use StumbleUpon to make them your StumbleUpon friend.
9. Mark the checkbox next to your friends who do not use StumbleUpon to invite them to use the service.
10. Click the Connect with friends now button.

StumbleUpon a Friend

* Everytime you stumble upon a page, the user who recommended that page will be indicated in your StumbleUpon toolbar next to the Favorites button.

1. Click the Stumble! button in your StumbleUpon toolbar.
2. Click on the name of the person who suggested the site in the toolbar. You will be taken to their StumbleUpon profile.
3. Click the Add him/her as a friend button in the sidebar.

Join a Group

* A group is exactly that - a collection of StumbleUpon users interested in a particular subject. You can join a pre-established group or form your own. The group maintains a forum, and you can find friends by checking out the profiles of other group members.

* To join a group, you must have been a member of StumbleUpon for, at least, three days and have stumbled frequently.

1. Log into your account on the StumbleUpon homepage.
2. Click the Home tab.
3. Click the Groups tab. (The Groups tab will not appear until you have been a member for three days.)
4. Create a group by clicking on Start a new group, or explore pre-existing groups by clicking on the Popular, Newest or Suggested groups links.

Blogging with StumbleUpon

* While technically not a blogging service, you can add personal messages and text to your StumbleUpon profile. They will appear in your Favorites list along with any reviews you have written.

1. Log in to your account on the StumbleUpon homepage.
2. Click on the Home tab.
3. Click on the Post new blog button in the sidebar.
4. Enter text into the blog post field.
5. Click the Post new blog button underneath the text field.
6. Your blog post will now appear under the Favorites tab of your StumbleUpon profile.

Step 5: Check out StumbleVideo and StumbleThru
StumbleVideo

* In 2006, StumbleUpon introduced its StumbleVideo service. StumbleVideo does not require the installation of a toolbar and is a great way to discover cool videos aggregated from YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe and MySpace.

1. Go to the StumbleVideo homepage.
2. Click on the Stumble! button.
3. Watch a cool video.
4. Rate the video using the player's Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons.
5. Stumble again!


StumbleThru

* In 2007, StumbleUpon launched the StumbleThru service. StumbleThru allows users of the StumbleUpon toolbar to "stumble through" just one website. The websites you can currently "stumble through" include Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, The Onion and BBC News among others.

1. Go to the StumbleThru homepage.
2. Click on the icon for the website you wish to "stumble through."
3. Click on the Stumble! button in your StumbleUpon toolbar.
4. Visit a page within the website you've chosen to "stumble through."
5. Rate the page by using the toolbar's Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons.
6. Return to searching the entirety of the web by clicking on the Topic drop-down menu in the Channel section of your StumbleUpon toolbar and selecting All.


* StumbleUpon recently introduced a form of social search to its service called "SearchReviews." SearchReviews actually integrates StumbleUpon's reviews and ratings into popular search engines and websites like Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, Wikipedia and YouTube. You'll be able to see which sites get StumbleUpon users' seal of approval without ever leaving those pages.

* To enable SearchReviews, you'll need the latest version of the StumbleUpon toolbar. If you don't have that version, download it from the StumbleUpon Changelog or Homepage.

1. Click on the Tools drop down menu in your StumbleUpon Toolbar.
2. Click Toolbar Options.
3. Select the Configuration Tab from the Toolbar Options pop-up window.
4. Click the "Highlight recommended search results" box under Web Search.
5. Click OK. SearchReviews are now enabled.

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16. Collaborative web search tool StumbleUpon makes finding good content online fast, easy and fun. Using StumbleUpon, you can cut down on your Googling and get straight to what you're looking for - whatever the subject - using the StumbleUpon community hive mind. Let's take a closer look.

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is browser add-on that you can use to search, or "stumble", the web. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer versions are available here. Use it to find new sites merely by hitting the "stumble!" button; once you find a site you like/dislike, you can give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. Multiply your thumbs up and down with the thousands of other StumbleUpon users, and you've got a whole lot of actual people - not cold heartless machines - sending the best content on the web your way.

However, there's more here than immediately meets the eye.
Make the most of your StumbleUpon settings

topics.pngNow, you don't have to grok your Stumble toolbar; you can happily click away on the "Stumble!" button and basically fall into random rabbit holes (I do this quite often, actually). However, the benefits of tweaking your Stumble settings are almost immediate.

You can get into your Stumble settings a coupla different ways; I just logged into my profile and clicked on "Stumbling" to start. One of the very first things you're going to want to do is decide what kind of filtering options, if any, you want. For instance, I'd rather not stumble on any PDF files because it makes my very old (temporary, new one comes soon thank Jebus) laptop go kablooey.

Once you've got that straightened out, you'll want to visit the Tags page. Click on any of these tags, for instance, humor, and that particular tag is added to the list of topics you'd like to explore.

Of course, you can do this from your toolbar as well (it's easier). Click on the All dropdown menu and go to Update Topics. You'll get a ton of suggested categories for you to stumble; check or uncheck the ones you want to see the most. StumbleUpon also suggests topics you might like; this is more perfectly matched to your unique interests the more you rate sites - remember those thumbs up and thumbs down buttons? Yep - the more you use those, the more you train StumbleUpon to do your evil bidding. These simple tweaks are pretty elementary, I know - but the ROI is incredible.
How I use StumbleUpon

tags.png
The simplicity of StumbleUpon is its most appealing characteristic - you click, you find great sites, you click again. However, StumbleUpon is a pretty powerful tool if used creatively. Here's just some of the uses that I've found for StumbleUpon so far:

* Generate ideas. You can use StumbleUpon as an instant idea mill - just type in a keyword and go. I've been able to take small kernels of ideas and build upon them using this method.
* Research. For anyone doing any kind of research, StumbleUpon is a dream come true, because the websites included in SU are hand-picked and filtered through many sets of eyes before they get to you. I've been able to find many, MANY incredibly rich research-oriented sites through StumbleUpon, faster and easier than using Google.
* Exploration. I really love the fact that StumbleUpon enables me to find information that I would never have had the inclination to look for before. It's that delish feeling of not knowing what's coming next - and knowing that if you don't like it, another super possibility is just a click away.

Why StumbleUpon is important

I've already gushed about StumbleUpon enough to make you hunt for the insulin; however, it's just that cool. Not only can it connect you to the quality content you're looking for - often it'll hand you stuff you didn't know you were looking for.

How do you put StumbleUpon to good use? Let us know in the comments.

Wendy Boswell, Lifehacker's Weekend Editor, is an avid StumbleUpon fangirl. Subscribe to her feature series Technophilia using the Technophilia feed.

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17. How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog

Social Media, Featured Posts, Blog Promotion 129 comments

StumbleuponThis is a guest post on How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog is by Skellie who writes tips and tutorials on creating better content at her blog, Skelliewag.org.

The potential for StumbleUpon to send traffic is often under-estimated, particularly by new bloggers. Unlike digg and del.icio.us, an item doesn’t need to become popular before you see immediate results. One or two votes can bring a hundred or more readers — more than a new blog might see in a day.

StumbleUpon users are, however, notoriously fickle. The service describes itself as allowing you to ‘channel-surf the internet’ and I think it’s a very appropriate description. Users flick through websites like you might flick through channels, often making a decision on whether to stay or leave your site before it has even had time to finish loading.

In this post, I want to suggest some quick tips you can use to draw StumbleUpon users into your site before they stumble away.

Channel-surfing the internet

We’ve all flicked through TV channels back and forth, waiting for something to hold our attention. The decision to stay on a channel or surf elsewhere is usually made in a second or two, and the principle is the same for StumbleUpon users.

With so many other potentially great sites available to them at the click of a mouse, you need to make it immediately clear why your site is worth their time. Here are some tips to help you do just that.

1. Make your blog’s core mission-statement unmissable

A core mission-statement as I define it is a one or two sentence description encapsulating what your blog has to offer. A good core mission-statement describes the kind of content you provide and broadly what your blog is about. It should communicate a lot of information in only a few words.

If a stumbler can see straight away your blog is about something they’re interested in then they’re likely to stick around.

2. Insert powerful visual cues

When channel-surfing the decision to stick with a channel or move on is often largely determined by visual cues. Even with the sound off you can tell a drama from a news program, a travel show from a cartoon, because visual elements provide clues as to what kind of show you’re watching.

The same principle applies to blogs. If your blog’s header contains an image of a pile of cash, we can reasonably assume the blog is about money (or making it). That’s a lot of information communicated instantly by a single image.

3. Push your content above the fold

StumbleUpon users often judge a site by what is offered in the above the fold area — the area of your site which appears on screen before any scrolling occurs.

I think this blog is an example of how to do that well. Not only do headlines and the first few paragraphs of a post appear above the fold, but other content of interest is showcased in the header area. StumbleUpon users immediately see a site packed with value.

You can use the top part of your blog’s sidebar, its header area and the post area to showcase your content. In doing so, you’ll straight away show StumbleUpon visitors why they should stick around.

4. Be unique, be pretty

While it’s difficult to judge the quality of a blog’s content in just a few seconds, people are much more hasty with aesthetic judgments. A gorgeous or interesting blog design encourages a stumbler to stick around and see whether the content is great too.

Of course, a great design is a lot of work (or quite a bit of money). The next-best thing is a unique logo or header image, an interesting color scheme, and so on. There are a number of small changes you can make to create a blog that looks unique and sets you apart from the crowd.

What we’ve done

The emphasis in all the above tips is on instantly showing visitors who’ve stumbled across your blog what it has to offer. This should help you make the most of StumbleUpon traffic and turn more stumblers into readers.

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18.Building Your Blog With StumbleUpon


If you think this is another post about voting up your own articles on StumbleUpon, you’re mistaken.

Every blogger should have a StumbleUpon account. Regardless of which social media service you prefer, StumbleUpon is by far the easiest and least time-consuming to use.
How StumbleUpon works

When you come across something you like online you can vote for it with a button on your toolbar. The page is then shared with others who have similar interests.

When you’re bored, or looking for inspiration, click ‘Stumble!’ and great pages others have liked will be shared with you.

It’s really that simple.

As with most things that seem simple, however, there’s much more to it beneath the surface.

This post doesn’t intend to be comprehensive overview of StumbleUpon. What it does intend to do is show you how you can build your blog and your blogger profile by participating in the StumbleUpon community — while having plenty of fun at the same time!
Getting started with StumbleUpon

If you already have an account, great. If not, sign up here. Don’t put it off — the process is worth it.

One tip: make sure your username and profile picture are branded in line with your blog. Use your blogging name for your profile, and a photo or logo your readers will be familiar with.

Once you have your account and StumbleUpon homepage, make sure you customize your interests to suit your tastes. You can ‘manage your interests’ via the sidebar. This is important, as it will effect what kinds of pages you get when you Stumble. It will also change the kinds of people who take an interest in your votes.

There are plenty of other things you can customize, but we’ll stick with the basics for now. Let’s get started building your blog and your blogger profile with your new account.
1. Connect with other bloggers

To start connecting with other bloggers through StumbleUpon, all you need to do is vote up their content (when it’s good). The more traffic you send them, the more likely they are to go and investigate the source, or even add you as a friend. StumbleUpon can be a great networking tool.

On top of that, supporting blogs you like is just good karma. What more could you ask for?
2. Drive traffic back to your blog with great stumbles

When you vote up a site that hasn’t been voted up before, you ‘Discover’ it. This means that you write its first review and your profile information appears in the sidebar of the reviews page for that item.

Great content can drive a lot of (influential) stumblers to the page profiling you, as they rush to vote and review it. Some of them will be drawn into visiting your profile, simply because you have such great taste. But how can we encourage these visitors to check out our blog?
3. Highlight your blog in your StumbleUpon profile

This is easy. Enter your blog URL as your website address, and this will be displayed above your image on the main page of your profile. You can also write a bit about yourself and add a link to your blog in your About blurb.
4. Connect with your readers

When you start to see traffic coming from StumbleUpon, take the time to visit the reviews page for the blog post readers have voted up.

The stumblers on this page have been enthusiastic enough about your content to want to Stumble it. If they’re not already loyal readers, this makes them great candidates for becoming one.

Take the time to thank them for their Stumble, and add them as a friend. Little acts of generosity like these leave an impression and may encourage the Stumbler to see what other types of great content you’re capable of.
5. Make friends for a more powerful profile

The StumbleUpon algorithm is a mysterious thing, but evidence seems to suggest that the most active and popular stumblers are rewarded with the ability to control large traffic-flows. The ‘active’ part is up to you — how much time are you willing to put in? The ‘popular’ part of the equation, however, depends on how many fans you have. Fans are those stumblers who’ve added you as a friend in order to see the pages you stumble.

How do you get fans? Great, properly labeled stumbles will do it. Another successful strategy is to add those who vote up your content. If they took the time to explore your blog they might recognize you as the author of the content they liked and add you in return. The friendship will enhance both of your profiles and you’ll be connecting with another potential reader.
6. To submit or not to submit?

Some bloggers believe that repeatedly stumbling the same domain will see the benefits of your stumbles at that domain peter down to nothing. Others believe it’s absolutely necessary to submit your own articles to ensure they’re placed in the category best-suited to them. I’d be interested to hear which approach you think is best in the comments section of this post.
7. Send great content to your friends

StumbleUpon users have the ability to send pages to specific friends, or all of them. If you’ve written something you’re really confident is worthy of a stumble then you might consider sending it out to your friendship network. They’re much more likely to vote up your content than the strangers who routinely find themselves at your blog.

Moderation is key when using this tool. If you overuse it there is a chance your friends will tire of you. An alternative to a wide-ranging send-out might be to send an article to one or two friends you know will be particularly interested in the content.
8. Create a profile people will visit for its own sake

Treat your profile like another blog. If you make it a place people will want to visit for its own sake, the chance of visitors engaging with it and following the link back to your blog increases.

Take the time to play with the colors, add images to your reviews, and explore the functions on offer to create your ‘blog’ (StumbleUpon actually refers to it as such). Fill your profile with votes and reviews for great content your friends will want to visit, and tell others about. A great profile will naturally attract interested and admiring visitors, and raise your profile in the StumbleUpon community.
9. Use it for inspiration

When StumbleUpon is at its best, it serves up a long line of great content suited to your tastes. A stumbling session can be a great source of inspiration when your well of ideas runs dry.

A tip: don’t stumble only within the topic you blog about. Sometimes the best (and most original) post ideas are found by trying to relate radically different content to your niche.
10. Have fun!

I hope this post has convincingly argued that the secret to building your blog with StumbleUpon is to participate actively, genuinely and enthusiastically in the community there. The rewards are sure to filter back to you and your blog.

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19. Stumbleupon traffic bounce rate is amazing

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

What is bounce rate?
A bounce is basically a visitor that loads a single page on your web site and then leaves the site without clicking anywhere. This would describe most Digg and other social voting sites really. If your bounce rate is 70%, out of a hundred new visitors 70 loaded just one page on your site, then left for good.

Why i love StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon traffic spikeTen days ago i wrote an article that was stumbled by many users, sending a spike of traffic from StumbleUpon.com. The article was first linked by (i think) problogger.com and later spread to many other blogs. This led to the article getting ‘liked’ by about a dozen stumblers. Those dozen stumblers sent a spike of 300 unique visitors my way. I kept getting about 15 referrals a day from StumbleUpon until there was a second, smaller spike of stumbles a week later, sending an extra 200 readers to the entry.

After each spike of traffic from SU i checked the analytics referrer logs for Su traffic which reported a 39% bounce rate from stumbleupon visitors. So from the 600 readers, 400 viewed more than that one page that got stumbled and checked out more from my site. In comparison, traffic from shoemoney.com, my biggest referral traffic, bounced at a rate of 75%, and Google organic traffic at 68%.

StumbleUpon traffic spike

Why does StumbleUpon traffic has such a low bounce rate? It’s all about boredom.
StumbleUpon has a huge advantage over digg traffic, the next cool site is always a link away. With Digg, you have to press the back button more than once to return from a visited link to the Digg main page. StumbleUpon has it’s own toolbar which is always available no matter the page you’re reading, so an SU visitor doesn’t have to worry about typing URLs or hunting down bookmarks to return to SU’s main page.

StumbleUpon traffic is highly targeted
Digg-type sites focus on one large mob of users with mostly random interests. True, Digg does have categories but most of the traffic will come from the Digg main page. Stumblers configure their profile and only see sites they are interested in. This explains the phenomenal bounce rate for SU traffic.

What i could have done better: Display popular posts
When the first wave of stumbles hit i was using a layout that did not display top or related posts at all, and i am certain having either would have reduced the bounce rate even more.

Add a “stumble this” button
I should have added a StumbleUpon graphic after the entry or even a line reading “If you enjoyed this please Stumble it” to remind people to thumbs-up the page.

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20.Getting Started with StumbleUpon – Using the Toolbar (transcript)

This is the transcript of the video on using the StumbleUpon toolbar.

Pseudonym, a friend on StumbleUpon, once told me: “Coming to SU was *definitely* the best move I ever made in my life…the experience has given me ever more confidence in myself, in what is possible, in what is available, happening, knowable, fascinating, and just plain *fun* out there in cyberspace.”

This is the what the StumbleUpon toolbar looks like when you first download it…well, maybe not so squished, but I wanted it big enough to see.

Clicking on the stumble button will take you to a web page that someone else has already discovered and thumbed up. A number beside the SU picture, or icon, shows how many pages your friends have sent that you haven’t viewed yet. Only your friends can send pages for you to view, so you don’t have to worry about a stranger spamming you.

The thumbs are the most important buttons on your toolbar. Giving a page a thumb up means “I like it,” but in a broader term, it means “I like this type of page and would like to see more.” By the same token, giving a page a thumb down means “I don’t like pages like this. Please don’t send any more.”

The Send to button let’s you share the pages you’ve been visiting. You can send a page to anyone that you are mutual friends with or anyone who’s e-mail you have.

And the Comments button let’s you read what everyone else has said about a page, or add your own comments. SU refers to this button as both the comments and reviews button, depending on whether you have text turned on for your toolbar or not. Either way, it takes you to the same page.

The Channel area gives you several options to choose from. If you are only wanting to stumble news, or friends, or one of your interests, you can choose an option from the channel area. Clicking on the word All brings up a drop down list that let’s you choose any of your interests to stumble.

Favorites is another button that will get a lot of use. It takes you to your StumbleUpon blog, where you can see the websites you’ve commented on.

Friends takes you to the same page that the Friend’s tab does. You can see up to ten friends who are online, up to ten people that you are fans of, and up to ten people who are your fans.

Finally, Tools brings up a drop down menu…

…that looks like this. There are several sections on the tools menu that you’ll want to note. This is where you come to invite a friend to SU, and on the rare occasions that you need to sign out of StumbleUpon for some reason.

Let’s look at more at the Toolbar Options for now.

For the rest of this video, I will be focusing entirely on the Appearance tab. Under the configuration tab, you can set whether SU shows if someone has discovered the page and what the page rank is when you use a web search such as Google or Yahoo. The default is to show this information, but if you prefer not to get it, unclick the first box under Search.

Now that you know what the buttons on the toolbar do, it’s easy to create a toolbar that fits you.

There are several buttons I recommend keeping on your toolbar, in addition to the permanent Stumble and thumbs buttons.

The inbox puts a mailbox icon on your toolbar. If you have mail, the flag on the mailbox stands up. I love knowing when to check my inbox, without having to wait for an e-mail notice.

The Channel Menu puts everything from the channel area into a drop down menu, so it doesn’t take as much space on your toolbar. If you’d like, you still have the option of adding to the toolbar the channels that you use most.

Send to so that it’s easy to send web pages to your friends.

Reviews or Comments

Favorites, which gives you a fast way to get to your blog

And lastly, the Tag icon, which lets you easily add tags to any page. Once you’ve added tags to a page, the icon will turn to the right, and will turn from blue to red. Hovering over it will show the tags you’ve selected for that page.

One thing I LOVE about the StumbleUpon toolbar is that they let you add it to other toolbars. The easiest way to do this is to click on “Drag to position,” pull the SU toolbar in front of the Google toolbar, and click OK. You can also choose a different position from the drop down menu, but just as a note, all toolbars don’t play as nicely as SU and Google, so you may have to try several to get it to work.

Aggregating links to content by other authors has been a staple item on the web content diet for years. Unfortunately, it’s an area almost completely devoid of innovation. Links are returned like results from an intelligent search-engine: a title, a description, a recommendation — as if things couldn’t be done any other way.

In this post, I want to suggest a number of new and interesting ways links could be both aggregated and interacted with.

Learning from StumbleUpon

When using StumbleUpon users select broad areas of interest, click stumble, and are taken to a popular link in one of the areas they’ve selected. They trust that the link will present some kind of value because it’s been recommended by others who like the same things. Even if the recommendation misses the mark, the user can go explore somewhere else with another click of the stumble button.

It would be entirely possible to replicate this experience inside link content. Links would need to be presented without titles and descriptions, either grouped under broad interests or presented with only one thing in common: the author’s recommendation. Here is what your link content could look like:

. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .

The dots could be replaced with numbers, keywords, little images or icons. Links could even be embedded inside a piece of ASCII artwork. With any of these methods each link is a surprise to the reader, and you’re asking people to put as much trust in you as they do a service like StumbleUpon. This could be quite an entertaining experience for the reader.

This route also allows authors to present more links in less time. The cluster above contains 20 links. A slightly larger cube might contain a hundred, or a thousand. You could even share your bookmarks, or every feed you subscribe to, in a small cube of links.

The image grid

Alternately, you could take a screenshot of the site you’re linking to and crop a 50 x 50 image from a distinctive page element, then use that icon to link to the site. You could create an image grid providing visual rather than verbal previews of the content. You would still be asking to readers to trust your recommendation, but the visual effect would be quite powerful. You could also place some descriptive text within the title tag of each image.

Quotes

You could also try extracting the most interesting or explanatory sentence or short paragraph from the content you’re linking to and present it as a quote. Link to the source in the usual attribution field. For example:

“Is this kind of minimalist home devoid of character and fun and life? Some might think so, but I get a strange satisfaction, a fulfillment, at looking around and seeing a home free of clutter. “
– Leo Babauta, A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home

Heirarchies and Conversations

Sometimes it’s interesting to track an idea as new people join in on the conversation. Recently, Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame did an interview at Daily Blog Tips where he stated that he found meta-blogging “incredibly boring”. He then went on to write a post stating the thirteen things he dislikes about the blogosphere, including meta-blogging.

Maki at Dosh Dosh took up the conversation with his own article lamenting the state of the meta-blogging field. Presented as a flowing conversation, the links might look like:

Jeff Atwood @ Daily Blog Tips: “It’s about the content, not the tool you use to write that content. I find meta-blogging — blogging about blogging — incredibly boring.” [Interview with Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror]

* Jeff Atwood @ Coding Horror: “If you accept the premise that most of your readers are not bloggers, then it’s highly likely they won’t be amused, entertained, or informed by a continual stream of blog entries on the art of blogging. Even if they’re filled with extra bloggy goodness.” [Thirteen Blog Clichés]
.
o Maki @ Dosh Dosh: “I must confess that I am also not a fan of meta-blogging. I find some blogs about blogging to be rather dull, not because they are poorly written but rather because they are repetitive and do not add value.” [The Problem With Meta-Blogging]

The authors don’t necessarily have to be referring to each-other’s content, either, as long as they are discussing the same topic. Some articles will naturally respond to others by making counter-points, highlighting different facts, and so on, even if the authors are not directly referring to each other (or even aware of each other).

This kind of link format would be especially useful for presenting various ways a point of view has been argued.

Create a Tumblelog

The Tumblelog for this site is located at skelliewag.tumblr.com. As I’m browsing the web I can publish links at the Tumblelog at the click of a button in my toolbar. I can share content I think you guys might find interesting in a matter of seconds. You can subscribe to the Tumblelog’s RSS feed, too.

Zen Habits also manages its links this way. You might be interested in creating your own at Tumblr.

Over to you

I’m sure there are a number of other ways aggregated links could be presented and interacted with. I’ll have a think about it over the next few days, but I’m interested to hear your suggestions, and what you think of the ideas above.

Skelliewag features daily discussions on content creation, great ideas you can use, and design tips. Join the community by subscribing!

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23. Using Stumble Upon To Increase Blog Traffic

Posted by Neena on 10/28/07 in Social Networking, Traffic

StumbleUpon My StumbleUpon Page

When I first started blogging I had no idea what StumbleUpon was. I quickly learned the basics, installed the toolbar, “stumbled” a few articles, and had a few of my articles stumbled. Sure, it was fun. And the spike in my blog traffic was great when my articles got stumbled. But beyond that I didn’t see much potential to gaining consistent blog traffic, so the novelty slowly fizzled.

But, I discovered that Fred at Newest on the Net is compiling an Ultimate List of StumbleUpon Articles. So, this was a good reason to give StumbleUpon a second look. And, boy, am I glad I did. There is so much potential there that I did not see the first time around!

The Basics
I am not going to delve into the basics of StumbleUpon. Much of this you can find out on the site in their help section. After you install the toolbar, you can start stumbling. Every time you hit the stumble button, you will be taken to a new page in the categories that you defined when setting up your profile. You then rate the page with a thumbs up or thumbs down. The more you stumble and rate, the more personalized your stumbles will become so you should find your stumbled content to become more and more interesting. This is where I stopped previously. Fun, yes. Increase blog traffic - hmmm.

Harnessing the True Power of StumbleUpon
The true traffic power of StumbleUpon lies behind the “friends” function. I never thought of StumbleUpon as a traditional social networking site - but it really is just that, with a twist. In StumbleUpon you can add friends just as you do on other social networking sites, But choose your friends carefully - the maximum you canhave is 200. (Of course, you can add and delete at will.)

Picking similar minded stumblers as friends is important to success with StumbleUpon. When you choose someone as a friend - you will see an updated list of all their stumbles. This gives you a pool of articles and new blogs that you may find to be interesting. You will also get that person’s attention, and they may come over and check out your site. If you stumble some of their articles, hopefully they will take note, read your blog, and stumble something of yours. This is where the viral nature of StumbleUpon takes hold. The more you stumble, the more attention you will get.

As with anything else, this process takes time. You cannot expect overnight results. Focus on StumbleUpon for a set amount of time everyday. Do this for a month. Be generous with your stumbles. Anytime you read a post that you like on any blog, use the social networking/share this button at the end of the post or the thumbs up (or down) button on the StumbleUpon toolbar. If you are the first to submit the article you will have the opportunity to tag it and write a short review. Take the time to do this and do it well.

When the author sees that his/her article has been stumbled, he/she will most likely press the infobutton.gif (infobutton) on the StumbleUpon Toolbar. Here he will find the identity of the person that submitted his article, as well as others who have stumbled it. He will then probably click over to your site and possibly reciprocate.

The result: Your traffic is sure to increase.
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24. Top 5 Resources for Stumblers Outside of StumbleUpon
2 Comments Filed Under: StumbleUpon, Blogging, Web 2.0

As you might have noticed: I’m not entirely through with StumbleUpon although I have been attacked there repeatedly and almost blocked for no apparent reason besides doing SEO. I still use it without a toolbar and in a less self sacrificing way.

While searching for add ons that will allow me a better SU experience without the toolbar I not only found the toolbarless StumbleUpon bookmarklets which are very neat and work fine without distracting you too much, I found some other great StumbleUpon resources outside of StumbleUpon itself, here are the best 5:

1. How To Stumble http://www.howtostumble.com/ is a great blog dedicated to StumbleUpon
2. Stumble Gods http://www.stumblegods.com/ is a blog about SU that focuses on great stumblers and sites found through SU
3. StumbleUpon Search http://phocks.org/stumble/StumbleUpon-Search/ is a Google Custom serach engine that allows you to search StumbleUpon
4. StumbleUpon Add-ons http://thlayli.detrave.net/stumbleupon.html is a site that collects SU add ons, plug ins and scripts
5. Userscripts.org http://userscripts.org/tag/stumbleupon
offers more than 20 different user scripts for the popular GreaseMonkey Firefox plug ins that allow you to customize any web page, here the StumbleUpon site ;-)

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25. das gleiche wie 24.
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26. StumbleUpon is a Goldmine for Writers

I’ve always been one to view social media sites with a certain amount of reserve. After all, I’m 32. Myspace sort of feels like someone else’s space, if you know what I mean. Digg has a bit of an elitist attitude. I like Reddit, even though the interface could be more intuitive. And del.icio.us is better as a utility than as a social scene.

StumbleUpon, on the other hand. Well, now we’re talkin’!

Right before Facebook became the social network du jour a month ago, StumbleUpon was getting mad press! Most of it was from bloggers writing posts on how they got about 7 bazillion visits from StumbleUpon within mere minutes of “stumbling” their own post. So, of course, I had to get in on that action. Well, my traffic has gone up a little bit, (10-15 visit a day) since I became active at StumbleUpon. What I got in return, however, has been far more valuable than traffic.

I’ve found StumbleUpon to be a tremendous resource as a writer. Most often, this comes in the form of inspiration and information. Please indulge me and my blatant overuse of italicized text.

StumbleUpon for Inspiration :: The Pictures

One of the most unique features of StumbleUpon is the ability for users to photoblog. Many users focus almost solely on seeking out magnificent and awe-inspiring pictures. If you’ve followed Tapping Creativity for a little while now, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Writing to a Snapshot. Some stumblers have made it an artform, however.

When you are stuck for an idea, check out two of my favorite photostumblers: TeapotFox and Fantm. Their choice is images is, without a doubt, enough to generate something creative. If not, you need to check your pulse. Pick an image from either of their blogs and use it to get started. Some stumblers also write poetry to the images they stumble. And most of it is very good. In some cases, the seeds to a much bigger story have been sewn. All you have to do is start watering it.

StumbleUpon for Inspiration :: The People

More than any blog or tagging system alone can do, StumbleUpon allows you to get a pretty good idea about a person, quickly. This helps not only in finding other cool people, but also in learning how to flesh out characters in your own writing.

For instance, Caile-girl is, what I would consider, an ideal stumbler from whom to learn. Her stumbles shine on their own. They also, however, show the range of a real (and interesting) person who shows lots of moods and sarcasm. And Perko shows a range in his stumbles that encompass a wide variety of interests from the arts and sciences, but show a common thread throughout. Checking out his stumbles is like reading a Don DeLillo book. And I love me some Don DeLillo.

StumbleUpon for Information

You will find experts in every conceivable field on StumbleUpon. I have a special affinity for some subjects, such as social media optimization. Do you? If so, check out Msaleem-stumbl. His stumbles are a veritable encyclopedia on the subject. Looking for a slew of information on socio-political current events? Try Poeticsweetnss. Her stumbles are like the best newspaper you’ll find – provided you lean a little to the left. Of course, you can always find me there, too. I post a lot of stuff about writing (surprise) and music.

Do any of you use social media to find inspiration for your creative inspiration? If so, by all means, drop a comment to share.

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27. The Magic of StumbleUpon’s Recent Reviews Page

If you’ve been using StumbleUpon for a while, you’ve probably fussed or heard fussing about the new format. If you’ve just joined SU, then you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, but the layout of your SU page is quite different than it used to look. In a lot of ways, the old page was more intuitive. It was easier to figure out how to get started, if you were new to stumbling.

I’m guessing that the guys at SU headquarters are figuring if you’re new to SU, you’re going to depend on the toolbar to learn your way around the site, since to me, the new pages seem more like they’re made for people who have been stumbling for a little while. It’s easy to find “people like you,” not too hard to find the top ranked sites of the day (although it’s harder to find the Buzz, a daily list of the instant hit sites, pages that were discovered and became popular in a matter of hours) and it’s easy to see what your friends have stumbled on.

I LOVE the Recent reviews section. It’s probably one of the main things that keeps me from switching back to the old layout. It’s really nice seeing the most recent items my friends have posted:

Okay, lean in close everyone, I’m going to share a secret. Are you listening? Okay, think about this. If you are getting the most recent posts from your friends, what are they getting???

Yep, they’re getting your most recent post. Without you having to lift a finger to suggest it to anyone. Just by posting it on your blog, you’re sending it out to as many people as you have befriended.

Now, there are a few things I still need to check and if anyone reading this knows, please share your findings. I know you don’t get pages from your fans, but I’m not sure whether your pages go out to people who are fans that you haven’t befriended. Either way, it’s still a powerful marketing tool, whether you’re blogging for a business or just wanting to move up the ranks in SU. Having the Recent reviews page set as your default SU homepage doesn’t hurt either.

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28. Stumbleupon Gamed by Paid-to-Stumble Service

stumbleupon-logo.pngMashable announces some unpleasant news. Unethical and unscrupulous website owners can pay to have their sites bookmarked on the popular StumbleUpon service. The controversial “service” behind this has already been paying Diggers to unnaturally promote links at Digg. Digg is already gamed from the inside, and it’s audience seems to be made up mostly of puerile adolescents, so I never cared much about it. But it would be very sad if you had to start wondering whether an article or site was stumbled because the user was paid. I have the feeling that it wouldn’t be too hard to spot these StumbleUpon users and ban their IP addresses: their stumble lists would be full of crap, and their profile information would be minimal. They would never join any StumbleUpon communities. There would be no avatar.

I hope StumbleUpon plans to fight this. There’s nothing wrong with doing it, legally, but because StumbleUpon is only worth the value of its links to its users, it would be in StumbleUpon’s best interest (that being the best interests of its users) to fight any attempts to game their system with cash.

If you want to get increased stumbles, here’s the right way to do it: Please Stumble this Post! Click the “Bookmark or Email this Post” link below. Stumblers need to know about this! Thank you!

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29. StumbleUpon Optimization: Leveraging Photo Stumbles for More Web Traffic

stumbleupon-photos.jpgIn my recent article on traffic building using Flickr, I’ve mentioned that StumbleUpon users love to stumble images as it allows them to adorn their StumbleUpon blog with all their favorite pictures.

Some StumbleUpon users have made photo stumbling into an art form and their blogs feature fantastic collections of meticulously selected pictures, placed alongside poetry and commentary.

This article on photo stumbling will offer some detailed tips on how you can use and optimize your images in order to increase the potential of receiving more stumbles and hence, visitors to your website.

For those of you who are new to StumbleUpon, you can start by reading my extensive guide to StumbleUpon, which outlines how you can use StumbleUpon as a means to drive massive traffic to your website.


Using Images to Increase Your StumbleUpon Traffic

I use StumbleUpon daily because its a nifty and out-of-the-box way to find interesting websites, concepts or art forms not available in most other social media or internet channels.

While I am hardly an ideal-type or model for all other stumblers, I do think most users view StumbleUpon as a platform which allows them to randomly explore the internet and share relevant content with other like-minded individuals.

I’ve mentioned before that the use of images is one of the best ways to immediately capture the attention of StumbleUpon users. The strategic use of pictures are by far the most effective method to organically increase your StumbleUpon traffic.

Learning how to use and optimize images on your website will easily increase your potential for receiving more StumbleUpon visitors, which is a powerful way to expand your site audience or reach.

An Introduction to Photo Stumbling

Photo Stumbling is a feature that is built into StumbleUpon, which allows users to post pictures on the web into their StumbleUpon blog. Not all StumbleUpon users are familiar with this feature, so this little introduction might be also useful for some of you who are new to StumbleUpon.

To stumble a photo you like, you’ll simply need to right click and choose the Stumble Photo Blog It! function, which will then allow you to submit the picture as if you were submitting any other webpage. Take a look at the screenshot below for an example:

photo stumble (by Dosh Dosh)

If the picture is already submitted, you’ll been taken to the discussion page whereby you can add more tags or leave a comment. After doing so, click on the green ‘Save changes‘ button and you’re done.

photo stumble review (by Dosh Dosh)

Examples of Photo Stumblers

Active StumbleUpon users are very likely to be active photo stumblers as well. A brief review of the stumblers listed on the Top Stumblers List will show that most of them practice photo stumbling regularly. Thousands of other StumbleUpon users do so as well, although some use the feature less frequently than others.

To better understand what type of images are likely to be heavily stumbled you’ll need to first appreciate the different types of StumbleUpon users around. Here are three prototypical examples of StumbleUpon users who practice photo stumbling.

1. The Artistic Stumbler

StumbleUpon User - cherishme (by Dosh Dosh)

CherishMe is a classic StumbleUpon user who combines stylistic imagery with unique commentary, which in her case is poetry. Her StumbleUpon blog is a work of art and is immensely popular with many StumbleUpon users. I myself am a fan of her work and there aren’t many like her.

2. The Humor Stumbler

StumbleUpon User - autorave (by Dosh Dosh)

AutoRave is my StumbleUpon username and my SU blog is similar to those of other stumblers, who generally use random pictures from a wide variety of sources. These photo stumbles are usually interspersed with text-only stumbles and they do not generally follow a pattern or theme. Pictures stumbled cover a range of topics from photography, art and web comics to funny pictures.

3. The Photography Stumbler

StumbleUpon User - Mortal-Light (by Dosh Dosh)

Mortal-Light is an example of a photography-oriented StumbleUpon user who focuses on stumbling images alone, very rarely including any text. The pictures stumbled are usually themed and in the case of Mortal-Light, her focus is on nature and urban landscapes.

Some of these photo stumblers are purists in the sense that they may not stumble your web page if there isn’t a picture they can incorporate into their blog.

Take a look at each of these StumbleUpon profiles and check out the profiles of other stumblers as well, so you’ll get a rough idea of how stumblers interact with images on webpages.

How to Use and Optimize Pictures for Stumble Upon

The process of optimizing your images and making them stumble-friendly isn’t difficult at all. Here are six steps you can take to prepare your images for StumbleUpon.

1. Allow Hotlinking Access to StumbleUpon

Yes, Photo stumblers are hotlinking your pictures. And yes, it does consume your bandwidth whenever someone photoblogs your image. I personally don’t mind being hotlinked by StumbleUpon users because the benefits outweigh the costs particularly so, when the bandwidth leeched is rather minimal.

The StumbleUpon user blogs/profiles do not see much traffic and only a small amount of bandwidth is used through photoblogging. This differs from traditional high traffic blogs, websites or forums which can steal a lot of bandwidth through the direct use of hotlinked images.

It is important to note that some StumbleUpon users do not practice photoblogging because they believe that hotlinking is in bad form and unfairly affects the website in question. I would recommend reading this detailed discussion on Photo blogging and hotlinking in the StumbleUpon forum as there’s a good deal of balanced information available on this topic.

I’m aware that some of you might run websites with low bandwidth limits or dislike hotlinking in general. Just be aware that if you disable hotlinking completely for your website, StumbleUpon users will not be able to stumble your images.

While this might be so, some StumbleUpon users will still thumbs up and stumble your webpage if they find it interesting enough.

2. Make Your Pictures the Right Size

This is the the most fundamental part of stumble image optimization. If your images are too big, Stumble Upon users will not be able to submit or photo stumble it, which defeats the purpose of using an image to attract stumble traffic.

Here’s an example of what happens when a particular image is too big to be stumbled (An error box will show up saying that the image is too large):

Diesel Sweeties Screen (by Dosh Dosh)

The key point here is to make sure that your images are not wider than 715 pixels.

3. Use Intriguing and Unique Images

Try to use an image that is not only relevant to your content but highly attractive. Flickr is a good place to look for images, as they have a large collection of pictures and also because you can easily embed the image into your webpage. Do remember to credit the image owner if necessary.

Alternatively, you can create your own unique pictures and graphics or make stylistic edits to specific pictures you have. These types of images are usually very well received by StumbleUpon audiences. Webcomics are a good example.

4. Leverage Another Platform: Use Flickr to Host Your Pictures

Another Flickr Screen (by Dosh Dosh)

When your Flickr-hosted images are stumbled, StumbleUpon traffic isn’t directed to Flickr but to your specific webpage, even though your image is hosted on Flickr.

As the image source doesn’t affect the traffic flow, I highly recommend creating a Flickr account to host your images. As I’ve mentioned earlier in my article on using Flickr for marketing, creating and uploading pictures into your own Flickr account makes them a potential referral traffic source.

StumbleUpon has a feature called StumbleThru, which allows you to stumble within specific websites, Flickr being one of them. By uploading your images on Flickr and inserting a link back to your website, you are essentially creating another channel which will give your website more exposure to StumbleUpon users.

5. Create a List of Images Around a Theme

This method operates through a simple principle: The more images you have, the more likely you are to be stumbled.

A webpage with a collection of pictures is very likely to receive a lot more potential stumbles because users are able to selectively stumble the images they fancy.

Dismal World - Unforgettable Photos (by Dosh Dosh)

Dismal World has a great example of a webpage that is perfect Stumble bait. Their list of unforgettable world photos has a coherent theme while featuring commentary which explains each picture.

This article was extremely well received by the StumbleUpon audience and received 148 reviews since it was first submitted on Jun 24th.

If you take a look at all the recent stumblers, you would have noticed that most of them stumbled different pictures within the list, once again supporting our theory that picture differentiation and themed images help to encourage more stumbles.

Oddee is another website that has a wildly popular collection of pictures. Titled 15 Unfortunately placed ads, this list of pictures feature a collection of images around the theme of misplaced advertisements.

Only submitted yesterday, it has already received 50+ reviews and reached the Digg frontpage as well. Creating a list of pictures will not only allow you to receive many stumbles; they can easily be cross-promoted on other social websites as well.

6. Add Commentary to Your Pictures

Adding comments on each specific image introduces the value of the images to visitors and personalizes it by making it conceptually unique. This has the possible benefit of encouraging more photo stumbles.

Commentary also has the additional benefit of helping your site to rank for several long tail keywords, therefore allowing you to get more organic search traffic as well.

Photo Stumble Optimization Helps Your Website

As most of you will probably know, StumbleUpon can send a tremendous amount of traffic to your website and the consistent use of images fit well with the StumbleUpon audience, particularly because of the built-in photo blogging option.

These optimization methods are nothing devious because there’s really no way to trick a StumbleUpon user into thumbing your website. You can expand your network of StumbleUpon friends as much as you want but you can’t completely game StumbleUpon into giving you more traffic.

You can however, encourage a greater amount of organic, natural stumbles by simply making your website irresistible through optimized usage of attractive images.

For more social media and traffic building tips, subscribe to Dosh Dosh today.

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30. How to increase StumbleUpon traffic?

Posted by Kev on Sunday, October 01, 2006


Having noticed StumbleUpon come up regularly in my referrer stats I decided to try and increase the amount of StumbleUpon traffic for this blog. A traffic stats graph from SEOmoz shows StumbleUpon's fantastic ability to drive traffic, the amount of referrals I have been receiving recently are around 50-100 visits a day which I hope will continue to improve.

What is StumbleUpon?
Social bookmarking websites such as Digg and Del.ico.us are an excellent method of gaining large quantities of traffic in a short space of time but the concept of StumbleUpon is slightly different. StumbleUpon has over a million users and generally refers a lower (but still significant) amount of traffic at a more consistent rate, whereas sites like Digg can send thousands of hits in the space of a few days for promoted stories which have made the frontpage.

How does StumbleUpon work?
Here is the definition of how StumbleUpon works but basically instead of listing popular stories on the homepage StumbleUpon works by downloading a toolbar which allows you to rate a website as thumbs up or down and view relevant websites (by clicking Stumble!) based on your own preferences.

StumbleUpon Toolbar
StumbleUpon toolbar
To begin receiving traffic from StumbleUpon you must have at least one of your webpages submitted. You can add this yourself by downloading the toolbar and browsing to your website, selecting the thumbs up 'I like it!' button will add this page to StumbleUpon.

How to increase StumbleUpon traffic?
The main methods I have found to improve StumbleUpon traffic have been:


* Rating websites
By getting involved in the community and rating some of the websites I visit helps my website appear for StumbleUpon users who have similar interests to my own, therefore they will be more likely to rate my site with a thumbs up! StumbleUpon is time-based, although not to the same extent as Digg, which means the more votes you can get in a short period of time the more traffic you will receive.

* Adding friends
By adding friends you will increase the amount of users who will see your newly added webpages, making them more likely to give your site the thumbs up.

* Submit new webpages
Once I have created a new blog post for example I will submit the URL to StumbleUpon using the toolbar, it is perfectly fine to promote your own website providing you don't overdo it. This will help to increase the amount of my webpages I have present in the StumbleUpon database and improve the likelihood of my site being 'stumbled upon'.

* Carefully selecting topic titles
It is important to categorise webpages carefully to ensure that it will be displayed to relevant users.

* Adding multiple tags
By using multiple tags you can help to attract a wide range of users and by keeping these as relevant to the content as possible will help to keep the traffic targeted.

Tags: StumbleUpon, Social Bookmarking, Website Promotion

Sphinn del.icio.us Digg Reddit Netscape StumbleUpon Yahoo!
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33 comments

You hit the nail on the head since that's basically what I have done and about 75% of my traffic is from there.It's a super way to increase traffic.

Posted by Gary McCurry 3:38 PM

Have you seen on your computer
or heard from anyone about
the stumbleupon toolbar
containing any "ware" ,
such as spyware, adware, etc ?

I appreciate your input, I found
you from a google search about social bookmarking.

Thanks, Steve

Posted by Anonymous 3:44 PM

No, there isn't any adware or spyware. Clearly it tracks what you stumble to make sure you don't keep seeing the same things, and to keep rating records for sites, but you never have to give information you don't want to. I've used it for several months and found it very useful. They make money from user sponsors (20$ a year) and sites paying to get viewed (I haven't noticd a difference so I couldn't tell you who pays for placement in SU). I use the free account and I've found a couple dozen really great sites, hundreds of photos and humour pages... all sorts of stuff i'm interested in basically.

It really is a great extension for your browser :)

Posted by Blissfulpain 2:50 PM

Boy I dunno man. I use stumbleupon to find sites in a particular topic. I don't use it to find people who suggest the sites I find useful. Your ideas are ok _if_ your assumptions turn out to be correct. However, they wouldn't be correct for my case and probably aren't right for others either -- but with close to 2 million users, even a few stumblers visiting yoursite would look like a lot in certain situations.

Posted by KC 3:27 PM

that is a comprehensive article. By the way how did you change your header?

regards

Posted by gazzali 3:22 AM

I got 'stumbled' the other day and when I looked at my logs it showed 300+ visitors in a day (I typically have about 40). Thats pretty good qualified traffic.

I recently tried their paid program for a client (I do SEO) and they currently charge a flat rate of 5 cents per view. A 20 buck test got my client a bunch of traffic and 7 thumbs up yesterday. Now they are in the stumble rotation and will continue to grow. The pay route is a good way to get a jump start on the stumbling as I am sure the more stumblers like the page the more it will go into the rotation.

Not good for all clients, but pretty useful in particular instances.

Posted by hornswaggled 8:23 AM

That's interesting thanks hornswaggled, most people seem to view paying for stumbleupon traffic as a waste of money because the quality of visits is generally poor, but if this can lead to more votes and a further increase in traffics maybe that would help to increase the amount of free stumbles.

Posted by Kev 8:33 AM

Thanks for the useful information. I will focus on stumbleupon in order to drive traffic to my blog. Lets see the response.

Posted by Syd 5:30 AM

Thanks for the StumbleUpon comments, Kev. I was looking for this sort of thing when I was googling around and your blog popped up. I've since put in the remaining sites I control and am looking forward to receiving additional traffic.

Posted by Matthew C. Keegan 4:34 PM

What do you mean by not overdoing it? Is it OK to submit all of your own posts to Stumbleupon? I know somebody who did this and, after a while, he was no longer able to submit posts from his site to Stumbleupon.

Posted by Josh 3:10 PM

A great post thnx :D

I have used stumble upon for the past few days and i am receiving an extra 100-200 UNIQUES a day

Posted by Sam 3:07 AM

Today I wrote about stumbleupon traffic myself and guess what I got over 3.000 unique visitors in about 4 hours , i can't wait to see what will happen tomorrow!

check out
http://www.bontb.com/2007/06/07/one-day-stumbleupon-experiment-traffic/

you could stumble it too tho

Posted by juliax 9:09 PM

As a member of the DP forum I have used all the stumbleupon threads to increase the exposure of my site on stumbleupon and am averaging 2k plus referrals from stumbleupon daily to My proxy network I can testify that stumble will drive traffic to your site. It will provide better results if you get friends and reviews provides you with even more exposure.

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31. Building a large audience for your stumbleupon account.
Over the last 2 months I have been a user on stumbleupon.com. I have really enjoyed using this system as it gives me the ability to search the web and find truly interesting sites I would never have found using any of the major search engines. During my break through post “Google Filters, how to get around them and exploit their loop holes” I noticed the power of StumbleUpon for traffic and for inbound links and traffic. I immediately started searching for any information on how to build a power profile on StumbleUpon. I have since been able to get an audience reach of around 3563. This number is pretty decent and the power that comes behind this type of audience reach can drive serious traffic to your site.

stumble

It’s very interesting to see how SEO is evolving into the “new school” form of search engine optimization. Social media community leveraging has already had a large impact on effectively marketing, ranking and optimizing our SEO clients. StumbleUpon is relatively easy to harness and within a month or less you can have a powerful profile which can help you start sending traffic and links to any site you desire.

Below are 2 images that show you how a stumble can effect your traffic.
stumble 1
pie chart stumble

So how do you do this? I will give you eight steps to help you become a power stumbler.

1) Get as many friends as possible (limited to 200)
2) Stumble as much as you can. Give thumbs up - thumbs down and review pages.
3) Import Your contacts from gmail, yahoo and msn.
4) Share stumbles
5) Stumble upon is time based so the more thumbs up you get in a short period of time the better.
6) Network yourself with other stumblers
7) Enjoy yourself and become part of the community.
8) Stumble pages that are interesting and are overall considered a contribution to the community.

If you follow these steps then you WILL create a power StumbleUpon account and WILL start leveraging this service to become a successfully new school SEO.

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32. Promotion
Don’t Buy Traffic, Use StumbleUpon

What a great tool! I know it’s possible to drive great traffic from StumbleUpon but I never dreamed of getting massive traffic to my blog. Many people understimate the power of StumbleUpon and put Digg in the first place when they talk about social bookmarking websites but Digg has never sent me that much traffic.

StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user — known within the community as a Stumbler — clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. i.e. it is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles.

I run two blogs. This one where I talk about blogging once a day and the other one is just offtopic blabbering where I post even up to ten times a day and I’ve stumbled both of them. When I first stumbled marketfederation.com it drove around 900 unique visitors in two days and I was so excited I wanted to tell the whole word about it and when I stumbled my other blog I got over 2,600 unique visitors just the first day! (the chart below shows stats for my second blog and the traffic is all from StumbleUpon)

Remember three most important things when stumbling your site:

1. Good content
2. A lot of content
3. Good niche

Your first stumble is important because StumbleUpon gives you a little extra traffic the first time and then you’re on your own so be sure your website/blog is ready for the market before publishing. Most important thing is that you stumble as many articles as possible every day so you get as much traffic as you can but your niche plays a big role in all this stumbling game since web 2.0 and entertainment website usualy do better than money-making, SEO or programming related websites. The traffic may not be as targeted as from search engines but I’ve got 30 RSS subscribers just the first day of stumbling so I don’t complain.

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33. August 14, 2007 11:23
Lingering Taste Of StumbleUpon Traffic

Category: Other Information [Offer Your Comment] [To Blog Main]
Submit Lingering Taste Of StumbleUpon Traffic to Technorati Submit Lingering Taste Of StumbleUpon Traffic to StumbleUpon

It all started when I chose to 'stumble upon' my own article in my blog, Kolkata Musing. The article was a humorous post - Effect of worms and viruses - of just 16 words accompanied by a fun photo taken from Funlok that showed a skeleton of a computer mouse.

I didn't plan the action. It was a Sunday, and so I thought let me give it a try. Earlier too I 'stumbled upon' my articles in categories like internet-tools but no noticeable traffic resulted.

The same was the trend when I tried my luck with other social biggies like Digg and 'del.icio.us'. Reason enough for me not to expect much when I made this new effort with StumbleUpon.

What happened then was simply delicious. Within 15 minutes of my posting in SU the first torrent of visitors started rushing to my site. This continued unabated for the next 2 hours.

Since I use PMetrics stats apart from MyBlogLog and Google Analytics, it has been easy to precisely track the onrush of visitors.

What did I find? Well, it proved to be a test of sorts for me using a raging social network site, and the results have been fascinating. Here are my findings recapitulating the events that ensued as the visitors came rushing in from StumbleUpon:

1. Not all categories attract instantaneous visitors, certainly not the ones like politics or internet-tools unless the postings are truly eye-catching or jaw dropping.

In welcome contrast categories like Humor or Bizarre or suchlike have comparatively high rate of success in SU. After this posting in Humor I did another in Bizarre with similar success.

2. Nothing can take away the importance of heading and description. Both should be such that there is an air of suspense in them prompting visitors to vigorously click the link to your site to find more.

3. The main action doesn't last for more than a couple of hours, which conveys to me that as long as the story remains on the first page of StumbleUpon's related category, there will be torrent of visitors. Thereafter it's a steady trickle petering out gradually.

4. Most visitors don't stay for more than a minute. Perhaps that is perfectly in order because they come to a site they've never visited before, and do not find anything of more interest that can retain them longer. In all probability an overwhelming majority of these guests will never again put their feet in my site.

5. Do they click on other links, especially the ads when they are in my site? Sure they do, and for me that's very important. I've the AdSense ads that when clicked fetch me money. After the initial stampede is over, I rush to check the AdSense figures.

I first check MyBlogLog stats and I find that in those 2 hours the AdSense CTR has been 11% of the page-views, which is pretty encouraging. Or is it?

I rush to AdSense figures and there alas only 2% conversion is shown. Which leads me to believe that Google doesn't like sudden spurt in CTR and therefore filters out most of them.

6. Did I gain anything? My answer is 'nothing really'. It'll be too naive to imagine that those visitors who came hotfooted to my site from StumbleUpon and left equally hastily would come back again remembering 'what a great site they have been to'.

7. Did I loose anything? Oh yes, the large volume of traffic gifted by SU ate away a good amount of my precious bandwidth.

8. Will I try it again? But of course I will if only to set adrenalin pumping through my body. Who knows some visitors just may come back for repeat visits..! No harm dreaming that, don't you think?

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34. Is Stumbleupon traffic worth getting?

Posted in reviews at 4:39 pm

I recently decided to do a test at www.stumbleupon.com. Stumbleupon for those who don’t know is a site that offers a toolbar to put in your browser. The toolbar has a button that automatically goes to sites they think you might be interested according to how you set up your account. You can then choose what you think of the site by clicking on a thumbs up or a thumbs down or reviewing it.

There are 2 ways to get into Stumbleupon. One is if people who have the toolbar decide they like your site. The other is paid. You can pay $0.05 per visit. You just charge your account with money and Stumbleupon will use whatever you tell them to.

An expert SEO friend of mine William Cross told me that Stumbleupon was a good way to get some traffic and that a lot of Stumbleupon users have the Alexa toolbar installed. So I sent them $100 and told them to only send 100 visits a day and added my site to the web development category. Sure enough every day I got 100 visitors. Previous to this I had never had any Stumbleupon traffic.

My Alexa rating went up over this time. I forgot to write down what it was before but if you look at the Alexa chart you can see it going up over that period. From my referrer stats I can see that at least twice I got some free traffic from Stumbleupon. My number of community members at www.mybloglog.com has gone up a little every day or so since then as well. I have posted some stats of all www.Stumbleupon.com traffic.

Overall I think it was worth it. It is a good way to grow a website community and get new readers. You have to have a quality site that matches the category you submit to. You have to provide stuff people want to read.

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35. Revealed: the 16 different personality types of StumbleUpon users
3 10 2007

The 16 personality types of StumbleUpon users

Here’s a different angle of looking at social media entirely - by personality type. In case you missed it, when you are filling out your profile in StumbleUpon, you can put what personality type you are. Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), there are 16 possibilities a person can be. There are lots of sites that have sample tests online, but here is the official foundation continuing the original work.

So, I’ve taken a sampling of top stumblers, social media mavens/addicts, and people I just plain find interesting. Here is what I found (personality type definitions credit - personalitypage.com):

The (E)xtroverts:

ENTP - The Visionaries (we’re the best, by the way :) )
nowsourcing
etcetera (top stumbler)
tnash

ENFJ - The Givers
barbarakb
noey

ENTJ - The Executives
waynesmallman

ESTP - The Doers
khook20

The (I)ntroverts:

INFP - The Idealists
gladius
vladtheaffiliate

ISTJ - The Duty Fullfillers
avigle
rustybrick

INTP - The Thinkers
bartthebear
flyingrose

INFJ - The Protectors
caile-girl (top stumbler)

If you haven’t put in your personality type in StumbleUpon yet, you’re missing out. This is an interesting item that tells more about you than that your interests include the Internet and computers :)
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36. Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers
September 19, 2007 — Tim Nash

Give it a Sphinn | Or a Stumbleupon thumbs

What follows is my understanding of the stumbleupon algorithm it is based on some pretty extensive testing using several volunteers however it has been incredibly simplified to make it easier to understand. We may be totally wrong so just a heads up but I hope this will at least give you some idea of what your thumb up is doing. I have also written up a few questions and answers to help people understand what I’m trying to do.
Audience score

Every stumbler has an audience score in the old days stumbleupon told you what your score was but have since taken this facility away. The audience score was based on number of fans, number of pages thumbed up, number of pages thumbed down and number of reviews written. The score is what determines how much stumble juice a person carries.
The audience score has one other factor stumble history. If a stumbler initially stumbles a site and the site receives a large quantity of thumbs up their audience score increases conversely if they initially stumble a site and it’s thumbed down their audience score goes down. Stumblers who stumble a site after the initial stumble also have changes to their audience score but not to the same extent.
It is hard to weight which factor is most important when increasing audience score but the factors as I see them are:

* Number of fans
* Number of thumbs up and down you have given
* Stumble thumb bonus – increase to score based on number of thumbs received on a page.

This model means that the obvious technique to get a “power account” is to find more fans, thumb up loads of pages and start stumbles on pages you expect to be popular – sound familiar its pretty much the same on every social media site.

Once we have our idea of an audience score its time to look at a few basic models that stumbleupon might use, you can skip to the big one if you want but these smaller models I think are important to demonstrate individual parts of the algorithm.
A Basic model


Initial stumbler + (number of thumbs up / number of thumbs down) = visitors

This basic model is based on the idea that the initial stumblers audience score will dictate how many visitors will initially see the page and then the number of thumbs up will dictate how many additional people see the page it also presumes that thumbs down have equal weighting to thumbs up.
Audience driven model


Initial stumbler audience + (% of audience of stumbler per thumb up / number of thumbs down) = visitor

This model is a little more complex it presumes that the full audience score is used for the initial stumbler while each additional thumbs up passes a percentage of each stumblers audience score. This model would account for the stumble wave effect, where stumbleupon sends continual waves of varying sizes.
Audience + Domain model


(Initial stumbler audience/#stumbled domain)+ ((% of audience of stumbler per thumb up/#stumbled domain) / number of thumbs down) = visitor

This model presumes the number of times the domain is stumbled by a user is a factor therefore the initial stumblers audience score is affected by the number of times they have previously stumbled the domain. If this is done for both the initial stumbler and all stumblers thumbing the page up or down it would explain why mailing lists and friends stumbling the same domain has less and less effect.

The models above show a continual development but there are few more factors rather then showing endless models I will just discuss these factors
Friends
Being friends is not a bad thing while stumbleupon does not provide a bonus it is my belief it does penalise accounts that continue to stumble the same things without being friends or at least one party being a fan. I do not believe the penalty to be huge just a balancing factor to flag that the accounts routinely stumble the same information.
Organic bonus
This I think is a huge factor when a user arrives on a site via the toolbar it is “organic” in the way your arrived, stumbleupon presumes you are judging the page on merits having not seen it before it therefore gives more weight to thumbs up that come via organic stumbling. This is another reason mailing lists fail to work over time on stumbleupon.
Send to
I initially categorised the use of send to as “organic” stumbling but my current belief is that it is not considered organic and therefore does not provide a bonus from organic stumbling, more experiments need to be carried out but I believe it may indeed be the reverse and actually cause a penalty.
The Big one


(Initial stumbler audience /# domain) + ((% stumbler audience /# domain)+ organic bonus – nonfriend) – (((% stumbler audience + organic bonus) + N

So initial stumbler juice is his audience plus his previous stumble bonus which is divided by the number of times the domain has been stumbled by the user. Plus for each thumb up the juice is a percentage of their audience score plus their previous stumble bonus divided by the number of times the domain has been stumbled by that user plus a bonus if the stumble was organic and any to close penalties that may apply. The audience score is reduced by a percentage for each thumb down stumbler plus a bonus if organically stumbled. Finally N which is a random number generator or a Tim get out of jail free card.

The big model is simplified to the extreme but I think is fairly accurate but it does not explain stumble wave suitably so within our model we need to look at time. Sadly we haven’t been able to run an experiment beyond a month but based on previous statistical evidence time stumbleupon waves occur on an almost logarithmically with large quantity of waves occurring after the first stumble and then petering out, until the next thumb which sends another series of waves.

Lets follow some examples we will use totally fake numbers to make life easy.

A stumble upon user
Our user lets call him Fred has an audience score of 10 he goes along and starts a new stumble at a site he has never visited it gets a couple of hundred visits and 3 thumbs up
Fred gains a point to his audience score for thumbing something up +a further bonus because others liked his stumble so fred now has an audience score of 13
Fred is really impressed that so many visitors came to his site so he thumbed up another page, even with his increased score it didn’t do so well and only 2 people thumbed it up and 2 thumbed it down!

His score is now 14 (increased for thumbing up – no bonus )
Fred tries a different domain it does well and 10 people thumb it up his score goes up to 25, Fred has realised stumbleupon can make him money so thumbs up his proxy site it gets a few visitors but 7 people thumb down the site and 2 marked it as spam. Fred audience score plummets (18 but has been marked by spam so temporarily has his score halved) so his score is now 9 poor Fred will have to work hard to regain his score.

A Domain
Some nice person stumbles the site they had an audience score of 10 which brought a 100 people 3 other people thumbed the site (all came via organic) with scores of 30/100/40 they bring a further 150.

Next day the domain is stumbled again but the number of stumbles is much lower, the owner tries to encourage people to visit the site by using the send to button and while there are lots of thumbs few extra visitors other then those he sent the send to to.

Mailing lists
A secret group of stumblers have a mailing list, they send an email when they want something stumbled. The first time it worked great and large amount of stumbles followed, the second time it didn’t work quite so well soon the mailing list stumbles are counting for little or nothing. (this happens an awful lot repeatedly stumbling the same domain reduces the chance of a stumble wave next time particularly if people outside of the group are not also thumbing up the groups stumbles.

are serious about social networking (and not just studying it like me!) Then you need friends and do you know what all 100 Top Stumblers and 98/100 Top Diggers have in common?


That’s right they all use an avatar picture…MegT Avatar image
An avatar image is a strong visual brand and identity that people quickly associate with a person many bloggers know who Darren Rowse is, simply by the picture he uses as his avatar, Lyndon from SEO Cornwall is another good example with his distinctive red background. The power of brand and visual identities is simple people notice you. Recently I had a conversation with MegT an Australian Blogger (its her avatar shown) We had both started to notice that every where we went we bumped into each other, now we have interests in similar niches but the reason we noticed each other was down to the fact we both use the same avatar in every location and by doing so we both have recognisable profiles and a sphere of trust.

When brands go wrong…
Trust is a strange thing, to take the example of Meg when I’m stumbling and come across something she recommended I nearly always stop to read, I trust her opinion and therefore think that if she believed it worth stumbling then I should at least take a look. Now you could argue that is how Stumbleupon is meant to work and yes, but I don’t know most of the people who recommend sites on stumble and I haven’t built up a respect for them as a brand.
What if Meg started to send me porn sites? then her brand changes it looses that trust relationship and I start to ignore her. The slope for a known brand is far steeper then some one who I can’t remember, when we gain a visual link and trust and that is then abused we are likely to have greater associated feelings, betrayal guilt etc then if it was a imageless persona.
The second issue with visual identity is when it is stolen or borrowed, if I associate Meg avatar as a trustworthy brand then when I am out in the big Social media world I am likely to either seek her account or add to my “friends” list at various sites based solely on that image, but how do I know its MegT?

Image is a powerful thing, by creating a brand you are pushing yourself to the front but with that comes a few small problems and every so often its worth looking to make sure no one else is using your brand to build their own on..
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Posted in identity, promotion, reputation management, seo, stumbleupon. Tags: digg.
8 Responses to “What do I and the Top Diggers and Stumblers have in common?”

1. daniboy Says:
May 25, 2007 at 6:19 pm

Totally agree there. I’m pretty new to the world of blogs and social media but I am already aware of certain brands/people out there. When you see them as a member or visitor to a site, or leaving comments it immediately gives a higher authority to a site or post you may have simply passed by.
2. Kingreaper Says:
May 27, 2007 at 5:21 pm

Well, with Stumbleupon there is the issue that in order to significantly participate you MUST have an avatar, so the fact the top 100 have them is no surprise even if the recognition factor were not involved.

Also, I feel that a distinctive name is more universally recognisable than a distinctive avatar, because avatar’s are useless in many places, for example I cannot use my personal avatar (nor any random avatar I might choose) here, because there is no spot for displaying it. Of course, a distinctive avatar is more instantly recognisable, so it is probably best to try and maintain both.

Hmm, maybe I should change a few of my forum avatars back to my personal one. And I might as well post it here too: There, recognise my brand people :-p
3. Venture Skills Team Says:
May 27, 2007 at 7:05 pm

Well, with Stumbleupon there is the issue that in order to significantly participate you MUST have an avatar, so the fact the top 100 have them is no surprise even if the recognition factor were not involved.

I don’t think their is any part of stumbleupon which requires you to have an avatar (certainly not in the new interface which shows a blue background silhouette) nor do I think that a name is as identifiable as an avatar though they all add to the overall brand and so obviously the best idea is to have consistent username and brand. You might be interested in http://internetducttape.com/2007/04/10/an-introduction-to-reputation-management/
Which covers text based usernames in detail
4. PressPosts / User / mrflakey / Submitted Says:
May 30, 2007 at 3:30 am

http://pressposts.com/Technology/What-do-I–Top-Diggers-Stumblers-have-in-common/

Submited post on PressPosts.com - “What do I and the Top Diggers and Stumblers have in common?”
5. Kingreaper Says:
June 2, 2007 at 6:11 pm

In fact, now I check, currently the photo is only required in order to use the search function. I think it was required for more functions in the past, but I may be misremembering, I have only recently started using stumbleupon again after an extended absence.Still, almost every active StumbleUpon member (with the exception of a few very new ones) has a picture, so I don’t see it as significant that the top 100 do too (in fact, out of 400 visitors to my stumbleupon blog, only 2 of them have not had pictures, both of whom were extremely minor stumbleupon users, with only about 100 t-ups between them.)

I acknowledge that the picture is a very important tool, but I don’t feel StumbleUpon is the place to be proving that. What you need if you want empirical evidence for your conjecture is a site where a significant proportion of the active users don’t have pictures, and then you can compare how popular those with pictures are to those without pictures at the same activity level. StumbleUpon is not such a site. Digg may be, I’ve never been much of a one for Digg, but I suspect that pictures are relatively uncommon on it.

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37. 25 Reasons You Get Thumbs Up

Muhammad Saleem yesterday wrote a list of the reasons that he might thumb someone down whilst using Stumbleupon.
I thought it would be a good exercise to come up with as many creative reasons why someone might Stumble one of your articles.

1. To say thanks, great post
2. To test stumbleupon algorithm
3. To be the first to discover a new site
4. To build up the strength of a page linking to them
5. To gain traffic both short and long term from the 3rd party
6. To benefit from multiple tier referral programs
7. To bookmark a future resource
8. To build up content
9. To strengthen good relationships with a power user
10. To repair bad relationships
11. Because you stroked their ego
12. For reputation management and branding
13. To share it because it is good content
14. To build awareness in an issue
15. To get them to come and visit their site (linked from profile)
16. Because they are a client
17. To build up followers
18. To get a stumble or Digg on -!- an important story -!-
19. Because someone asked
20. Because they are just being nice
21. To make a comment because they force you to register (just hope it is good)
22. To Get Their Attention
23. because they are polite
24. Because they are just being funny
25. They have auto stumble switched on, and it is just as fast as clicking Stumble

Please note:- this is just a list, and I am not advocating anyone does all, or even any of the above.

All links point to an assortment of quality articles from my recent browsing and stumbling for your enjoyment.
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38.StumbleUpon Launches StumbleThru-Site Specific Stumbling

20 April, 2007 - (12:00)

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed of Startup Meme.

StumbleUpon Logo
StumbleUpon has launched a new feature called StumbleThru, that lets you stumble through your favorite sites. So if you are a Flickr freak, you could now use StumbleUpon to stumble flickr photos, give recommendations on the photos and with time the system will start serving you with hyper relevant content. The sites supported by this feature include-Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace, Youtube, Google’s Blogger, Wordpress.com, TheOnion.com, pbs.com, physorg.com, cnn.com, bbc.co.uk, .gov websites, .edu websites.

The initial set of sites for which the feature has been enabled must be the favorite destinations among StumbleUpon users, however their is a lot of useful, interesting and exciting content scattered around the web that is yet to be stumbled. What I would like to have is a way for my visitors to stumble through posts on Startup Meme. The ratings of the users from my blog could then be fed into StumbleUpon’s recommendation engine and could be used to determine which posts are really good, and could be served to general StumbleUpon audience who has the relevant preferences. This will in no time provide StumbleUpon with immense and valuable data about the great content scattered across the web, hidden even from the spying eyes of some of the best Search Engines.

StumbleUpon has recently been at the center of attention. They just went through a web2.0 makeover, than came the news of eBay acquiring StumleUpon for around $45-$75 million, which was spoiled by Google’s launch of Google Recommendations, a similar service, on the same day.

I have also embedded the Youtube video below, that I stumbled through. Watch it and tell me, if you find it interesting.
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39. Before Stumbling Your Story Make sure That ..

Before stumbling your story make sure that you choose a popular category

I have clicked my stumble button 100 successive times in one session, and I have noticed that about 95% of the pages SU returns were added in categories of my interests. So if you want to write a Stumble worthy story make sure that it falls under a category with enough audiences or if you have a story that fits tow categories, make sure that you go for the more popular one.

How to know the most popular categories ? SU makes it easy for you through the tag cloud on the home page, simply the bigger is more popular.


You may ask yourself are not the popular categories getting more new stories and eventually my chance will be the same if I submit to a low popularity category will less new stories, theoretically that looks right but practically and after many experiments I find out that submitting to the popular categories is far better that low popularity ones. If you try this and find more to add on to this post please feel free to do
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40. Hamaschon
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41. Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic Than Digg

Social Media, Blog Promotion 87 comments

I was digging around in the Google Analytics stats for Digital Photography School this afternoon and did some analysis of some of the most popular pages on the blog over the last month.

One page that has done exceptionally well and continues to bring in reasonable traffic even six weeks after it was written is 11 Surefire Tips for Improving Your Landscape Photography.

The post has had just over 93,000 page views from around 70,000 visitors since I posted i on 18 May. Here’s how the traffic was spread out over this time (you’ll want to click it to enlarge the graph in a new window):

Traffic-1
The Spike - Days 1-7

You can see very clearly that there was a real spike of traffic in the first couple of days. The day after I posted this tutorial hit the popular page on Digg. Here’s how the traffic came in over the first week (i’ve rounded these numbers to the nearest 50):

18 May (the day I posted) - 6,400 page views - largely from direct traffic (via RSS). StumbleUpon generated 405 page views.
19 May - 30,000 page views - 21,000 from Digg, another 2500 from RSS and regular readers, plus another 6000 or so from other sites like Delicious, Popurls and other blogs/sites linking up. StumbleUpon generated 575 page views.
20 May - 6200 page views - Digg sent 1550 of them, another digg like site (Wykop) sent 1200, direct traffic was around 900, other sites still sent a bit and StumbleUpon hit 1050 page views. (note, Google started sending a little traffic on this day).
21 May - 6600 page views - Wykop sent 2500, Digg sent 1100, direct traffic was 700, Google sent 200 and StumbleUpon continued to rise to 1300.
22 May - 3350 page views - Digg was down to 600 page views while StumbleUpon was at 953. Other sites and Google made up the rest.
23 May - 2250 page views - Digg sent 300 page views and Stumbleupon 800. Other sites the rest.
24 May - 2000 page views - Digg sent 150 page views and Stumbleupon generated 550.

OK - so that was the ’spike’ and while StumbleUpon has generated more traffic than Digg in the last few days - Digg is still the clear winner after the first week:

1. Digg - 24,410 page views (43% of all traffic to the post for this period)
2. Direct Traffic - 8634 page views
3. StumbleUpon - 5599 page views (9.5% of traffic to the post)
4. Wykop - 4661 page views
5. Delicious - 2523 page views

The Tail - Days 8-43

It’s usually at this point that a blogger would stop tracking how successful an individual post is going (in fact I tend to lose a little interest after the first 3-4 days) but out of interest today I decided to see what happened to traffic to this post since 24 May. It’s been 5 or so weeks - so how much traffic has the post generated and where did it come from?

Here’s how the traffic graph for this five week period looks (click to enlarge):

Traffic-2

As you can see, the post has continued to generate traffic over the last 5 weeks. On it’s highest day it generated 2800 page views and it’s not dipped below 400.

I won’t go through the period day by day but can you guess where the majority of the traffic came from?

You guessed it - StumbleUpon.

Can you guess how many page views it generated?

60.05% of the traffic to the post from the 5 week period. Here’s how the top 5 sites sent page views over the last 5 weeks:

1. StumbleUpon - 21,963
2. Direct Traffic - 5,253
3. Google - 2,530
4. Digg - 1,057
5. Wykop - 934

Digg traffic has dropped to next to nothing (today it generated 6 page views) - yet StumbleUpon continues to send traffic (today it’s already at 500 page views - 6 weeks after the post was written).

Add the totals for the first 7 days to the last 5 weeks and here’s how the page view count between Digg and StumbleUpon looks like this:

1. StumbleUpon - 27,562
2. Digg - 25,467

Now I know that the Digg traffic for this post wasn’t as big as some other stories that get to the front page of Digg and so it could be argued that this type of analysis will vary from post to post - but I guess the main point of this post is to show how the two social bookmarking sites can have remarkably different impacts. Digg’s impact upon a blog is short, sharp and can be quite devastating (at least to unprepared servers) while StumbleUpon’s impact is somewhat gentler and longer term.

The way things are trending in the case here under examination, the gap between Digg and SU will grow significantly as SU’s steady stream of traffic to the post hasn’t really shown any signs of tapering (although at some point it surely will).

One More Reason I like StumbleUpon

One last thing that strikes me about the comparison between the stats of Digg readers and StumbleUpon readers is the comparison of the ‘Bounce Rate’ figures (or the percentage of people leaving the site after viewing the particular page - ie single page readers who don’t go onto explore the site).

StumbleUpon - 52.31%
Digg - 65.73%

There’s not a lot of different between them I guess - but what interests me even more is that when I compare bounce rate between Digg and StumbleUpon across all pages on the blog - Digg users bounce on average 89.64% of the time and StumbleUpon users bounce 39.28% of the time. As a result the average time spent on the time statistic is also longer with SU readers.
An Argument for Digg?

The last thing I’ll say is that I’ve not done any research on how Digg and SU compare in the numbers of secondary links that they can bring a story. I do know that when I hit it big on Digg that this generally triggers going big on other social bookmarking sites (eg - delicious) as well as causing many blogs to link up. My suspicion is that the secondary links that come from being on StumbleUpon are fewer and further between.

I can only deduce this by seeing a lot of links made to the story in the first 7 days and few being made over the last 5 weeks. If this the case then Digg’s impact on traffic from secondary links and also SEO benefits are significant.
Digg or StumbleUpon? Or Both?

Of course - this post doesn’t really illustrate that StumbleUpon is better than Digg or that Digg is better than StumbleUpon. In fact, if anything it shows how they compliment each other quite nicely - I wouldn’t say no to being featured heavily on both!

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44. My StumbleUpon Friend
Posted by Marty Weintraub on August 29th 2007 in Social Media

SUThis post contains serious tips from a friend of mine who is a StumbleUpon authority figure. She has bookmarked over 3400 pages, has 365 fans, a network of more than 6500 Stumblers, over 70 SU members have reviewed her profile, and is a darn nice person. When this lady bookmarks content it’s certain the thumbs-up will drive 150 to 5000 unique visitors to a website or blog…for each post that catches her eye.

The StumbleUpon Effect
Once, a review she wrote ignited a spark that drove 25,000 visitors to an aimClearBlog post in the course of hours. We’ve experienced this phenomena a number of times for our clients’ sites.

I’ve not included my friend’s SU name to avoid opening the spam-gates and we asked permission to publish the tips below. In the StumbleUpon community, as with all social media sites (and life), making authentic friends and loyalty is what matters. Here are her tips for StumbleUpon success in response to questions about how she built her SU network:


Hi Marty,
I thought you knew how I was building my network at SU. To start with, I have a much larger reach because I am interested in and write about a wide range of subjects and some of those are rapidly growing in demand.

I increase the audience for those subjects because I’ve learned how to interest readers in information most people would normally skip over by providing the connection between it and something they are already interested in.

Then I intentionally keep multiple reviews featured on the Buzz page to maximize who finds me. That is possibly partly because of the authority I’ve built there and that rating is plugged into the SU algorithms.

Another factor is that is that I write far more compelling and extensive reviews than most people do so it is likely that they garner a lot more yes votes than the other reviews. That probably keeps my reviews featured (and sometimes moves some up that weren’t originally featured) and also adds to my juice there.

And let’s not forget tagging - many others (surprisingly also many SEOs) don’t use the best tags or enough tags. You know how important that can be. I have a good example of that:

A writer from Pakistan wanted to post her article on 4-10 year old children being abducted from her country to be forced to be jockeys in camel races. SU won’t let her post her own links any more.

I asked what she would use as tags and she said Pakistan, camels, children, and something else. She would have posted a story about camel racing or children being killed - both would be avoided by most.

If you read the review I did on that article when I posted it for her you’ll see that I “pre-sold” the story the way the best affiliate marketers will pre-sell but not sell whatever they’re promoting. It is a multi-step process:

1. Identify it with something they already know
2. Tell them why they would care
3. Present the story

Here is what she wrote and then what I wrote so you can see how different they are:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Her Version
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Camel Jockey is the worst kind of human rights violation, and the victims are small kids aging from 4-10. For a ruthless amusement of few many families lose happiness forever on losing their children; to be trafficked as camel jockeys in camel races.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My Version
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anyone involved in horse racing knows that riding races is extremely dangerous. Many famous riders including Canadian Ron Turcotte who rode Secretariat have been seriously injured or even killed. Injuries are so common that there is a charity specifically to help injured riders and the families of those who are killed.

Even though Ron is in a wheelchair he drove all the way from Canada to Texas to support the Jockey’s Guild charity. The Jockeys Guild site is at http://www.jockeysguild.com/.

Adults who choose to ride are aware of the risks they are taking.

Forcing children to ride is another matter entirely. Any one of us would never want anyone to physically take us against our will. Rubab wishes that we understand this issue and help make our world a safer place for children.

From the page: “4 to 10 years old children who are ruthlessly tied to the Camels to run in deserts on certain tracks; where these children are usually crushed under the feet of contesting Camels.

In order to manage these children, children trafficking of four to ten years old from Pakistan and other South Asian mostly under developing, has become a common practice for last three decades. Yet, most of the studies done in this context, cover issues like reasons for trafficking, target communities from where children have been trafficked, routes of trafficking etc. However no report yet could empathize with the innocent & victim children being used as the camel jockeys in such areas because a comprehensive investigative report was missing describing the situation of these helpless and small children.

Human-trafficking has become a grave concern for the Government of Pakistan particularly and World’s civil societies generally. Over a million people are reportedly trafficked each year; women and children are alarmingly noticed as the main victims. ” http://www.pak-times.com/2007/07/01/camel-jockey-innocent-victims/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What I do is not always nearly that long, but it is generally substantially longer than what others would write (if they write anything at all). My calling is to help people see and that requires stretching their paradigms, repeatedly, a little at a time.
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45. Hat viele Links.

How Important is StumbleUpon?
Posted by Rose Sylvia on October 9th 2007 in Driving Traffic Using StumbleUpon

http://invent.stumbleupon.com/

[Image by invent]

I loved and used StumbleUpon for seven months before it suddenly dawned on me that I never did use it the way the designer’s intended. I was amazed to find so many other people who think like I think and knew what I knew. Where else can you find others who think like you? What other site attracts so many brilliant geeks?

Adding these awesome stumblers as friends willy-nilly, I did not realize they would be inundated with all the pages I linked in. I used it as a giant annotated bookmark site for organizing a huge amount of research on a wide range of subjects. While I regularly reviewed and added sites I found in other Stumbler’s blogs, I almost never clicked Stumble! and I have never stumbled only in any particular stumblers pages.

What about you? Do you click Stumble? Do you Stumble-Thru particular sites or other Stumblers blogs? How do you use SU? I would love to know and I bet there are tons of others who would too so leave a comment or drop a link to your own posts about SU and/or to your SU blog. I will correct any format or length errors. Anyone who ends up here will be a serious SU fan so there is no telling who you can meet and what great blogs you will discover.

How much do you know about StumbleUpon? Did you know: When ebay bought StumbleUpon for about $75 million many wondered why and others started paying attention if they weren’t already. SearchEngineJournal shed light on why with an interview with StumbleUpon’s CEO titled StumbleUpon Defined vs. Digg, Google, MySpace and more and followed that up with Five Reasons Why Marketers Should Take an Interest in StumbleUpon.

Long before the sale many had realized that StumbleUpon was something special. But what really got attention was the large amount of traffic being mentioned there could send.

On January28, 2006, EGOL asked at SEOmoz if Anybody Else Was Getting Good Traffic from StumbleUpon? On January 31, 2006 Fluxx answered that StumbleUpon Had Stumbled Into His Heart. In August 2006, SEOmoz’s Randfish blogged about StumbleUpon’s Fantastic Ability to Drive Traffic.

Many experience The Power of StumbleUpon where one thumbs up at SU can generate 63 comments in one day, a thanks from the blog owner, and huge jumps on Alexa graphs. But for a for a real glimpse into how much traffic StumbleUpon can really drive read AimClearBlog’s My StumbleUpon Friend.

That traffic driving ability caused many to try to figure out how to Become a Top Stumbler. There has been much speculation regarding how to become an “authority figure” at StumbleUpon. There are many theories on how the StumbleUpon algorithm works. Tim Nash posted his theories in the Venture Skills Blog:

* Stumbleupon Mathematics for stumblers
* More Questions Than Answers
* Organic Stumbling Tip
* To Send-To or Not To Send-To; That is the Question

Maki was right when he posted How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother). Perceptive readers of the interview Brian at NowSourcing did with a 16 Year Old StumbleUpon Power User will realize what actually works. Intention counts. Those who give the most to any social networking site including StumbleUpon will have the most influence. If your only interest is selling something that will be obvious and seriously undermine anything you do.

Web Two-Point-Whatever posted that “a number of people have asked [him] how I get so many visitors to my sites via StumbleUpon. To answer that question, I first need to make it very clear that I don’t actually ‘get’ Stumblers to my sites per say. Instead, I share what I enjoy both what I find on other sites.” He offers tips on being a contributor to SU in Share Your Stuff: Effectively and Ethically Submitting Pages to StumbleUpon & Stumblers.

Social Networking sites benefit those who contribute to the greater good. My favorite articles on how to do that are these provided by Maki at DoshDosh. They are excellent primers on StumbleUpon:

* Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon
* StumbleUpon Networking: How to Easily Build Content and Share Relationships
* Five Simple Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling

There have also been some great posts on how to be an asset to SU. One of my favorites is Andy Beard’s 25 Reasons You Get Thumbs Up. Another is Dana Wallert’s All I Needed to Know About Social Media I Learned in Kindergarten. Both of these blogs are among the best on the Net for quality content and having hearts of gold.

Bill Hartzer suggested Claiming Your StumbleUpon Blog Through Technorati (You’ll definitely want to do this.) Dana Wallert sorted out the multitude of StumbleUpon posts to give us 34 StumbleUpon Posts That Aren’t Crap. If that doesn’t satiate your interest, Lyndon - affectionately known as The Linkbait Cowboy to his friends - went hog wild compiling this Categorized List of StumbleUpon Articles.

And naturally many really want to know how to drive traffic from StumbleUpon:
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46. Centralising your social world
October 7, 2007 — Tim Nash
Using Send To as a information centre

Most of you will be familiar with the Stumbleupon toolbar and in particular with the send to button we have discussed its uses before and when I first reviewed it considered it a fantastic tool to start a stumble however since then the “send to” has become devalued.

“the “send to” has become devalued“

The devalueing of the “Send to” command creates some interesting new uses not as a means to send interesting articles to one another as this would now make it pointless if you valued the article then you would not want to use the “send to” however we can use the “send to” to notify fellow social media junkies of something that may or may not be useful.
In other words

Do not use the “send to” on your posts and article pages

Seriously Don’t do it you are actually harming the posts chances of doing well on Stumbleupon if you use this tool in.

Diagram showing stumbleupon send to button as a central marker in a social world
How it works

Presuming you or some one else has submitted an amazing piece of content to a page like Digg, Sphinn etc then a page will be created on that site, by using the “send to” button on the social media page and not the article without thumbing the page up you can send a message asking for a vote, digg, thumbup.
Key points

* When you use the “send to” button without first thumbing or creating a review a stumble begins on the page but that stumble has no initial stumbler and so will result in no traffic unless a massive amounts of other stumblers thumb the page up.
* This really only works on social media sites that create a dedicated page for each item i.e Digg clones.
* It really only works as long as all the people realise you are not looking for a thumbs up but another action a digg or a sphinn.

The downside

Their is a long term negative to this, if you are not a very active stumbler repeatedly using the “send to” button without receiving thumbs up for posts you are sending people to you will slowly see your audience score reduce an active stumbler will see this to but it is masked by the positive thumbs up they are receiving through their normal stumbling. You also are relying on people using the stumble bar every so often to notice that a new site has appeared.
What about Ebay won’t they get upset?

I can’t imagine they will be upset by not thumbing the sites and creating stumbles without an initial stumbler you are preventing your “send to” stumbles to pollute Stumbleupon, moreover this technique relies on people using Stumbleupon and seeing the sponsored posts which is how Stumbleupon is funded so they are not going to be upset.
Is it worth it?

Well I’m not the only person playing with this or similar techniques, Marty from aimClear has been using a similar technique though I hope this variant reduces the chances of polluting Stumbleupon a little less. We are not alone many people including Rob from Yack Yack have effectively been doing what I’m proposing for a while now and like Marty my original inspiration came from Bill and his idea of claiming your Stumbleupon blog in Technorati.
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47. How do you become a StumbleUpon power user? Ask a 16 year old.
2 10 2007

Interview with aivzdog, a young StumbleUpon power user

For those of you that don’t already know her, Anna (Aivsdog) is a power user over at StumbleUpon with over 500 fans and 5,000 pages liked.

Hey Aivsdog, it’s a pleasure interviewing you. Thanks for making the time.

It is my pleasure to do this for you and to let everyone know how wonderful StumbleUpon is.

1. How did you start out at StumbleUpon?

I don’t really remember how I came across it but I do think a friend of mine mentioned it and I thought I would check it out.

2. Tell us about what keeps bringing you back to StumbleUpon.

I am always coming back because of all the new things people are thumbing up and discovering. Also all the wonderful people on the StumbleUpon. I made a lot of wonderful friends. Some of my friends on StumbleUpon are ferusvulpes, FATCATdagg, anahey, StormJosh, zspada15, SantaGauss, pkirsch, and you.

3. Surely, you’ve noticed a surge in users / user activity lately. How would you say that the SU community has changed?

It is such a wonderful friendly community to finding the best things across the web and I think that is what keeps people coming and joining. There are also new sites being added every second. Ways to meet people with the same interest and same website interests. It is colorful and creative. Just a great place to hang out.

4. You’ve really become a popular user with over 125 reviews and 500 fans. And at such a young age, no less. I find that folks that are Generation X and older sometimes have a hard time understanding the latest generation’s success on social news / social bookmarking sites. Maybe it’s just that I’m still relatively young yet, but I have no trouble seeing why. When I was a kid, the Internet barely existed (no www for sure), and my first computer didn’t even have a harddrive (Apple IIc). Today, people grow up with the Internet all around them and with all the tools available. Not that everyone young is tech savvy, but you almost need to go out of your way to at least have some aptitude. What are your thoughts?

It isn’t actually hard to understand. Remember that we young ones learn things quicker and easier and plus if you have a interest in it you will even learn it quicker also. Our young brains are still developing and don’t confuse things as much as when you get older. Also we have better memory. I am an Internet lover and just love doing anything with social networks and finding things that are fun, interesting, bizarre, and anything that catches my eye. I have always had a computer and internet in my life and just you learn more and more every single day you use it. StumbleUpon is actually made pretty easy to understand so anyone can use it no matter what your age might be. Don’t give up if you don’t understand it right away.

5. What other types of social media sites do you like?

I love social networks. Some other social networks that I enjoy are myspace, facebook, and livejournal. There are so many others and always new ones being created.

6. Social Media such as StumbleUpon has become the latest craze in the Internet Marketing industry. Do you see yourself going into this type of industry in the future?

I would love to do something with the Internet and social networking. But my main career idea is something with animals and photography. Like an animal photographer. I will probably do some kind of job on the Internet some time in my life. I probably will have some different small jobs. Maybe sell some things on the Internet.

7. Any tips for those that are just starting out in StumbleUpon now?

Take your time and explore and learn about StumbleUpon. It does take some time to learn how to do everything and get the hang of things. Go to different peoples pages and see what kind of things attract people to your pages. Some people with great things and helpful pages that i visit often are sehsxu, chris789, 7HL, geoff, starspirit, tutto, CherishMe, and lots of others. Keep your StumbleUpon page updated. Come by my page if you need help with anything and check out my pages that are always being updated.

8. How much time do you spend on StumbleUpon?

I get on and off the internet during the day and so I am on it between 2-5 hours is a good estimate of time I spend on StumbleUpon. Usually whenever I am on I am on StumbleUpon and never far from it.
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48. StumbleUpon Quintuplet From The King Of Blogging Gobshites

Yes that title makes total sense, but you will have to keep reading to find out exactly why.
Stumble Popup

How often do you read a great blog post and forget to share it with your friends? The Stumbleupon toolbar is often a long mouse move away, and most people don't use shortcuts when browsing, because they can't remember them, or because of conflicts between different toolbars and other applications that are running on a system by default.

You hold down the right mouse button and up pops some custom navigation

Stumbleupon Popup

Then you just move your mouse slightly, either to navigate within your browser, or to do various things with Stumbleupon.

This is brand new software, so you would expect a few bugs or shortcomings.

* Registration - The registration procedure isn't very automated, and requires you email a hardware key to them, and in return you are sent a registration code. Whilst having a human element in the chain limits people cheating the registration process, it does cause some inconvenience and confusion.
* Hotkeys - The software relies on sending hotkey information, and if you have a few popular toolbars, you are going to hit conflicts. In my case the hotkey to stumble something conflicts with Roboform, although that was easy to fix.

Roboform Shortcuts

I strongly suggest you grab this software before they start charging for it. (and I am not making a penny from suggesting it)
Converting Traffic From Digg & Stumbleupon

There are so many articles about how to get traffic from Digg and Stumbleupon, but very few that analyze the difference in behaviour once you get traffic from a social media site.

Tim is one of the few people who has actually tackled the difference between Digg and Stumbleupon users and also how they interact with different page elements.
If you want to maximise the value you give to visitors from these services, and thus the benefit you receive, you should definitely read both articles multiple times.
Notice the emphasis - you have to give people what they want for them to take an action that is a benefit to you, such as:-

* linking to your article
* subscribing to RSS feed
* sharing your article with friends

Stumbleupon Friends

Stumbleupon isn't just about gaining lots of traffic to your own sites, in many ways that is just a bonus of a little reciprocal stumbling of the blogs you read on a regular basis.
You should avoid "over-stumbling" the same domains - I have noticed that there can be a reduced effect of stumbles if the same people stumble the same domains all the time, even if they have powerful accounts.
I have learnt a lot about Stumbleupon from Maki - in the past I pointed my readers in the direction of his comprehensive guide to Stumbleupon.
Now Maki has written a followup which emphasises that not only can you gain traffic from using Stumbleupon on a regular basis, but you can also find lots of great content suggested by your friends.
How To Test The Effectiveness of Social Media Traffic?

This is something I am in the middle of setting up on my own sites, so I will have a more in-depth post coming soon.
My friend Alister Cameron has some interesting code set up on his site, that detects referrer traffic from various social media sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon and offers them a different user experience, by simply asking them to take a different specific action.
You could also take a look at the landing sites plugin for inspiration (uses Google search terms) and my friend Rob over at Yack Yack also offered some code a few months ago for handling search queries.
I know many Digg and Reddit button display plugins also work by using the referring URL, so there is plenty of code to play around with.

What tools would you use to measure the traffic?

* Crazyegg - this is one of the obvious choices - you would be able to measure user activity using a heatmap
* Clickheat - this seems to be a great script you can host on your own server, and it is possible to do some quite sophisticated tracking with it, though you might hit performance issues if you go overboard.
It would be possible to set this up not just as an A/B splittest, or multivariate, but also based on the source of the traffic.
* Google Analytics - you could probably do something with Google's analytics which has just had it's interface revamped, though my account is still set for the old interface. Extracting data from Google Analytics has always been fairly difficult, hopefully as they roll out the new version, things have improved.

You might think Clickheat is going overboard, but I know among my readers there are some very fanatical testers who would be quite happy to set up a dedicated server just to run a script like Clickheat, if it allowed them more granular testing results.

Here is the simple code you place on your pages
PLAIN TEXT
CODE:

1.

2.

6.


ABC - you can make this as granular as you like, depending on the limits of your server hosting your tracking script. If you are just testing one sales page, you could easily change that to a source of traffic or adwords keyword group.
No Script - I would probably remove this link

It would certainly be possible to write a simple Wordpress plugin to insert code based on a specific tracking code within your pages, or based upon a page ID or referring source.

I still have to test to see how well it works if you have multiple copies of the code on each page - with the current code (though it is GPL) there is no way to get specific birds-eye-view information based on groups of pages IDs.
The King Of Blogging Gobshites

About a month ago Gavin wrote a post about dofollow which I thought was remarkable, but not because of the content. The content was good, anyone talking about dofollow immediately gets a huge plus in my book, but the title he used for the post in my mind just hit a sweet spot, in a typically Irish way.

I Dont Trust Blogging Gobshites

I gave the post a Stumble just because of the title.

A month later Gavin has followed up the post with the following, and as intended it has piqued my vanity. I have been looking for the best opportunity to link through to him from a post that will actually give him hopefully even more traffic.

Andy Beard - The King of Blogging Gobshites

Actually the original post didn't get a huge amount of Stumbleupon traffic, but even light Stumbleupon activity is far more significant than a couple of Diggs.
Quintuplet?

I decided as I had 5 things I wanted to talk about all on the same subject (Stumbleupon) to add it to Darren's group writing project.
I don't expect all of these items to be of interest to everyone, but I hope both beginners and my most advanced readers find something useful.
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Noch was eingeschleust von doshdosh:

Five Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling

stumbleupon-network-get-more-friends.pngI previously wrote an extensive guide to StumbleUpon, which gave a thorough introduction to using StumbleUpon as a means to direct massive traffic towards your website.

The article was pretty well received and I’ve gotten several questions from bloggers over the past two months.

The question I was asked the most often, was how to build up your own StumbleUpon network of friends, who might help to stumble your blog posts or webpages whenever interesting articles were to appear.

Why would you want to build up your StumbleUpon network or profile? As mentioned in my previous post, the number of StumbleUpon users who stumble your webpages has an effect in how much traffic you will receive in the long run.

The other obvious benefit to having many friends is that your StumbleUpon experience will be enriched and more fulfilling. Sharing websites with friends through StumbleUpon is truly a fun way to interact with the world wide web.

As I will mention in detail later on, the altruistic sharing of websites is the best way to appreciate the full value of StumbleUpon and how it adds value to the experiences of other users.

Five Simple Ways to Grow your StumbleUpon Network

In response to the questions that I’ve received, I’ve listed the five main ways you can use to expand your StumbleUpon network of friends:

1. Be a StumbleUpon evangelist. Write a blog post or article about StumbleUpon and introduce StumbleUpon to your readers. You can also try recommending Stumble Upon to friends who have never used it before. Remember to let them know your StumbleUpon profile so they can add you as their first friend.

2. Connect with fellow bloggers who are also StumbleUpon users. If you recognize their avatars on StumbleUpon, send them a message and add them as a friend.

Publish your StumbleUpon profile on your blog and start to consistently stumble the articles of bloggers you love.

This will allow you to not only connect with the blogger in question, but also the readers of the same blog, who are very likely to be bloggers themselves.

3. Find StumbleUpon users with similar interests. When you thumbs up any article, click on the discussion bubble to see who else likes it. Add the users who have similar interests as your friends or send them a private message to say hi.

4. Practice Reciprocal Befriending. This involves adding someone as a friend in return for that user to add you as a friend. While this is a very fast way to build up a network of friends, it is purely a short-term method because StumbleUpon has a restriction on the number of friends you can add.

250 is the maximum figure and obviously reciprocal befriending cannot move your network beyond this point. I also believe that users who befriend you naturally because of similar interests, instead of a reciprocal arrangement, are more likely to interact with you and your stumbles in the long run.

5. Be a very active StumbleUpon user. Stumble and submit webpages as much as you can. This is the natural way of building up a network of friends and is the best for longterm growth.

Usually StumbleUpon users will see who has stumbled a similar article and some of them are likely to add you as a friend.

This method might be a little slow, but I like it because this attracts StumbleUpon friends with similar interests. They might be likely to stumble the sites you stumble as well.

My Relationship with StumbleUpon so far..

I must confess that I initially started using StumbleUpon solely as a tool to drive traffic towards my websites. Motivated by the desire for sheer traffic, I’ve participated in reciprocal stumble exchanges, which were beneficial to some extent.

After writing my article, I’ve gradually started having a different perspective of StumbleUpon, largely because of my increasing usage of the stumble toolbar to casually surf the net.

I enjoyed discovering unique websites and personalities, particularly through the various Stumble categories and soon moved away from the notion that StumbleUpon was only an excellent social media traffic tool for webmasters.

I came to appreciate the various features of StumbleUpon and developed a deeper understanding of how StumbleUpon is a fairly important tool that should be used for the benefit not just oneself but others as well.

Altruistic Stumbling or Sharing the Power of StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon a tool that is incredibly powerful. Able to channel hundreds or thousands of real individuals to a website based on the simple approval of others, the potential of StumbleUpon is truly staggering if comprehended in full.

Stripped down to a minimal form, StumbleUpon is a vessel that can be used to support the creativity of others or preserve the value of certain websites which are truly useful to the general public.

There can really be no decree that is simpler than this: If you feel that a specific webpage or blog post is important and deserves to be seen or read by others, please stumble it.

There is no easier way to reward another blogger for his or her effort in writing that well researched article, the writer for composing that heart-felt story, the photographer for hours spent taking the perfect photo, the political enthusiast who offers a voice of opposition towards injustice and even the humble programmer or designer who gives away wonderfully useful Wordpress plugins and templates for free.

These concerted efforts on your part help to sustain and expand StumbleUpon’s inventory of websites and allows you to share with others what you have enjoyed. This is the true meaning of participating in a online social network where your editorial voice is counted.

Contributing to the Experiences of Others: Stumbling with Friends

We are all part of a cyberspace that is connected through hyperlinks, images and words which interactively feed off one another.

StumbleUpon mashes all these interconnected elements together and throws it out in the form of a webpage which appears before us whenever we press that 'Stumble‘ button.

This connection between you and that particular webpage was not born from nothing. It came from others who deemed the website worthy of future viewing.

In a similar fashion, you can very easily add value to the experiences of others by suggesting and stumbling websites which you fancy.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, this will naturally lead to a larger network of friends and fans, who will follow your stumbles because you are providing interesting and valuable content which enriches their online experience.

And so a final plea: If you ever come across an interesting website or brilliant blog post by another blogger, don’t hesitate to stumble it and share it with others. I’m sure that everyone would really appreciate your efforts.

I thought it’ll be fitting to put up a link to my StumbleUpon profile just in case any of you would like to track my stumbles.

If you’ve got one too, feel free to leave a comment with the URL linking to your profile, so we can all check it out and learn more about the sites you like. -)
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http://newestonthenet.com/65-must-read-stumbleupon-articles/
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49. Claim Your StumbleUpon Blog through Technorati

Technorati StumbleUpon

Here’s an interesting tip that you probably haven’t thought of yet. In fact, this will increase the number of links to your StumbleUpon blog, and will automatically increase the “link juice” to every page that you add, review, or “Stumble” using the StumbleUpon service.

First, you need to make sure that you have an account at Technorati. You’ll also want to make sure that you have an account at StumbleUpon.

Next, go here to start your claim. Enter your StumbleUpon home page, which will be something like bhartzer.stumbleupon.com.

Once you enter the blog URL, you’ll get a confirmation screen. It will look like this:

technorati claim

Next, click on Use Post Claim » link on the left, the part in green. That will get you to another screen that looks like this:

technorati claim part two

Now here’s the tricky part: Don’t close this screen.

Instead, open a new tab in your browser or a new window and go to your StumbleUpon profile (mine is bhartzer.stumbleupon.com. Edit a recent review or click on the “post new blog” link. Copy the code that Technorati gave you (the a href link code) and paste into a new blog post at StumbleUpon.

Next, go back to Technorati and click on “release the spiders”. Once the Technorati spiders have confirmed that you’ve added the code to your StumbleUpon blog, then you an re-edit the review to remove the Technorati claim code or delete the blog post.

That’s it! You’ve now claimed your StumbleUpon blog with Technorati.
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50. StumbleUpon Is Your Trump.

Sep 12th, 2007 by Artem Belinskiy
stumbleupon.JPG

Traffic, traffic, traffic… How much is in this word. Traffic could give us everything we need - money, popularity and Google’s trust. It happens very often that you have a good article, but there are nobody who can estimate it. You don’t have Google’s Page Rank, your pages are in Google’s sandbox, Yahoo is still not refresh its index and you don’t have your own community to digg on Digg… How can we quit from this situation?

Every blog guru has his own traffic secret. Our secret will be StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. As all our bookmarked sites are social, everybody could see what we are stumble.

Use of Stumble will solve us 3 problems:

* traffic (to some of my posts to 2000 visitors per week)
* increasing of inbound links to our blog
* getting better Google trust and Page Rank

But we will need some additional and really helpful service to keep our traffic from StumbleUpon for a long time. Such is StumbleXchange. The principle of this service is so: you stumble their website and they stumble yours.

Follow these steps and result will not be wait for a while.

1. Register on StumbleUpon if you are not yet, download Stumble plugin, and also register on StumbleXchange.
2. After registering on StumbleXchange, click on userCP and add your blog.
3. Then, you will be given a list of sites to say “I like it”.
4. First, click on one of the Stumble members in first column and add user as your friend.
5. Then lick on the site of added user in third column and if you like it click “I like it”.
6. Repeat 4 and 5 actions.
7. Then click “check” and all your results will be checked by the system.

Now you have to just wait until other StumbleUponers will add your blog in their bookmarks. Don’t forget to click on “waiting” to add others who added you as a friend.

Why do I use it and why do you have too?

1. Links getting. From 2 thousand visitors I received 3 links from forums and 2 from blogs.
2. Many search engine opimizators talk that good volume of traffic at the initial stage, is really helpful in Google ranging
3. Receiving of RSS subscribers.

And the last thing - if you have any questions about this, don’t hesitate to ask me in comments. :)
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51. Making A Power Account On StumbleUpon
Written By: Sujan Patel On August 26th, 2007 | 13 Comments

The Basics

Make a Great Profile Page- You profile page is going to be looked at a lot. Make it exciting, enticing and friendly.
Make Friends - 200 is your limit, but you need friends to do well. Work hard to network and make friends.
Stumble - You need to Stumble to do well. To Stumble you need the StumbleUpon Toolbar. Stumble the articles, blogs and web sites you like. It is great to “discover” a new site, which means you are the first to Stumble that page. You want to Stumble quality material; humor, lists and “How to” articles are great. You can also use the Stumble button on your toolbar and it will take you to sites you are interested in; Stumble these.
Review Other Stumblers - When you give a Stumbler a review they often return the favor and review you. You need these reviews for traffic and a good Stumbler reputation.
Join Groups - There are groups discussing every subject. Find some groups in your niche and join. Try to make “friends”. You can also create your own group and attract a lot of traffic.
Don’t Spam - You don’t want to build a bad reputation.
Import Your Contacts From Email Accounts - When you import your contacts Stumble looks to see if they are using StumbleUpon. You instantly gain friends and can begin networking more effectively.

To Attract and Maintain Traffic

If you want traffic to keep coming to your site you need to offer a quality site or blog:

* Stumble your own site, but be selective
* Brand your site or blog- make it memorable
* Provide quality content
* Offer email and feed subscriptions in a highly visible place
* Always respond to comments
* Thank those that Stumbled you
* Don’t use tags that only a few people will search for; use tags that will attract large numbers
* Offer a different perspective
* Have a contest
* Offer your subscribers something
* Ask questions people will want to answer
* Create exciting an enticing titles to your posts/articles
* Create a blogging network where you and your network can support one another
* Discuss money- make money, save money, win money…everyone likes wants to know how to obtain money
* Link to your StumbleUpon profile page from blogs, MySpace, Facebook etc.
* Promote StumbleUpon
* Visit Buzz Section of Stumble Upon and notice the tags that are getting the most traffic. Use those and check back often.
* Be friendly and have a sense of humor

To have a power account on StumbleUpon you need to Stumble correctly and provide high-quality content that appeals to readers.

Have any tips, tricks or techniques to add, feel free comment or email us (sj at singlegrain dot com) and let us know.
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52. 8 Reasons why I prefer Stumbleupon
Stumble it! | Digg it!

Here are just a few reasons why I use Stumbleupon every single day for my web browsing…
1. I love randomness

Get the Stumbleupon toolbarI don’t think I’m alone on this one. Many times I’ve sat staring at the google search window looking for something new. Sure, Digg and other bookmarking sites have some random content but often it’s the same old stuff. Stumbleupon gives me true randomness, and I’ve discovered sites that both make me laugh and make me record them in my del.icio.us favourites for later consumption. Often I find sites that are very valuable to me in my work as well.
2. It doesn’t involve me typing

I hate typing. It involves exercising my fingers…
3. I don’t find myself chatting to 13 year olds

Digg in particular is legendary for this one. Many of the web savvy generation are just going through puberty right now and are, quite frankly, a major reason why I don’t use Digg very much.
4. Stumbleupon tunes in to my tastes

I just love this concept. It’s very web3.0, I feel. I’ve noticed Stumbleupon has an uncanny way of finding sites that I will enjoy. Giving feedback is a great way of doing this, and the vast majority of sites I visit either get the thumbs up or the dreaded thumbs down.

I think many other users do this as well and so Stumbleupon is much harder to influence by a small pocket of cooperative digging.
5. Stumbleupon seems friendlier

I get the feeling that Digg is a bit, ummm, elitist. The fact that the whole rating system is much more behind the scenes makes Stumbleupon users much less mercenary, I feel. There’s also no apparent ‘elite class’ for people to be jealous of.
6. Stumbleupon is bigger

It’s a little known fact, but Stumbleupon is actually much larger than Digg even. More hits are sent out from the stumbleupon toolbar than all of the Digg topics put together. Digg receives a higher profile simply because it’s legendary, but somewhat temporary, Digg spikes get a lot of attention. Stumbleupon’s day-in day-out hits often pass by, under-the-radar so to speak.
7. Stumbleupon has a more diverse usership

You’d be very surprised at the kind of people who use Stumbleupon. There’s a far higher proportion of women, non-geeky, less tech-savvy people who use stumbleupon. Using a toolbar is far easier than visiting a website. Often the toolbar will be recommended from a friend to people who are otherwise oblivious of the bookmarking ‘revolution’.
8. I don’t end up reading top 10 lists..

..like this one. Digg is famous for its top 10 lists. Top10 lists are a great way to grab attention and summarise content. Unfortunately, after a while, they do begin to grate on people.
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53. Nix besondres.
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54. Increasing your StumbleUpon Audience

StumbleUpon is one of those social sites that many people ignore, although it is not as popular as Digg or Del.icio.us, it can drive a lot of traffic. Back in September I wrote an article on How to get StumbledUpon and how I received 17,209 visitors from using the techniques described in that article. Since then a lot of things have changed on StumbleUpon and I have learned a lot more about it, if you are looking to leverage it here are some of my thoughts.

Stumbleupon

Audience

Each user is given an audience number. The number could be 1 or it could be in the thousands. The overall goal is to get your audience number as high as possible because then when you stumble stories more people will see them, thus increasing your traffic. The following are some ways to increase your audience number:

* Use StumbleUpon on a daily basis - by stumbling and submitting stories (as well as voting) on them on a daily basis your audience number should go up. Just be careful because their algorithm is quite complex and your goal should be to stumble and submit stories you like as well as ones that the community will like.
* Add friends - the concept of friends is that when you stumble stories your friends will also see them. StumbleUpon lets you add up to 200 friends, so be careful and make sure you add friends with similar interests or it could hurt your audience number.
* Join communities - there are communities within StumbleUpon where people with common interests such as "Apple" or "Web 2.0" hang out. Join the communities that you are interested in so that when you stumble, web pages that will interest you come up.

If you do these simple things and become an active member in the community your StumbleUpon account's audience number should get higher. If you have a high audience and submit a website that the community loves, you should be able to drive thousands of visitors to that website.

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55. Beginners Guide to StumbleUpon

Published by Meg at 8:59 pm under StumbleUpon

To write a completely authoritative guide on the nuances of StumbleUpon would take a week - not to mention tons of screen shots! So as a compromise, I’ve outlined what I think are the most important features to understand as a beginner, and you can start exploring from there.

I purposely haven’t researched any other posts about StumbleUpon, as I wanted this to be from my perspective, but when I’m finished I will do so and add some relevant links.

The Overall Concept

StumbleUpon is all about discovery, sharing, and “peer recommendation”. The idea is that you are randomly served up web pages according to one of a number of options - such as pages on a particular area of interest or those of your friends (you get to select how you want to stumble and can change this easily). There are currently over 2.7 million people using the service, which reflects its popularity.

People who join up to StumbleUpon (herein “SU”) are called “stumblers” and will have a nickname - for example mine is “MegT”. My SU page is therefore megt.stumbleupon.com.

If you come across a webpage you like, the idea is that you “stumble” it (aka give it a “thumbs up”). Similarly you can also rate a page with a “thumbs down”, though I don’t know that this is widely practiced (well I don’t anyway). These are known as your “stumbles”.

I don’t think anyone is *really* sure exactly how the “system” works, but there are many theories. The general idea is that the more people who stumble a page (vote positively), the more it gets “offered” to other stumblers as being a quality recommendation (and of course the more traffic it generates for a web page).

Signing Up

The first thing to note, is that in order to add stumbles you WILL need to download a toolbar - there’s no way around it. If you’re not prepared to do that, then you might as well stop reading now!

I can’t remember the exact Sign up steps (and I don’t want to create another account, as that’s frowned upon). But it looks like you create your user name and then download the toolbar. I’m gathering it will run you logically through the steps.

What IS important, is that you take time selecting all your interests (called topics). This is how you get to meet “like minded” stumblers. If you don’t get to add them all during the sign up process, you can update them in your preferences (Preferences / Stumbling / Update Your Topics).

StumbleUpon Preferences

You’ll notice there are quite a few pages in the preferences, it’s a good idea to go through and make you profile as complete a possible. I think it’s “acceptable” to have a link to your blog (if you have one) on your profile page.

“General” - this covers your biographical data - age, location, about me blurb, name, and the obligatory avatar (I say “obligatory” because without an avatar your functions are greatly limited).

“Stumbling” - where you choose the topics you’re interested in.

“Interests” - Books, music, movies, tv (I haven’t been overly bothered with these)

“Personal” - personal info, ie, work, education, sexuality, politics, etc (these are optional)

“Settings” - What your profile looks like, colours, and content filter (eg restricting R rated content)

Other Menu Options

You’ll see other menu options to the left of the “preferences” tab.

“Home” (MegT) - This is your “about” page, which displays your interests, personal details and groups you’ve joined.

“Pages” - By default this displays your “blog”. It isn’t a blog in the traditional sense, but includes any entries you’ve made here and pages you’ve reviewed. You can add an entry by clicking on the “post to blog” button. Clicking “all thumbs” will display any pages you’ve stumbled. “Discovered” shows pages that you discovered (ie were the first to stumble). Tags give you a cloud view (where text size reflects popularity) of all the tags you use when reviewing pages.

StumbleUpon Pages

“Friends” - the friends page displays three types of friends.

Mutual Friends Unreciprocated Friends Fans

Mutual friends, are people you’ve added as a friend who have also added you as a friend.

“Friends showing you pages” are friends you’ve added, who haven’t added you back (unreciprocated friendships).

“Fans” are people who have added you, that you haven’t added back.

SU have this to say about friends:

“Adding a friend is essentially subscribing to their content. You will stumble upon pages they have rated, filtered according to the shared [topics] displayed on that person’s profile.”

You can only have 200 mutual friends, so it’s good to chose people who like similar topics, as this will influence the pages you may get shown (similarly, the pages your friends get shown and perhaps their likelihood of “thumbing up” your pages). You can always remove someone from your friends down the track.

“Inbox” - when you get a message this little icon has a flag on it. You can access the message by clicking on the icon.

“Network” - this shows who has recently visited your profile, and will display the last 10 stumblers to visit.

“Matches” - this displays people who are interested in similar topics. You can filter the results (e.g. females from Sydney interested in weblogs who are between the ages of 35 and 40) .

“Forum” - displays discussions in any groups that you join.

“Your Reviews” - you’ll notice in the screen shot below, that there may be reviews on your profile. If you click this button, you’ll not only see what other people have written about you, but also which stumblers have given you the “thumbs up” (the most recent will be displayed first). I think it’s nice to reciprocate these where possible. The process is the same as “how to stumble a web page below”. Every one loves a first review when they’re starting out - it gets the ball rolling, and only takes a few extra seconds. These stumbles are usually submitted with the tag of “stumblers”.

Stumbler Reviews

The Toolbar

This is what my toolbar looks like (I’m not sure what it looks like by default). You can customise what is shown by clicking on the last option “tools”.

StumbleUpon Toolbar

The first thing you’ll notice is a red number “1? next to the Stumble! button. This indicates that a friend has sent me a page directly that he or she thinks that I might be interested in. By clicking that button I’m taken to the page. You’ll notice a “send to” button with a drop down box - this is how you chose a friend to send it to. BE VERY CAUTIOUS of overusing this function. It’s nice to ask someone if they mind first, particularly if referring your own posts or website.

Generally, clicking the Stumble! button, will take you to a random page, depending on the preferences you’ve set. You can Stumble many ways including; by topic, channel (web page, video, friends, news or images), a particular friend, tag or all your favorites. Explore a bit!

How to Stumble a Web Page

Firstly, if you see a web page you like, click on the “thumbs up” button. If it has already been discovered the thumb will turn to green. You have two options, leave it at that, or click on the little speech box (which I think now looks a bit like an ear! - it’s the one on the end).

SU Review

Clicking on the speech box will show you people that have stumbled that page, and any comments (reviews) that have been left. Your stumble will be at the top (directly under the avatars of people who have stumbled it). You can add your review by clicking “edit review”, and here you can also add tags to describe what the page is about (separate these with a comma, but if it’s a two word tag just separate with a space eg “blog, internet, social networking, StumbleUpon”). Using tags (relevant tags) really adds value to the whole experience.

SU Edit Review

How to Discover a Web Page

So if you click on the thumbs up and the site hasn’t already been discovered you’ll get a dialog box which will pop up. It’s nice if you can take the few seconds to fill it in properly. Here’s an example:

SU Discovery

The URL and Title are automatically added to the discovery page. You’ll notice that I highlighted some of the text from the web page. This text is automatically added to review area as a quote (note: sometimes the formatting goes a bit wonky with apostrophes and quote marks, so you might need to tidy it up).

Next you select a topic, the most popular ones are already there so you can just click on one, or chose a more appropriate one from the drop down box. Add a few tags, and don’t forget to click the corresponding button as to whether it’s an adult site or not and the language, if other than English. Hit “submit this site” and you’re done!

Other Places to Explore

There are lots of places to explore on StumbleUpon. They’re not always easy to navigate to from your profile.

The Buzz section lets you see what’s popular at the moment, and you can filter this by topic. You can also search by a particular tag.

You can explore people currently online, and popular videos (and they have a terrific selection of Australian videos). Also you might like to see if there’s a group that appeals to you. You can find out a little more about the technology and they also have a comprehensive “help section”

Other Resources

Tim Nash has a post about the “send to” function being more effective than when your friends stumble - “Organic Stumbling Tip“. He has a few other posts too, which are a good read; Stumbling Voyeur, Reputation Management and Digg vs StumbleUpon.

A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon - doshdosh

How to Use StumbleUpon to Promote - Webby Online

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The reason I put this guide together was because a lot of the feed back I have been receiving here is that many people don’t quite “get” StumbleUpon. It’s like any social networking site, in that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. I hope this might have helped.

One question that was raised by AgentSully in comments, is the following

Regarding StumbleUpon, I’d be interested to hear everyone’s opinion on this:
what if you send a post link of your own blog which is relevant to stumblers who are in a specific SU group? If the post is relevant and the message offers to review material that the recipient might want to share in return, could this not be ok? I’ve actually met some great folks this way on SU. For people who don’t like this messaging can be set to “off” or “only messages from friends” (I believe).

What do you think?

So I’ll turn that question over to you. And I’d love to hear of any tips, questions or feedback you have regarding StumbleUpon :)
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56. How TO Run A Successful StumbleUpon Advertising Account

Long-term readers of this blog it is not a secret that I am big fan of StumbleUpon (SU). I find that SU traffic stays longer and views more pages than any other traffic source. This month I will receive more traffic from SU than from Google making me less sensitive to any algorithm changes that Google makes in the future.

Being such a SU fan I am always looking for new ways to get more traffic from the site. So when I saw that Darren Rowse at Problogger has written an article on buying StumbleUpon traffic I was very curious to see what Darren to say.

In the post Darren identified 3 ways to improve the success of your SU campaign. They are:

Make Your Content Appealing to SU users to get Organic Stumbles - While 5 cents per impression isn’t that expensive (it’s a lot cheaper than some other forms of advertising) it’s more expensive than natural traffic from SU. Your goal should be to start the campaign off with paid visitors and then let the natural voting up of content take over. To do this you need to create content that is appealing to SU users.

SU works better for some markets than others. As with any type of advertising, look at who is stumbling and visiting sites in your market and make sure that it matches your content and target audience.

Make Your Page Sticky - The other way to get extra value from a StumbleUpon advertising campaign is to get the visitors who come to your blog to come back again and become loyal readers. This is one of the biggest challenges that you’ll face with advertising using any means - but particularly on a service like StumbleUpon where users have their cursor hovering over the Stumble Button ready to surf on to the next site. Of course the best way to hook someone onto your blog is to create compelling content that they can’t live without - but also consider other ways of making them loyal readers by prominently offering subscription methods, driving people deeper into a blog.

SU visitors are notoriously sticky, but don’t take that for granted. If you develop some really good content for the SU visitor to see, you will be happier with the campaign results than if you sent the traffic to a generic page on your site.

Test and Tweak - The key with StumbleUpon is not to throw big money at a campaign straight away. Get your landing page/post ready and then set a small budget (a few dollars) to see what results you get. Once this is spent - do some analysis of how many people voted the post up and down. If there were more downs than ups you might want to change something about the post (title, add a picture/video, change your opening paragraph etc). Then run another small campaign to see what impact the changes have. Do this until you have a page that is consistently getting voted up and then turn up your budget a little. Keep in mind that you might only need to get a relatively small number of up votes before SU will start sending you organic traffic so be ready to pause your campaign once this starts to happen or you could waste your money.

Good suggestions here. When you start to drive paid SU to your site, the votes that you will receive will in turn bring organic SU visitors. So for example, you might pay $50 for 1,000 SU visitors. But those 1,000 paid visitors buy voting might bring another 1,000 free SU visitors, reducing your cost per visitor from 5 cents to 2.3 cents.
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57. The Secret Features of StumbleUpon
30 08 2007

StumbleUpon StumbleUpon, a popular social media site, is a fantastic way to “channel surf” through the web. The StumbleUpon folks were intelligent to set up the system the way that did. Ebay thought so too, having recently purchased them for $75 million.

So, what’s the secret feature, you ask? First off, StumbleUpon has a much more thorough Help page than most social networking sites, but as with any good help page, there will always be more to add.

If you have ever had someone review something that you Stumbled, you will see something like this:

Stumble Upon user review

(If you’re wondering about the context of this review, this stumbler was reviewing my article about Google Sky being released).

Note that the “Helpful?” link has been highlighted. That’s because I said that this user’s review was helpful. I’ve seen on the web that some people speculate that selecting “no” is the same as reporting a review that’s inappropriate. Even if that’s true, nothing is speaking to the “yes”.

I have seen a notable difference in the popularity of my stumbles that I selected helpful reviews vs. not selecting them. Has anyone else seen similar results? Perhaps there is also some added benefit from others rating your reviews, bringing you closer to Top Stumbler status? Look for a future post from me to go into further stats comparing the results.
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58. Increasing Your Stumbleupon Network

With it apparently being stumbleupon week I figured I would give an insight on how you can increase your stumbleupon network. First I will tell you why this is important.
Why it is important to increase your stumbleupon network

By people adding you to their friends list, they are then subscribed to the pages you stumble. The pages you stumble are what they will see, when they are stumbling. If that makes sense. Then if they stumble your page, those people who are friends of theirs will see your page. By getting more people subscribed to your pages, the more powerful your stumbles are. Basically a person who has 100 friends has a more powerful stumble than a brand new stumbler. Not only is it more powerful, but it has a greater chance more people will see it. That is the main benefit of building your stumbleupon network.
Three ways you can increase your network

When I wrote about the importance of building your stumbleupon network I mentioned that I had 59 fans. 2 days later, I currently have 118 fans. How did I do it?

First you should mention your stumbleupon page when writing about stumbleupon like I do. By doing this people go and add you as a friend, trying to build their own network. Somewhat similar to the technorati favorites exchange we saw some time ago.

Ask for friends! Yesterday I was asking for comments and a friend request, in turn I stumbled their blog or website.

The most successful thing I did however was turn to the digital point forums. Under the freebies section I posted 20 free stumbles. In return all I asked was that they add me as their friend, and I would stumble one URL. After doing this twice I gained about 40 new friends.

What have you done to increase your stumbleupon network?
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59. Writing for StumbleUpon:
High Impact Content “Above the Scroll” in Four Easy Steps

by Muhammad Saleem

StumbleUpon

Most Copyblogger readers are likely familiar with the concept of “above the fold,” which refers to placing the most important or most attention-grabbing content on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper. When applying the same concept to content published on the web, we can think about it instead as “above the scroll,” since we make traditional “above the fold” content visible to readers without requiring them to scroll down.

With StumbleUpon, an under appreciated yet extremely powerful socially driven content discovery site, staying above the scroll is more important than ever. That’s because “Stumbling” is very similar to channel-surfing on television.

As a user of the site, you repeatedly click the Stumble button to see random pages based on your preferences. You give either a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” based on your opinion of the value of that page. Just like channel-surfing, however, StumbleUpon users are surfing the web for content that is instantly captivating, making it more important than ever to use your above-the-scroll real estate wisely.

Here’s a quick comparison between two sites that I have a lot of respect for and read regularly (both images are of an article in single-post view):

Copyblogger on StumbleUpon

Channel surfers will give a site 2 to 3 seconds to see if something interesting is going on before they Stumble away. In this first case, you can see that Chris Garrett’s Copyblogger article starts with a visual that grabs your attention immediately and compels you into the content. Beyond the image, the article includes an opening question, some elaboration, and three items from a list of seven, all above the scroll.

Freelance Switch on StumbleUpon

With Freelance Switch, however, (even on my screen, which is bigger and higher resolution than your average reader’s and can accommodate more content) you see the site’s header and byline which take up 50 percent of screen space and the post meta-elements taking up another 25 percent, leaving only 25 percent for actual content, in which you can barely see the first two lines of the article and can’t make out the image at all.

Here are some things to keep in mind when writing specifically for Stumblers:

1. Put serious thought into your title: When you start writing a post, you obviously have an idea in your head. If you can’t start with the headline first, write a temporary title when you start but once you’re done, make sure you rewrite it so it stands out.

2. Start with a striking visual cue: A picture is worth a thousand words, and Stumblers really take that to heart. Nothing grabs their attention more than a striking image. StumbleUpon users seem more likely to be drawn in by the smart use of images, and there’s no better placement for a great image than at the top of your article.

3. Have substance above the scroll: When my cursor is on the Stumble button in my toolbar, I don’t want to take it all the way to the scroll-bar and scroll down to get to the content. Lay it out for me so I can decide whether I want to invest time in your article or not with minimum effort on my part.

4. Make an engaging opening splash: So far so good, but to make me scroll down you have to make a splash with your opening. Simply having content above the fold isn’t enough. Ask me a thought provoking question or tell me you’re going to help me make millions (but if you don’t deliver in the body content, I’m giving you a thumbs down and never coming back). Add extra effort into your opening because this is what’s going to make me read the rest of your article, lead me all the way down to the comments section, and give you a big thumbs up and perhaps a nice review on StumbleUpon.

5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang

by Brian Clark

What’s the second most important part of your blog post after the title?

Master copywriter Eugene Schwartz often spent an entire week on the first 50 words of a sales piece — the headline and the opening paragraph.

Just imagine how disappointed you’d be after crafting a killer headline for your post, only to lose readers with an opening that failed to carry the momentum. A great headline mixed with a lame opening is like inviting someone into your house, only to slam the door in their face as they approach.

So, here are 5 ways to open your post that will capture the reader’s imagination and pull them deeper into your content.
1. Ask a Question

Opening your post with a question is a rhetorical device (hence, the “rhetorical question”) that creates curiosity and gets the reader thinking. Thinking equals active engagement with your writing, and that’s a very good thing.
2. Share an Anecdote or Quote

Anecdotes are quick stories that can make people laugh or immediately establish the main point of your post. A nice quote from a recognizable authority or famous person can also work wonders when holding attention in those crucial opening seconds.
3. Invoke the Mind’s Eye

Producing a mental image in a reader’s mind is one of the most powerful things you can ever do as a writer, so expressly engaging the imagination is a powerful opening technique. Activate the mind’s eye of the reader by using words like “imagine,” “picture this,” “do you remember when,” etc.
4. Use an Analogy, Metaphor or Simile

Analogies, metaphors and similes are some of the most powerful devices available when it comes to telling a story in a single sentence. This is a great way to capture a reader’s attention and also acts to provoke mental imagery that allows readers to tell a story to themselves.
5. Cite a Shocking Statistic

Starting off with an interesting factoid is also a great technique. People love being provided with interesting data, but only if it is unique, startling, or even shocking. The statistic should also be directly relevant to the point of your post as well.

Bonus Tip: The third most important part of your blog post is the closing. A great way to close is to tie back into your opening.

So, which of the 5 techniques did I NOT use in the opening to this post?
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60.
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61. How to get StumbledUpon

StumbleUpon is a popular social site that over 1 million people use. It is not as popular as digg or del.icio.us, but it drove 17,209 visitors in the last 25 days to this blog. That makes it a valuable traffic source, so lets see how StumbleUpon works and how you can use it to get traffic to your website.
Toolbar

StumbleUpon is very similar to digg because the community votes for what they like, but unlike digg you do not go to www.stumbleupon.com to vote; instead you install a toolbar into your web browser.

StumbleUpon toolbar

As an Internet user you probably browse tons of web sites on a daily basis, with the StumbleUpon toolbar, when you see something you like, you hit the "thumbs up" button on the toolbar and when you see something you dislike you hit the "thumbs down" button. You don't necessarily have to vote on each web page you visit, but you can do this with pages you really like or dislike.
Community

If you want to see what people like on digg you would visit the digg homepage. If you want to see what people like on del.icio.us you would visit the del.icio.us popular page. If you want to see what other people like on StumbleUpon you hit the stumble button on the toolbar.

Every time you hit the stumble button on the toolbar a new page will appear. StumbleUpon has an algorithm that tries to show you pages that other people with similar interests may like. The algorithm is able to do this by looking at a few variables:

1. It looks at the stories you mark as thumbs up and thumbs down. Then it compares your votes with other users to figure out which users have similar interests.
2. StumbleUpon is like MySpace in the sense that you can view other people's profile. If you see someone's profile that you like, you can add them as your friend. Once you have added friends, the algorithm shows you pages that your friends like when you press the stumble button.

Joining in on the community

So now that you know how StumbleUpon works, here is how you can maximize the number of people that see each story you give a thumbs up to.

1. Get involved with the community. Vote on web pages that you like and dislike on a regular basis. The more you stumble the better.
2. Add as many friends as possible (limited to 200), that way when you give a page a thumbs up more people will see it and potentially and also give a thumbs up if they like it.

StumbleUpon is time based so the more people that vote for the web pages you like with a thumbs up within a short period of time the more traffic those web pages will get. Some people use this to their advantage by voting for their own website which is fine (as long as it is not abused), but if you want to get a lot of traffic to your site from StumbleUpon make sure you have a lot of friends before you start voting.
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62.
StumbleUpon Visitors Not Identified by Analytics
Share This Wednesday 7 February 2007 @ 8:30 pm

There has been quite a buzz lately about Stumbleupon traffic. I’ve been testing Wordpress and other analytics programs and have found that many of them don’t count Stumbleupon visitors correctly.

Here’s a quick look at plugins, server side analytics, and java tracking:

* Wordpress Plugins:
o Slimstats plugin thinks the traffic is internally referred, so doesn’t count the visitor.
o Shortstats thinks the same think as slimstats.
o Counterize II doesn’t seem to count it as anything.
o Popstats gets it right, but doesn’t have aggregate views into referring domains.

* Server Side Analytics Programs:
o AwStats thinks it’s a website referral and counts the link the traffic came from; however, it doesn’t group all of the traffic together unless you do a special sort in the referring source. For some reason, I see over 50 different referring stumbleupon URLs. No other program sees this many variations.
+ Stats show 914 stumbleupon visitors.
o Webalizer gets it correct for the most part.
+ Stats show 1102 stumbleupon visitors.
o Raw log files
+ Stats show 1153 stumbleupon visitors.

* Java Based Analytics Programs:
o Google Analytics counts them similar to feedburner.
+ Stats show 373 stumbleupon visitors.
o Feedburner analytics is missing quite a few of the referrals.
+ Stats show 364 stumbleupon visitors.

* Log File Parser
o ClickTracks gets it correct
+ Stats show 1152 stumbleupon visitors.

It seems that a stumbleupon.com URL looks like:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http%3A//www.ewhisper.net

The redirect that stumbleupon.com is preforming confuses every WordPress stat plugin I’ve tried.

Dixon wrote a great post at WebmasterWorld about java vs server side tracking a while ago, which is a worthwhile read about the advantages and disadvantages of each.

If you rely just on java, or just on server side stats (or Wordpress stat plugins) - you might be misinterpreting how much traffic Stumbleupon can bring to your website.
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63. StumbleUpon: Exposure That Lasts

After looking at my statistics after numerous posts from my site were submitted and promoted on StumbleUpon, I saw a huge difference between traffic from the more mainstream socially driven sites (i.e. Digg and Netscape) and that from StumbleUpon, in a very positive way.

Exposure that lasts

Both Digg and Netscape send almost zero traffic until you get promoted to the sites' homepages. While both these sites, and especially Digg, have the power to send thousands of visitors to your site in a very short time, exposure from these sites starts only once your content gets promoted and lasts only as long as you are in the first few pages of the promoted content sections of the sites. The further down the homepage you move, and then the further down the pages of the homepage you move, the smaller your traffic numbers will get.

On the contrary, you only need 3-4 thumbs of approval from Stumblers before a decent number of visitors start coming in to your site. The more 'likes' (thumbs up, or votes) you get, the more traffic you will get. Unlike Digg, where you can get 5,000 visitors per hour for a few hours and then next to none from there on, StumbleUpon sends you sustained traffic over long stretches of time. For example, I have been seeing the site send me around 200 unique visitors per hour for 3 days now, with the number sometimes spiking to 350 per hour and even as high as 1,200 visitors per hour.

People often discount StumbleUpon because the traffic spikes aren't as sudden and as huge as those resulting from Digg. While it's true that the spikes aren't as huge, if you look at the total traffic trends over longer stretches (i.e. a week or two) you will see that the visitor count equals out. Furthermore, because the traffic from StumbleUpon is averaged out over longer periods, you don't have to worry about exhausting your MySQL databases or crashing your servers.
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The Qualities of a Good Digg Title

Each day, thousands of stories are submitted to Digg by its users, who often have vastly different reasons for submitting them. Some use Digg as just a personal bookmarking service, while others submit their own content in the hopes that it will get attention from others. Still others just want to share good, quality content with the world. In any case, a key component of getting people to notice your story is having a good Digg title. But exactly what makes a good Digg title? This blog has written about the characteristics of good Digg titles in the past but today I thought we should take another look.

dc_ditle.png

I can't tell you how many times I've seen Digg stories titled poorly, slapped my forehead and wondered to myself, "What was this person thinking? Did they really think that people would digg this?" This screenshot above was taken just this morning at random from Digg's upcoming section and I can tell you, I will never Digg any of these stories, or stories like them, for reasons I will describe below.

I thought it might be useful for me to give a few tips as to what makes a good Digg title and description. Note that a good Digg title may possess only one or as many as all of these characteristics; occasionally, they will possess none. Nevertheless, I think if you follow these guidelines, you'll maximize your chance of a front page submission. Here are adjectives I would use to describe a good Digg title:

1) Informative - Your title should tell me something about what's going to be waiting for me on the other side of that link.

2) In English - This doesn't just mean that you shouldn't submit French or Spanish titles to Digg (although that's important too). This means that you should read over the title and the description and make sure they don't sound like they were written by a five-year old. Check for typos and make sure sentences are complete and grammatically correct.

3) Intriguing - This one is key: Your title should be written in such a way as to make me want to find out more. This will often mean that you need to use a title that is different than the original title for the article. For example, see "Toy-themed virtual worlds" in the above screenshot. The submitter just used the title of the original article, not thinking of what would make for a good Digg title. The story is somewhat interesting, about how virtual worlds can undermine basic human values. So a title like "Virtual Worlds Undermine Basic Human Values" or "Virtual Worlds Shown to Undermine Basic Human Values" might be a better headline for the exact same story.

4) Relevant - "Pai Gow Poker Rules" may be a fascinating or intriguing topic, but it's not one that the Digg crowd is likely to be interested in. Read what gets onto the front page of Digg and tailor your Digg submissions to people's preferences if you want your story to make it big. I don't think this is necessarily that restrictive, as Digg users have a wide variety of interests. But unfortunately, I don't think Pai Gow poker is one of them.

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.
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64. How to Set Up a Domino Effect of Traffic

dominoesDo you think your blog doesn’t have enough traffic to become popular with major social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us? I don’t normally have a huge amount of traffic either, but I’ll show you how I was able to get over 34,000 unique visitors in two days without submitting the page to any of the sites mentioned above. And best of all, I think it is a strategy that many of you can duplicate.

With dominoes, before the fun begins you have to strategically set up the pieces. You set them up to flow from one to the next, and to multiply from one into two. As the dominoes spread, those small multiplications add up and suddenly you’ve got a whole mess of them knocked over.

With website traffic, if you’re lucky, the domino effect can happen on its own. But to have the best chance of success you’ll need to strategically put the pieces in place and push the first one to get things started.

With the right strategy even small blogs can maximize social media marketing and create more traffic than ever before. After somewhat accidentally coming across this concept, I’ve attempted the strategy three times, and twice it has resulted in new traffic highs.

How Does it Work?

Social media marketing is used by most bloggers, because if successful it can bring thousands of visitors, new links, and new subscribers in a very short period of time. Contrary to the opinion of some bloggers, having success with major social media sites does not require you to already have a popular, highly-trafficked blog (although that certainly doesn’t hurt).

Many social media sites share users. For example, a del.icio.us user may come across a blog post and submit it to StumbleUpon. Likewise, another user may come across that blog post on StumbleUpon and submit it to Digg. This is one of the keys to the domino effect.

Some social media sites, like StumbleUpon, are easier to have success with, and others are more likely to require a large list of “friends”, like Digg. With StumbleUpon, one person submitting your blog post can lead to thousands of visitors. With Digg, the post is very unlikely to generate much traffic unless it is submitted by a user with a lot of friends (or more accurately, a user who has been be-friended by a lot of other users).

The Importance of 2nd - Tier Social Media Sites

If you’ve done much reading on social media marketing, these statements are probably not new to you. But what many people overlook is the power of 2nd - tier social media sites. There are a number of smaller social media sites that send a significant number of visitors and are easier to have success with than the major sites. Many of these sites focus on specific niches, which can bring even higher quality traffic than say Digg or StumbleUpon.

These 2nd-Tier social media sites are essential to the strategy that I have used to produce the domino effect of traffic. As mentioned earlier, many of these sites share users, and 2nd - tier sites are no exception.

In order to set off the domino effect, I’ve been able to have blog posts become popular with 2nd - tier sites and then have the traffic that is generated from that popularity carry over and result in popularity with major social media sites.

To best explain this, I’ll lay out the strategy that I used (and how it played out) with last week’s post, 77 Resources to Simplify Your Life as a Web Designer. Back in July I started using a 2nd - tier social media site, Dzone, which is a niche site for web designers and software developers. If your post gets to the front page of Dzone it can send about 300 - 600 visitors in a day. (Note: Dzone very strictly enforces that content be on topic. Anything off topic will get nowhere and will probably be deleted. Trust me, I found this out on my own.)

In July I had two posts that became popular on Dzone (83 Webmaster Resources and Find the Perfect Colors for your Website) that also immediately began to rack up a lot of bookmarks, and wound up on the front page of del.icio.us. It didn’t take a genius to realize that a large percentage of Dzone users are also del.icio.us users.

While Dzone sends a few hundred visitors in a day, del.icio.us sends a few thousand visitors in the same amount of time. The del.icio.us numbers are obviously higher, but for me the traffic from Dzone was essential and it actually provided a springboard to the traffic from del.icio.us. Without the popularity on Dzone, the popularity on del.icio.us would have never occurred.

After I realized the connection between the users of the two sites I started to think of how I could maximize this traffic. To start with, I needed to have a post become popular on Dzone. After using Dzone for a little while I’ve realized certain types of blog posts that are likely to have success. So creating the right kind of content is obviously important.

Setting Up the Domino Effect

In order to benefit from the connection between Dzone and del.icio.us I decided that I needed to optimize my blog posts for del.icio.us users. I did this by adding a large link at the bottom of each post that says “bookmark this on del.icio.us”, and it also shows the number of people who have bookmarked the page (you can see how to use this tool in my post 10 Tips for Making Your Blog Posts More del.icio.us). My experience is that this tool is very effective. As Dzone sends a few hundred visitors in a short period of time those visitors will be seeing increasing numbers in terms of how many people are bookmarking with del.icio.us. As the number grows, it of course looks more tempting for them to bookmark it as well.

About a month ago I also discovered another site that seemed to have a similar audience to Dzone. CSS Globe (web design related) is a little bit different from most social media sites. There is no voting up or down, but members are able to share their links with subscribers. Adding your link will easily bring 100 - 200 visitors in a day. The audience of CSS Globe also seems to include a high percentage of del.icio.us users.

Now that I feel like it is very possible to get a few hundred visitors from Dzone and 100 - 200 visitors from CSS Globe, I wanted to make sure that the content of the blog post was attractive to those users who also keep their bookmarks with del.icio.us. If you spend time on del.icio.us you’ll notice that lists are very popular and draw more bookmarks than the average article. Using numbers in titles also tends to help.

With that in mind, I created a list post that I felt was unique and would appeal to the audience of CSS Globe, Dzone and del.icio.us. This part of the plan worked extremely well as 77 Resources to Simplify Your Life as a Web Designer was published late Monday September, 10 and I immediately submitted it to Dzone and CSS Globe (it’s important to get the traffic all at the same time because sites like Digg and del.icio.us factor in how quickly people and digging or bookmarking the page).

It reached the front page of Dzone on Tuesday September, 11. That day Dzone sent 577 visitors to the page and CSS Globe sent 280 visitors. Many of these visitors bookmarked the page with del.icio.us, as I had hoped, and it quickly appeared on the front page of del.icio.us.

A decent percentage of visitors who come to the page through all of the sites listed above are also StumbleUpon users, so part of my strategy is to also include a reminder on blog posts for readers to Stumble the page. This is easily done with a button at the end of the post. I’ve chosen to only include links for users to del.icio.us and StumbleUpon because I feel that providing too many links, buttons, and widgets causes all of them to loose effectiveness. Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon are the best fit for my audience and I don’t want other buttons to take away from these two.

I knew that if I was able to create a rush of traffic from Dzone, CSS Globe and del.icio.us, someone was bound to submit the page to StumbleUpon and the domino effect would spread again. This also happened like I had hoped, and StumbleUpon sent 9,228 visitors to the page that day.

The final piece of the strategy involved Digg. I use Digg a little bit, but I’m far from a “power user”, so I chose the highly complex strategy to do nothing and hope that someone with a better profile and more friends would submit the post to Digg. If I submitted the post myself there is no way it would have gone anywhere, but fortunately for me someone else with a lot of friends submitted it (thanks Lyndoman, if you’re reading). Digg sent 13,997 visitors that day.

The last part of the domino effect involves what happens after popularity on these sites. Yahoo Site Explorer is currently showing 2,656 links to this page (Technorati is showing 82 links). Some of the links have also brought significant traffic, and many of the sites are not even in English (which I think is an advantage of a list post rather than a long article, although this traffic is probably not the most targeted). PresseCitron has sent 1,346 visitors to date. Infected-FX has sent 1,331. PopURLs has sent 1,243. Many others have sent smaller amounts.

The Results

In total, the post has had 69,000 pageviews in about 5 days, 25,000 visitors from Digg, 19,000 from StumbleUpon, 4,000 from Del.icio.us, 990 from Dzone, and 436 from CSS Globe.

Conclusion:

* My blog doesn’t normally draw enough traffic to have success with major social media sites, and I don’t have enough friends on Digg.
* Instead of going directly to these sources in hope of thousands of visitors I used smaller, targeted social media sites to quickly send a few hundred visitors.
* I choose those sites strategically and optimized my blog post to have success with del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.
* I got lucky with Digg.
* Lots of other links came as a result of the exposure to this post, and those links together sent a substantial amount of traffic.

I’ve tried this strategy 3 times now in the past 4 or 5 weeks. The first time was with 31 Sources of Quality, Free Icons which became popular with Dzone and del.icio.us and also got a few thousand visitors from StumbleUpon (no love from Digg). That day was an all-time traffic high for me at the time. I tried the strategy again with 89 Community Sites for Webmasters with very little success. And then the third time was last week, which resulted in a new traffic high.

How Does this Affect You?

While Dzone and CSS Globe are not applicable to bloggers in other niches, there are likely some other sites that can accomplish the same thing. All you need to do is find sites in your niche that can send a quick rush of visitors, and try to direct them to submit your page to another, larger social media site. Have a strategy targeting specific sites and you’re more likely to have success.
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10 Tips for Making Your Blog Posts More del.icio.us

Like the other leading social media websites, del.icio.us can be a great source of traffic for your blog. In order to make the most of del.icio.us, follow these steps and you’ll be on your way to driving thousands of new visitors to your blog.

1 - Use Powerful Headlines/Titles

Headlines and Titles are always important for getting your blog posts read, but they are especially important for drawing traffic from del.icio.us. Some readers will bookmark a page without even reading the whole thing, influenced primarily by the title. Even more important, as your post starts to move its way up the popular pages on del.icio.us, the title will either entice people to click or it will not stand out enough to get them to take action. If you look at the items that make it to the front page, you’ll see a predictable trend that almost all of the items have very effective titles.

2 - Be Original

Think about what makes you decide to bookmark a page. If it’s information that you can find at a number of different websites or blogs you’re probably not going to bookmark it. Be original, provide readers with something they haven’t seen before, and make them want to bookmark it before the forget where to find it.

3 - Use Lists

While lists aren’t a prerequisite for getting to the front page of del.icio.us, it’s another consistent trend that you’ll see. Why do lists work? For one thing they’re easy to scan and readers can quickly gauge the content without reading word-for-word. Numbered lists, such as this one, also tend to work well.

4 - Encourage Bookmarking

If you actively encourage your readers your bookmark your posts they are more likely to do it. This can be accomplished by placing a sentence at the beginning or end of your posts, or it can be accomplished with buttons and widgets that let readers bookmark with one click. Whatever your method, for the best results you should place the link to bookmark in a prominent spot where readers will see it. WordPress users can use the Antisocial Plugin (an SEO-friendly version of the Sociable Plugin) to display buttons for various sites, including del.icio.us.

5 - Encourage Others to Join Your Network

Building a network is one way of sharing links with other users. It certainly doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get more of your pages bookmarked, but it makes it easier for others to see your bookmarks. del.icio.us provides a great tool to make this easy. When you’re logged in, go to the settings page and you’ll see a link for “Network Badges.” From that page you’ll get some code to paste into your blog that will encourage visitors to join your network (Mine is on the sidebar if you want to see an example and join my network).

6 - Write About Hot Topics

When you’re looking at the del.icio.us front page you’ll notice that many of the popular bookmarks are technology-related. This is a common trend, so if you write about technology you have a better chance of getting bookmarked. Visit the page regularly to see what is hot and learn how you can benefit from knowing other users’ bookmarking habits.

7 - Get Your Posts Popular with Some Other Social Media Site

This may not be easy, but many of the pages that are popular on del.icio.us are also popular on other social media sites. This is actually how I made it to the del.icio.us front page for the first time. My article 83 Top Webmaster Resources became popular at D-Zone, and the increased traffic that came from D-Zone lead to a lot of bookmarks and a spot on the del.icio.us front page for a while. Using other social sites as a gateway is a proven tactic.

8 - Show How Many People Have Bookmarked Your Post

The del.icio.us Tagometer will show readers how many people have bookmarked the particular page they are viewing. It’s a great way to remind visitors that other people are bookmarking the page. If no one has bookmarked the page yet, it will say “be the first to bookmark this page!” Here’s an example from our post Find the Perfect Colors for Your Website.

number of del.icio.us bookmarks

9 - Use FeedBurner’s “Save to del.icio.us” Feed Flare

FeedBurner users can insert a link into their RSS feeds that will allow readers to bookmark. It also shows the number of bookmarks and the most popular tags from within the RSS reader. To active this FeedFlare, login, click on the Optimize tab, click on FeedFlare and check the box.

10 - Allow Other del.icio.us Users to See Your Bookmarks

By default your bookmarks are viewable to other del.icio.us users. You can change them to be private in the settings tab, but if you’re bookmarking your own pages you will be decreasing the chances that others will see your pages. Leave this on the default setting.

By using these 10 tips you’ll be able to increase the number of bookmarks your posts get, which will help you to bring floods of new traffic from del.icio.us. If you have any additional tips for our readers please leave a comment. If you’re a del.icio.us user feel free to leave your id or a link to your profile in the comments and grow your network.
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The StumbleUpon Experiment
January 4, 2007 // Marketing

Do people “stumbling” across the net have their wallets open while doing so? Will they stop when they see a commercial site or keep on “stumbling” by? That was today’s quick experiment: advertising through StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon Toolbar

StumbleUpon offers a toolbar that lets you find new websites by “stumbling” through sites recommended by other users of the toolbar. You just click the “Stumble!” button on the toolbar to visit a new site, and can rate each site with “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” buttons.

I first joined StumbleUpon and downloaded their toolbar in May, but had forgotten about it after upgrading to Windows Vista. I was recently reminded of it when seeing a couple hits in this blog’s referrers after another blogger reviewed this site in StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon sells website visits for just $0.05 a view. After a 4-figure sales day at VisitorBoost yesterday, I decided to put a bit of that into StumbleUpon. In addition to the ultra-low cost for guaranteed traffic, StumbleUpon isn’t prone to click fraud since they neither syndicate their ads nor have any mechanism to bring up a specific site, and they also offer targeting according to their users’ stated interests. I really didn’t expect these users to buy, it’s not the mode they’re in when using the toolbar, but I’ve been surprised by sales from unexpected sources before, so I’ll try everything once or twice before discounting it.

I created a new tracking URL for the ad campaign and filled out the form to start it up with StumbleUpon. I chose the Web Development category hoping to reach website owners, and restricted my ad to only U.S. visitors for the best chances of a purchase. A few hours later, the ad was approved and running.

It was evening when the ad began to show, and at 250 visitors to the site, I hadn’t made any sales. I paused the campaign for the night, planning to continue it during the afternoon the next day to show during business hours. Another 250 visitors came through after I resumed before I considered that to be enough of a trial for now.

One thing I can say about StumbleUpon that I can’t about any other service I’ve advertised with is that they are 100% accurate in reporting and 100% free of fraud as far as I could tell. My tracking program tracked exactly 502 visits where StumbleUpon shows 500. That’s 500 paid for, one from the reviewer that approved the campaign, and one click by myself to test the URL before starting.

A quick analysis of the traffic backs up the presence of interest targeting fairly well. More than 90% of the visits were by computers running the Firefox browser with a high screen resolution. That matches up to what you’d expect from the web development community.

The results? No sales, 96% of the visitors only viewing the landing page for the campaign, and none of them rating the site positively or negatively with the toolbar. That says to me that most people that see a commercial site, or a site that isn’t immediately interesting to them with StumbleUpon will simply move on and click the “Stumble!” button again.
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