StumbleUpon as a Great Source of Traffic

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[Meg]

StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site. It is a wonderful tool for discovering and sharing great sites, but it can be a bit confusing at first.

A while back I wrote a Beginner's Guide to StumbleUpon which some people have found useful for learning how to use the site and the toolbar.

While I don't recommend that you use StumbleUpon solely to "stumble" your own blog (and it very quickly loses all effect in any case), actively using the site and networking with other stumblers can have many benefits. A successful stumble can bring hundreds (or occasionally thousands) of visitors to your site.

Also related is 7 ways to use StumbleUpon as a Discovery Tool

I hope you might find them useful.

[Boneblower]

I don't know about StumbleUpon Meg, but I sure as heck stumbled into this strange but comforting world!!! Will check this out when I've caught up with everything else - how do you guys get anything else done. Seriously.

[Lani]

I'm pretty hopeless with all the social bookmarking options there are, but StumbleUpon is the first one that works for me both in being fun to use and finding new blogs I like. And, yes, in getting some more traffic.

[Riayn]

Can someone please explain how Stumble Upon generates traffic?  I use it mainly to find new sites, but it doesn't really seem to generate any traffic for me, even though my blog is listed on Stumble Upon.
Do I just need to get more friends to "thumbs up" my blog?

[Lani]

I've had an increase in traffic from thumbs up, but it is for an individual post generally, rather than the whole blog.  The first time I ever got stumbled I got about 300 extra visits.

[Meg]

Riayn

Do I just need to get more friends to "thumbs up" my blog?

The short answer is yes, but then soliciting stumbles is seen as a bit of a no-no unless you know someone really well. Regular and routine thumbing up of a particular site diminishes its effectiveness over time.

There is a bit of a formula behind it, but basically the more friends you have (esp. ones with similar interests), and the more active you are, the more valuable your stumbles become. Person A can stumble a site and bring 20 visitors - Person B 200 or more. It just depends on their stumble weight (or authority if you like).

With more friends, comes more a wider audience for your stumbles. While installing StumbleUpon won't increase traffic to your blog per se, the frequent use and networking has a trickle effect.

I had one post (a little puff piece that I recycled from an email) that has received 9,000+ visits from SU since August - crazy!

[Riayn]

So I just need to find some more hours in my day to Stumble more?  Where is that time thing that Hermione had in the Harry Potter books?  That would come in real handy.

[Sueblimely]

Irabina Childhood Autism Services (early intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Victoria)

Irabina is a fantastic orgnization. I used their services for my son when he was younger.

Back to Stumbleupon - I use the Firefox Stumbleupon toolbar regularly - to give thumbs up to sites as well as communicate with my stumble friends. If someone sends me a 'shout' via the toolbar, clicking on the notification takes you directly to the site they want stumbling - or sometimes just to things they think may be of interest to me. These are all people who I know write good content so I am happy to stumble a post of theirs if they want. They  send me links to other sites they have stumbled to to help others out. I have found that no one has gone overboard in asking for stumbles, they just do it occasionally on posts they think are particularly worth stumbling.

[Kelley]

So what is the protocol re stumbling yourself?

I notice that some people stumble their own posts.  Is this the norm or seen as a no no?

[Snoskred]

I find it usually means less traffic if you do it yourself. So therefore I don't stumble my own posts anymore.. 

[Davidlind]

I asked myself whether I would like to have traffic from StumbleUpon or from Google with my keywords.  SU traffic doesn't mean that much to me.  And I have built up keywords from ten percent to thirty five percent of traffic in about a month.  That's where the effort needs to go.

[Lani]

Hmm, for me the StumbleUpon traffic is better, because I write a personal blog.  All search engines seem to do is make my bounce rate look appalling.  I think SU visitors tend to take an extra couple of second to have a look around, perhaps because they are there making and active judgement rather than just moving on.

But as I said, that's on a personal blog.  it's a different beast..

[Snoskred]

I've noticed some people around the web tend to say a lot of bad things about stumbleupon traffic and it is giving SU traffic a name that I don't really feel is deserved. One thing I keep hearing is that SU traffic doesn't stay around long is one of the major ones I keep hearing..

I've found that to be not true when it comes to blogging. It might be true when we're talking about an image or a website on one topic etc, but when stumbleupon people get to my blog they seem to always -

- view more than one article
- view the about me page
- click on some of the links in my sidebar (which often lead to reading other posts of mine).

During one of my biggest stumble upon traffic spikes, the average time on site for people who arrived via stumbling was 8 minutes, which is a lot when you consider people say "Oh, stumblers leave straight away, they just hit the stumble button again".

That may be true for some stumblers but it certainly isn't how I stumble - I only hit the stumble button again straight away when it is a page with just a photo on it, or it is a topic I'm not interested in at all.

I would agree with you (Davidlind) re Google but after their recent slap people and goodbye to your page rank in the blink of an eye and the John Chow not appearing in the first 7 pages for his own name type antics I think it is *very* dangerous to rely on them as a source of traffic. If you are doing something and they suddenly decide to kick all people doing that thing out of the search results, there goes your traffic.

Google was only ever about 1% of where my traffic was coming from but after they dropped my page rank to 0 I have to say the traffic coming from them did drop considerably also. Now that they gave me my PR back, the traffic from their search results is increasing. So I don't know whether they did more than just decrease the page rank number.

In fact I have given up on relying on Google these days as a search engine, as an email provider, as an RSS reader, as a calendar.. I'm pretty much done with them after their bullying stay at home Moms into not working for Pay Per Post type services tactics. It sickens me.  It makes me wonder who they will target next. Are they a search engine, or the Internet police?

Stumbling can be a great source of traffic for a tiny effort.

[Kelley]

As far as I can tell, and I only use my Wordpress stats as a guide I was using statcounter but for some reason it is no longer working (and I really wasn't that interested in the information), I rarely get traffic from anything but feedreaders, referrals or people wandering over after reading my comment on another blog.

How do I increase my traffic for less effort?

[FormerAdmin]

How do I increase my traffic for less effort?

More shoe fetishism and perverted coffee bean references?

Seriously though, I think that you are a star in your anti-mommyblogger niche, Kel, and many more readers will come through referrals. Just keep writing that funny stuff that we love so well.

Cheers, Andrew

[Kelley]

But I am running out of shhooooes!  Need to find me some peeps to buy me some.  Nobody reading so far has offered...

My feedreader is filling up cause I am spending all my free time here.

And I notice no comment from you re last nights post.  I was was waiting.... *snort*

[mountainmama]

I thought SU's TOS discouraged stumbling your own stuff? As a newish and keen stumbler I've been tempted to do it with a couple of favourite posts, but haven't dared yet? So some of you have stumbled your own stuff?

Oh, and by the way, Kell - I stumbled last night's post. It's a ripper!

[Lani]

I haven't got to last night's post yet (My feedreader is filling up too) but one other quick way to get traffic...  Oh this thread's about stumbling.  I'll start a new one.

[Kelley]

I thought SU's TOS discouraged stumbling your own stuff? As a newish and keen stumbler I've been tempted to do it with a couple of favourite posts, but haven't dared yet? So some of you have stumbled your own stuff?

Oh, and by the way, Kell - I stumbled last night's post. It's a ripper!

Yeah I noticed that in my stats.  PM'd you saying thanks babe.    But I was a little shocked at the category..... wouldn't have classified it as that.  Is it because of the title of the post?

TBH I was having second thoughts after I hit publish.  I thought I might come across as up myself or arrogant.  Which was not the intention at all.

[Lani]

I'm going to see it NOW so I know what you're talking about. 

[mountainmama]

WTF!!!

I just checked what you are talking about, since I had no idea what category you meant...and I didn't choose that!! However, I did check the Adult content box 'cos of the language (not that it was excessive, but you know how these filters are). Now I've learned that checking that box automatically gives that category.

I'm so sorry!!!!!!! I'm off to write an email to the SU admin to see if they can sort it out. I don't want you to miss out on much deserved traffic due to that erroneous categorisation!

[Lani]

Actually, that's a good issue to raise.  I interpret the "adult content" as things that would be X or R rated.  I don't consider swearing alone as either of those so I don't think I've ever come across something I consider "adult content". 

[mountainmama]

Oops, I've just checked again and the edit did finally work...so personal panic over. 

I guess the admin will just get back to me and tell me what I already know...  :whatever:

And yes, Lani, I generally agree, and don't really know what possessed me to press that darned button. Not usually particularly PC. Lesson learned! :blushing:

[Meg]

I thought SU's TOS discouraged stumbling your own stuff?

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing in the TOS that discourages you stumbling your own content.

You'll find that the first time you stumble a website (including your own) will bring the most traffic, and each subsequent time less and less - I guess that's factored into the algorithm to prevent rorting.

I have discovered my own stuff in the early days, but I don't anymore. I will stumble it most times if someone has already discovered it, mostly so that my "friends" will see it, and hopefully give it a push.

Traffic is dependent on a lot of things, the category it's submitted to (and relevance), keywords added, who discovers it, etc...

Tim Nash has the best discussion I've seen of the StumbleUpon Algorithm and he followed up with some Q and A's.

[mountainmama]

Thanks, Meg. It must have just been someone's opinion about stumbling own content that I had read. I am reading sooo much stuff at the moment that it is hard to keep track of it all.

And Kelley, did you PM me here? 'Cos 40 minutes later I still have no message...