Imagine how delighted I was when I checked my Google Analytics this weekend and found that last month, most of the referring site visits to my blog came from StumbleUpon traffic. What's also surprising is that the bounce rate for the StumbleUpon traffic is fairly low, and at 13.5%, it's much lower than I expected 🙂
I was just starting to feel like I “get it” when it comes to mastering the fine art of getting StumbleUpon traffic, until I did a little more research and found that I'm not alone. As you can see in this chart from StatCounter, Web 2.0 property StumbleUpon continued to rank higher than Facebook for traffic in the U.S. so far for the month of February.
StumbleUpon traffic is the green line and Facebook is the blue one
Mr. Ben Wan also got a nice blip on his traffic radar from SU earlier this month when I submitted his post How to Resolve WordPress RSS Widgets Time out Error to be served up to the community by the infamous SU “recommendation engine” algorithm.
Here are a few of the Do's and Dont's I learned for generating StumbleUpon traffic for myself, and others.
StumbleUpon Traffic Secrets
1. Don't follow your Twitter Friends
StumbleUpon offers some convenient features for finding and following your friends from other networks and your email accounts. Contrary to what you may have heard in the past, if you're already active on Twitter and Facebook, I don't recommend doing this and here's why.
Your Twitter and Facebook friends and even your blog visitors are already visiting your blog. Your goal for using SU is to find new users and interesting content but you can't expect the “recommendation engine” to do all of the work for you. You need to circulate and find other Stumblers with mutual interest – or maybe even discover a whole new area of interest! That's what really make this platform fun and exciting.
2. If you are a blogger, DO NOT invite all of your email contacts.
Most of us bloggers have email accounts established that send blog posts to sites like Amplify, Posterous and Tumblr. If you invite all of your email contacts that means you just sent a post to your blog, inviting people to join you on StumbleUpon, whether you wanted to or not. 🙂 Well it might not be the end of the world and you're not going to compromise your credibility but for me it was an embarrassing little “boo-boo” that I wish never happened.
3. Do follow popular users.
Remember, the rules of the SU game are totally different from the ones we are so familiar with on social networks. When it comes to “influence”, the more outlandish and bizarre the better! Join Groups or visit the Top Rated section and look for users that have high numbers of favs. Accept shares from your new found friends to your toolbar (find out how to use the StumbleUpon toolbar for Google Chrome in my video).
4. Find out which one of your friends has generated your newfound StumbleUpon Traffic?
First, let me mention that you don't need to submit each and every one of your own posts to StumbleUpon and it's is not a good idea to promote your blog the same way you do on Twitter and Facebook. I'm sure you're publishing top-notch content, so you can rest assured that your regular blog visitors and your organic search engine traffic to handle your submissions. Once you see the traffic appearing in your stats, navigate to the post in question, open the SU toolbar and locate the speech bubble.
Click the bubble on the SU toolbar to see who discovered and reviewed your blog post, and in this example I find a mix of new and old friends. Now is a good time to click the Share Now button and share your post on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn right from your toolbar.
5. Watch out, you're getting hooked!
After spending some time building up your network, pretty soon you might find a new appreciation for the SU “recommendation engine”. Remember that it's important to click the box that says “Accept Shares To My Toolbar” under the “Following” box button.
Invest a few hours each week, hitting the Stumble button on the toolbar and you'll be on your way to getting a boost from StumbleUpon traffic too!
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StumbleUpon is surely a great traffic source. I do not even utilize it but I see some traffic come from StumbleUpon.
Hey Dana, sounds like your friends are Stumbling your posts for you. If I see any of them while I’m stumbling, I’ll be sure to give you a thumbs up!
Its great to find a source sending you lots of traffic, but what interested me is how you managed to lower the bounce rate so down to the ground? Most of the users from stumbleupon are hurried to click that Stumble button on the toolbar, aren’t they?
Hmm… I don’t have any SU buttons on my blog yet some days ago while checking Analytics I saw 60+ unique visits from it alone. Wow!
Ileane are you involved in this? 🙂
P.S. How does it convert for you compared with Google organic traffic and Twitter for example?
Codrut,
It has been a long time since I have seen your name. Appreciated all the training emails that you have sent. SU gives me some unexpected traffic too and so I started looking to stumble my articles and it really delivered some traffic.
Bill
Dana,
That is the same experience I was having and then when I set up an account and added some of my website pages it got even better. Stumble Upon is really a great traffic source.
Debs
Hi Ileane,
Very helpful info here, as always! I’m not sure I’m posting top notch content but I do try my best. lol. I knew about SU but just started check it out as I did see some traffic in my analytics. Wish I would have read this first *sigh* my time would have been much better spent. Thanks for the continued insight!
Hi Kathy, I see loads of food blogs and images when I’m stumbling, so your content would fit right in. Here’s one foodie stumbler that you might want to check out http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/giverecipe/reviews/
Let me know how it goes!
I really don’t use SU for my personal blog because I just share through twitter and facebook. DO you think I should start with SU now?
Emily, why not give it a try and see how it goes. StumbleUpon allows lots of flexibility for customizing your profile so you could feature some of your work there. Art related subjects do very well on SU.
I am not so active on StumbleUpon but also see some posts get significant traffic. I realize that the community is very important on StumbleUpon, the more sites we thumb up and discover, the more traffic we receive. I will need to change strategy on SU then.
Thanks for the post, Ileane.
Hey Tuan, I found something on SU that I think you’ll like. I sent you a tweet but here’s the link again:
38 Digital Dazzling Advertisement Examples | Designs Mag http://su.pr/2JUa0p
I noticed that you aren’t accepting my shares in your toolbar. If you accept them I can send you more cool stuff that you’ll enjoy. Just go to my profile and click the check box below the word Following. Thanks Tuan!
Thanks you for sharing those awesome ads.
I just notice about the checkbox there and didn’t know what it is. Just checked it. 😀
Hi Ileane,
I can always count on you to reveal some of the best secrets and tips. I like Stumbleupon and I really love it when SU is nice to me and my friends. It always makes me feel good when I stumble someone’s post and it sends them a nice flow of traffic. But I’ve also noticed that happens less and less when you submit posts from the same blogs – so you’re right, when it comes to SU, you’ve got to be willing to get out and explore big time.
Thanks for another great post!
Hey Kiesha, great to see you today! I started following some of the employees from SU and by following them I picked up on some of the types of content they like to share. Check out http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/gmc/ – he’s the founder and CEO. Then click the option to see “We Both Like” and I’m sure you’ll see some interesting topics that you both have in common. Next, find the stories with the highest counts and see who the other Stumblers are who reviewed the piece.
The first thing I needed to do was change my “marketing” approach. It might sound like work, but it’s really fun when you keep an open mind. And don’t be afraid to share stumbles on your toolbar, you can always turn off the alerts if you change your mind.
Thanks for the visit Kiesha, I hope you get a chance to turn on sharing in your toolbar with me! Here’s my profile http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/Ileane/
StumbleUpon is another new thing i’ve learned from your blog. This just proves to me there are always traffic methods out there that you don’t know about, you just have to be on the lookout and they’ll come to you.
Hi Alex, it’s good to know that you are finding new things here at Basic Blog Tips. StumbleUpon is unique with their approach to social bookmarking and it can be tricky for those that don’t understand it. Many people try to use SU for a marketing tool like Twitter or Facebook, but it doesn’t work that way.
I hope you continue to come back here for the good stuff!
I’m definitely coming back for the good stuff 🙂
You know, it’s funny you mentioned facebook and twitter, because i was thinking about them when i made that post. Probably because everyone knows about them and they’re the most used methods. But it’s good to diversify, because you never know when a method will go under.
Hey Ileane, came to your blog for the first time and thought to say hello. I have thoroughly read some of your blog post and tips and believe it has enriched me a lot about the role of social media in publicizing a blog. I really learnt here that stumbleupon can be a great source of traffic to one’s blog. You video tutorial also helped me get ideas. Just wanted to know whether it is the same for company or commercial blogs. Do you have any previously written post about it or shall you post one in near future ? Or do I need to request you a tutorial separately ? Thanks.
Daniel, that’s a good question but I don’t have any statistics in that area. What will say is that I think StumbleUpon is really more for websites than it is blogs, but blogs do have a place there too. In fact one of the categories is “weblogs” but I’m sure other categories get more traffic. I’ll see if I can find out any stats on that and come back and add the info to this post.
Thanks for your response Ileane. Yes, I have seen the category ‘weblogs’ and will see if I can use the other categories for different topics. However, it will definitely be of help if you added this info to this post. I’ll revisit later for any more updates.
Good. Thanks for the support.
Awesome great tips. Thanks for the refound inspiration in StumbleUpon, hopefully I can get some nice traffic
Hi Edwin, thanks for the comment, visit and retweet.
This sure tells me I need to get back to SU, very cool!
Btw, I’m a statcounter user also but have never seen the global stats, where is that located?
Hi Dennis, I checked the site and this is what I found “Please note that this is the StatCounter Global Stats website. We deal with enquiries in relation to Global Stats only and cannot assist with general StatCounter enquiries.”
Hope that helps. Let me know, ok.
Dunno yet, lol. A separate site? Got link? Hehe.
Thank you for sharing this tips.
I always try stumbleupon but don’t get any result.
Will try to do this tommorow. Already tired and sleepy now…. 🙂
Zezebel, you can’t Stumble when you need rest, so get some sleep first 🙂
Thanks for the advice Ileane…. 🙂
Still trying to understand SU but I am getting hook on reading people site in SU. 😀 Need to put this on my blog schedule, half an hour a day max. 😀 Just don’t want to get to addicted.
Zezebel, it’s good to set a limit. I’m already hooked on StumbleUpon so I need to set time limits too. Good luck.
Ileane,
I have not been to active on SU, but your post gives me some inspiration to try and change that. I have seen some decent SU traffic but always with a correspondingly high Bounce rate when it comes from SU. I liked that your article really shows that when done properly SU is not only a good source of traffic, but it is also a good way to send traffic that is targetted.
Thanks,
Steve
Hey Steve, I’m amazed at the low bounce rate I have on this blog and it’s nice to see that things are going according to plan. That’s why I felt confident enough to experiment with StumbleUpon. Trust me I will keep a close eye on it 🙂
I have been using Su for a while now but really never bothered to apply any of the advices you provide here. Good to know that there is something that can be done to gain more traction with fellow stumblers. thanks for the heads up. Will go and hunt for those top rated “chiefs” and see if I can get their attention, lol.
Hey DiTesco, I’m following so many “chiefs” that I reached my following limit. LOL! I had no idea I could only follow 500 users (but you can have unlimited followers). Don’t worry, you are already one of the 500 🙂
Hiya Ileane,
I must be honest that I don’t use StumbleUpon much but it is one of the traffic sources for my blog so definitely will have to look into putting some more effort there.
Thanks for the insight on how to get more out of using it.
Deidre, I’m pretty sure I stumbled a few of your posts recently. I hope you see more traffic and it really seems to work better when you don’t submit your own posts. When I look at some of my friends profiles I see that they only have one view on each and every one of their “discoveries” then I also notice that each one is from their own blog. When you do that, the recommendation engine will bury your stuff. 🙂
Thanks for this great post, . I just enabled Do Follow, KeywordLuv, and CommentLuv on my blog to encourage more comments. I’ve been getting a lot of traffic because I share YouTube marketing tactics, but very few comments for some reason, so hopefully this will fix that! Check out my blog too– hopefully we could learn more marketing tips from each other.
Hey Josh, I just visited your blog and it’s pretty darned awesome!! Way to go! I would like to invite you to join Blog Engage. It’s a very supportive community and since we are all bloggers, we’re bound to leave comments on each other’s blogs. Most of the commenters you see on my blogs (the ones with Gravatars that is) are from Blog Engage and as you can see in the Google Analytics that I shared it is my #3 source of referral traffic – right behind Twitter. Blokube is great as well, but you don’t need an invitation, you can just join!
Btw – great to know that you are already a member of CommentLuv and using it on your blog. Maybe you should enter their newest contest:)
Thanks Ileane, an invitation to join Blog Engage would be great. 🙂
And I’ll check out Blokube too!
Super-duper info, Ileane.
I’ve just returned to SU, as it is one of my goals this year to get actively involved with the site. This post with these insider tips helps me in that regard.
Congrats on your traffic stats. I’ll be following your advice here in hopes of doing the same.
Thanks!
Hi Jimi, the new avatar looks great! I had to do a double take at first. Great to see that you’ll be spending more time stumbling new things!
I just started using SU myself and have noticed traffic on several of my sites. I need to spend more time figuring out the ins and outs.Your post helped with the many great tips you offered! I see I already made a mistake by doing the Twitter thingy. Oops. “-) Hey JimiJones, I like the new profile pic!
Chuck, nice to see you commenting here. I mentioned to DiTesco that there is a following limit on SU of 500, so if you follow tons of people on Twitter and you start following them you’ll use up the 500 and miss out on being exposed to all of the new friends you can make in the community. Here’s another tip, look for those posts or articles with the really huge view counts like 100K+ that’s where you’ll find users with a high number of faves. It makes sense that if someone has 20K faves, they are more likely to give your discoveries a thumbs up then someone with less than 500 – make sense?
Talk to you soon good buddy! Can’t wait to see another video from you 🙂
Really nice. It’s time for me to revisit StumbleUpon. I guess you have to put in the work before it pays off for you. Your tips will help me get started, hopefully.
Jenny, this is so true. Why is everyone always looking for the quick and lazy way to do things. Blogging and blog promotion involve some work but at least you can have fun while you’re working. When I get bored with the noise on Twitter, I can find a fresh approach to surfing the internet on StumbleUpon.
Hi Ileane,
Thanks for mentioning me in this post. When I saw the spike in traffic on my Google analytics I nearly fell over, I’ve never seen anything like that before for myself.
Keep experimenting and fine tune the technique for getting targeted traffic from Stumbleupon, what you are sharing with us is very valuable.
The question that comes to my mind is: how can we repeat the same on a consistent basis and get regular flow of targeted traffic from Stumbleupon?
Maybe we should talk and analyse exactly what you did there and compare note with my Analytics data as well and find out who else got a traffic spike from your Stumbles.
How does that sound to you?
Ben Wan
Hi Ben, I think this is a great idea. Where do we start? From what I understand, StumbleUpon only counts “views” when they are discovered from people hitting the “stumble” button. Therefore the views in SU will never match the traffic you see on Google Analytics. If there is some way to reconcile the two that might be a starting place. Let me know what you think.
I look forward to working with you on any type of social media or networking project. Keep in touch!
I would suggest that you rely on facebook traffic that is more genuine. Stumble upon might get you traffic however most often the conversion rate is fairly low.
Good to see that you have a decent web traffic. If you need help or suggestion, do let me know. I will be glad to help.
Hey Eddie, that’s great advice and I’m spending time on Facebook but I don’t have a Fan Page up yet. My daughter gets over half of her traffic from Facebook on her fashion blog so I’ve seen what a powerful traffic generation tool it can be. Thanks for offering the advice.
I’ve just started getting traffic from SU, most people say that SU traffic isn’t worth the bother, but I’ve had a few comments and a good amount of views so I’m happy, nice post by the way.
had no idea abt this tite. thanks for telling abt it! great post!
Out of Referral traffic StumbleUpon brings me the most out of any other referring site but the bounce rate is a bit high at over 60% for my own SU traffic.
Justin, your traffic is so much higher than mine, so I suspect that causes the higher bounce rate. The bounce rate on this blog is the lowest I’ve seen in all of the years I’ve been monitoring sites with Google Analytics (knock on wood). If I ever get down in the dumps about my Google Page Rank being stuck at zero, I can just go look at my bounce rate and smile again 🙂
Hey Ileane,
I am very new to using StumbleUpon so thanks for your tips and guidance in this post to get some good StumbleUpon traffic. Thanks for the tip to follow popular users. I am going to start going to the Top Rated section and find users with with a lot of favs.
I will take your advice and invest a few hours a week to hitting the Stubmble button and hopefully I can check my Google Analytics and find that most of my referring site visitors to my blog came from StumbleUpon traffic too. Thanks for sharing the quick lesson, I learned a lot.
John, please come back and share your results! btw – I wanted to ask you if you have a Gravatar? There is some very compelling evidence that they can help improve your branding and eventually your traffic flow as well.
Awesome tips I never would have thought of. Many of them are not intuitive but seem like a smart way to go, so I’m definitely going to try them.
I have ups and down from SU traffic, but I have to say it’s inconsistent for me. Anyway, when the ups come then there is a traffic boost more then many other traffic resources 🙂
Thanks for sharing these great tips!
Hi Omer, somehow I my response to your comment got lost! But anyway, for now I’ll just say, thanks for your feedback and I hope you get more SU traffic in the future.
So, I’ve never really gotten into the SU community. I think I tried it once a few years ago, but didn’t see immediate results, so I dropped it. Do you genuinely feel that SU is a good community or are people really just looking for traffic to their sites (or maybe that’s the whole goal of SU).
TJ, don’t miss out on the opportunity to find some other photographers on StumbleUpon. I think that one of the most interesting shares are the artistic one and they are very widely accepted by the community. Most of the big users don’t even have website and they very rarely have blogs. You might even want to invest in some paid advertising because you have access to so many potential clients.
Ok – sounds like I may have to give SU another shot. It just sounds like a lot of work building up an entirely new network.
I use SU, but I haven’t put enough into it. Your right it is different from all the other networks. Thanks for the advice I’m going to give it another look.
Great, I look forward to your stumbles. You can accept shares from me and I’ll send you some good stuff!
Hi Ileane,
Lately I’ve been seeing quite a bit of people mentioning their traffic increases from SU. One blog I read mentioned several thousand in one day from it, which is amazing! However, he also mentioned that most of that traffic didn’t convert to anything.
Have you found that to be the case here?
Delena
Delena, that’s a great question. In my case, I’m not really selling any products or doing much affiliate marketing so I would have to say no. But for someone who has a site that is optimized for conversions, I think it could do well. By that I don’t mean using Pop-up Domination! I’ve never gone to a site with high view count (like 10,000 or more) with a pop-up.
I’ll give you an example, yesterday I saw this Stumble with over 2 million views since 2009:
cole rise http://su.pr/31qq7h
I’m sure he got some conversions with that amount of volume. 🙂
Now you have made it- people out there not always believe they could get quality traffic from SU-
The rules of any social site to get traffic is to engage with the people on that social site- admit it or lose your traffic!
Congrats Ileane- 🙂
Hey Moonomo, great to see you my friend! Yup, you got that right!
Hi Ileane,
SU can literally suck up hours of time. The articles that I SU are often different from the ones that I tweet – I have a slightly higher standard. Also my SU favourites tend to be less business oriented (anything that makes me laugh gets liked).
I have noticed some traffic spikes for a couple of articles, but it’s not consistent. These tips will definitely help!
Ronika, I do the same thing and it’s crucial to recognize that they StumbleUpon community is a completely different demographic than the community you’ve built up on Twitter.
Hello Ileane,
I know that when I first started surfing the internet and built my first website stumbleupon, was not such a popular network, like digg was, but I still submitted my website, excited to see how well I will do. But unfortunately it didn’t worked that well and I quickly abandoned it.
Now I see lots of people who say that stumbleupon can drive quality traffic to your website, but I still don’t know how to properly use it in such a way that it will significantly increase my traffic.
I will try your tips too, you never know where the luck strikes.
Thanks Illeane for taking your time to share your experience with us 😉
Jocuri, I found some SEO tips yesterday that you might find helpful too and I posted them here on Amplify http://ileane.amplify.com/2011/02/26/seo-master-class-from-wordpresstv/
Hello Ileane, thanks I just saw that the video has 32 minutes (holy moly).
Oh and by the way, my name is Alex, the jocuri part is just for kluv part :).
Thanks again, I’ll for sure find something useful in the video 😉
Sorry Alex! You can read the slides if you don’t want to watch the video. The SEO check list is really the best part.
You’re getting so much traffic from su and fb. That’s rally good. In stumble when i stumble interesting posts from other sites I see lots of view but when I stumble my own blog post the views count doesnt exceed single digit. News based articles or some amazing content gets views easily compared to regular blog posts.
Mukundan, that’s exactly how it goes. That’s why I advice not to follow your Twitter friends. Everyone on Twitter is there to eventually promote their own stuff and most bloggers, affiliate marketers and small business owners will tweet links to their own sites at least once a day or more. The StumbleUpon algorithm must be totally contrary to doing that. Check out some of the user profiles and you’ll see that “1” next to all of the discoveries from the same domain.
Btw – I like your logo 🙂
How much has your bank account gone up with the traffic? I have sites with lots of traffic, my political blog often has thousands per day (12,000 was my highest day)- but very little money. (It’s my favorite thing to blog about though)
Then I have some sites with only 100 per day, but they make money. I guess my question is, why do you want traffic? What is your goal in working so hard to bring in more traffic?
I’m not trying to be a wise guy, it’s just that for me, I have to make money. If I have to work to bring in traffic that does not convert, I don’t do it. I guess that’s why I love my sniper sites – once you get them to list in SERPs, nothing left to do, no comments, no social bookmarking, no FaceBooking, and no Tweeting. That leaves me time to do things that I like and want to do, like leaving comments on blogs owned by people that I actually like! lol… I’m so crispy…
No conversions yet Chuck 🙂 In fact I didn’t have any conversions in February, not even from my organic traffic, so it’s a really good thing for me that I don’t use that metric.
The goals I have set up in Google Analytics are based on number of pages visited, length of visit and rather or not someone subscribes. The StumbleUpon traffic visitors go to more than one page but the visits are short and sweet.
I don’t look at blogging, or spending time on social media as work. It’s all fun to me so when I get bored with something, I just move on to the next thing. To be honest, as much as I loved Google Buzz and spend time there, I got bored with it rather quickly (I should write a post about this some day) and it’s interesting because I just realized that I’m spending the time on SU that I used to spend on Buzz.
Thanks Chuck, you always make me think about stuff, that’s why I like you.
btw – there is one form of social media that I equate with work and that’s good old Facebook, but since I do it for my job I am getting paid for using it. 🙂
(thank goodness) 🙂
That’s funny, the only social place that I do hang out at is FaceBook… My friends from school are all on there and other people that I know.
I know you do this for fun, and there is nothing wrong with that at all. ( I have fun too) My point was more to the general public because I see so many people who are looking to make money spending way too much time on social. – as you pointed out, no sales. In my experience, social is not the way to make money, search is. Other people say the opposite, so who knows.
My philosophy and politics blog is my passion and what got me started with all of this back in 2002. But not much money from that, and, it’s BIG time work. Writing a 5000 word essay on philosophy is much more work than writing on blogging or other topics. Schools Online just listed my philosophy podcast #1 on their top 50 list and it gets a bunch of traffic – but little money.
That was, and is untenable for me. I can’t put that much time into something without $$$ in return, so I started affiliate marketing and blogging about web stuff. Now I have a small empire of sites, but I don’t use social, just search. I have know Idea who purchases what, and I like it like that. “-)
CyberSmart gets the least amount of traffic and brings in the most money. Monthly clients pay well and you don’t need much traffic for that.
Hey Chuck,
You’re right that social media traffic doesn’t convert and we can’t make money with social media traffic, but we use social media to build relationship with other bloggers and to increase the friendship and engagement with them.
As Ileane said, We do this for fun not for money!
Also, Ileane gets enough organic traffic which converts well but still she is active on social media.
“so it’s a really good thing for me that I don’t use that metric.”
So, you spend hours every week on social networks, and hours more analyzing the data, but don’t check your bank account? Why spend so much time driving traffic then? I see you have affiliate banners in your sidebar. If money is not a metric, why have affiliate banners? (I know, a bold question to ask)”-)
This is what I discovered about social: Social is like putting on a performance every day at noon in the town square. People come every day to see the show. They applaud, cheer, and say “thanks for another fine performance.” But few people ever think to toss a dollar in the tip jar, and will actually complain if you skip a day! There is a huge “what do you have for free, what do you have for me” crowd on social networks.
At some point I had to ask myself, “is it worth all the time and money I have to put out in order to run a free show every day?”
After a few years of putting on free performances, I answered the question with a clear NO. Today I’m into mutually beneficial exchanges. I don’t sing and dance for free. “-)
I see two different approaches to making money online, one real the other is more an illusion.
The first is what I do:
1. I offer a real service to small businesses (my free articles and videos lead to this end)
2. I make money from search traffic on micro sites
The second is what most people are trying to do:
1. Give away free stuff every day for years until you build a loyal following blogging about something that you are passionate about. In time, you will be rich and famous like problogger.
2. Spend hours on social networks driving traffic to your blog so people will see all your free stuff.
While the first approach is actually attainable for most people, the second is NOT. Only a few bloggers are going to be rich and famous, and they depend on people thinking that they can be rich and famous too. We all want to be rock stars, but there is only one Eric Clapton. For every one Clapton there are 100,000 that never make it.
One other thing that I notice about the second approach that I mentioned – it has this ‘I’m not in this for the money’ mindset, which is quite disingenuous to say the least. You can bet that if problogger had to do what he does without his nice house, car, jet, and freedom, he would be doing something different.
That’s not to say that you can’t blog just for fun, that’s what I do on my political blog. But I don’t spend any time attempting to drive traffic to it, nor do I analyze any data – I just look at my dashboard traffic stats. And as I said, it gets thousands of visitors anyway.
Did not mean to start a controversy, it’s just that I’ve been watching people spin around in circles spending hours and hours for little reward (I have to catch myself as well – social pulls you in like a black hole) for some time now.
I use social to be social with people that I know and like (and to pick up a few backlinks from time to time).I use search to make money. I guess I’m an anti-social marketer! Lol…
NOTE: If you had a PayPal tip jar, I’d give ya a tip for your work and effort that I have benefited from. “-) I believe in mutually beneficial exchanges, not free rides.
Chuck, I’ll try to respond to as much as I can here and save some for a future blog post 🙂
I established this blog to help people. That’s it. No ulterior motives, I want this to be the place where someone can come to get advice about blogging, networking and social media. I want this to be the blog I wish I found when I first started blogging and at the same time I want to offer something of value to more seasoned bloggers like yourself.
Let’s talk about the banners I have up for real quick:
In case you didn’t know Estava Morioka (aka Nikki) is my daughter – so that one is a no-brainer 🙂
I think everyone should join CommentLuv!! Even if you have a static website.
Blog Engage – the best blogging community that I ever joined and it’s one that I support whole heartedly and the good far outweighs the bad
Market Samurai is the ONLY tool I use for keyword research and of course you know it comes with a free trial (btw – I sold one of those in January, but I have no idea who purchased it)
Lynda.com – also comes with a free trail, but don’t even play around. Sign up for Lynda.com today if you want to learn about blogging, graphics, design, SEO, music software – the list goes on and on
SEO Pressor is great and I really hope that all of my guest posters will take advantage of it.
Now I need to go and get myself one of those paypal donate buttons – but then people will think that I’m online to make money, which I’m not (unless you want to buy a nice dress for your sweetie from my daughter’s boutique – the prices are very reasonable)
Now, about spending hours on social media – yes I love it! It’s just so “ME” can’t you tell. 🙂 (btw my loved ones don’t understand this either so join the club)
Do I spend hours analyzing my traffic. No way man! I look at Google Analytics maybe once or twice a week and mostly to compare it against what I’m seeing in my WordPress stats. But heres’ the thing, because I’ve watched the Google Analytics tutorials from Lynda.com I know WAY more about how to apply the data than the average person. I also use Google Analytics for work and believe me that’s a whole different world. On our website we have hundreds of thousands of pages – for example there are twenty items on the main nav bar alone and each one of them is a unique area of the site. Fortunately I only monitor two of these and since the organization is doing so well, watching the stats is not something I need to invest too much time in, but it’s good to know that I can answer a question from upper-management or the Board of Directors if one comes up.
More to come….
Free hint:
“there is one form of social media that I equate with work and that’s good old Facebook, but since I do it for my job I am getting paid for using it.”
Did you say that you’re getting PAYED to use Facebook? Really? Why? Because you now have a marketable skill in using blogging/social networking. Now rinse and repeat. “-)
How many people would you need as monthly clients charging $500.00 to $1,500 per month to quit your day job? If you had your own video course to offer business owners, what would you make from the sale?
AHA! You caught me red-handed Chuck! I knew from the first day I started blogging that I could use those skills and apply them at work. It’s almost like a dream come true that I’m able to do that. You have to understand, the organization that I work for has a huge social network of it’s own. It’s exclusive to highly knowledgeable technical experts and engineers who volunteer their service to improving the quality of life for everyone in the world. So basically the organization doesn’t need social media, and being part of it is like the icing on the cake. Now I can’t say anymore about it because I don’t want to mix work with blogging.
The bottom line for anyone that is reading this is that social media is the wave of future so if you have a chance to get some skills and knowledge in that area, take advantage of it because you never know when those skills will come in handy. I’m blessed and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned with others and I appreciate everyone who visit this blog and exchanges ideas with me.
Thanks Chuck!
uptill now i havent been on stumbleupon, but now after reading your post iam thinking of doing so for my blog also, it is a good thing to do if one wants to increase traffic to their blog, a nice post keep it up.
Hi Balbir, thanks for saying that!
I have try it for one month ago and getting about 100 – 150 visitors per month from StumbleUpon.
Hey Tony, are we following each other on StumbleUpon? Let’s accept each other’s shares ok? What is your user name? Mine is Ileane 🙂
I have checked out and i found through Google analytic that i received most visitors from StumbleUpon. So I happy to use it and in future i hope it will give be more efforts.
Rakesh, I just visited your blog and I can see why you’re getting SU traffic. You have some great content and a lot of tips for using gadgets and software. Good for you! Thanks for the comment.
Your Referring traffic is dominated by Community sites. That shows how active you are on Blogging Communities.
I must say, StumbleUpon has always been one of my most favored traffic sources since the beginning of my blogging experience. Up till today, it is still among the top 5 traffic source for my blog, contributing much in bringing in new readers and traffic. I just love the SU toolbar, it makes stumbling so easy! I agree with your suggestion to not overlapping all your blogging contacts in all social profiles/bookmarking sites. For your wonderful effort, I hereby present you another (SU) thumbs up and an RT soon to come. Hope it’ll generate you more unique traffic.
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
Hi Ching Ya, the StumbleUpon toolbar for Chrome is really decent! Are you using that one or the or the one for FireFox? Thanks for the visit and for the thumbs up!
WOW, this is amazing info! Especially for me 🙂 I’m lost when it comes to SU and have barely done anything with it. It’s a goal of mine to do more stumbling and build up my network. Your traffic stats for SU are amazing! Really gets me in the mood to give it a go. 🙂 Thanks Ileane!
Hey Elise, pretty cool to see you visiting again. I Stumbled your SEO video and you might see some YouTube hits as a result.
The first time I saw that SU toolbar my head was spinning (I was using IE back then) and I felt like there was no clear instructions on how to use it effectively. Now that I have the Chrome toolbar, it’s so much more simplistic and it looks like they got all of the bugs resolved too. You’ll find some awesome videos there and I’m sure to be submitting more of yours in the future. Let’s make sure we’re connected on all the social networks too Elise. Thanks!
Ileane it’s amazing how much of your traffic is coming from SU but more importantly is how many are staying and not leaving. I have seen this become a major issue for bloggers. High bounce rates for SU has always been an issues in the blogosphere.
Hey Brian, the bounce rate for the StumbleUpon traffic here at Basic Blog Tips is surprising low as well. Thanks for asking. 🙂
StumbleUpon is huge, but usually not quality traffic. Your page to visit ratio is really impressive though, great job 🙂
Hey Ben, Great to see you around here! Thanks for the comment.
Thanks so much for this beautiful, informative post Ileane. I have so much work to do! I really need to spend more time on StumbleUpon – to be honest, I’ve not done nearly enough.
Hi Catherine! Nice meeting you. I visited your Facebook Page and I made sure I’m following you on Twitter. I have reached my limit of 500 on StumbleUpon, so I’m not able to follow you, but I can have unlimited followers. If you start stumbling feel free to follow and accept shares to your toolbar from me. Thanks!
Hi Ileane,
Thanks to Brankica for introducing me to your blog. I’m so thrilled I visited it with this being your latest post.
I read recently that SU outdid FB in traffic but I just have never taken the time to really research exactly how to use it. I do bookmark other people’s posts when I find good ones I want to go back to. Now I’m going to have to break down and really learn how to use this site successfully. I now know that I will be able to accomplish this task with your help.
Awesome post…
Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, Brankica and I are such great supporters of one another. I appreciate the visit and please come back again anytime. Thanks!
Brankica, that’s what they call “social proof”! I need to grab a screenshot of that page on StumbleUpon for all the skeptics and non believers. 🙂
Here’s the perfect example of how submitting someone else’s post or article is a great idea. Brankica has over 1,000 views on this post that I introduced the the StumbleUpon “recommendation engine”. Let’s be clear this doesn’t mean that Brankica’s friends gave the post a thumbs up or a “like” – her friends are those people that you see there in the screenshot. But see that number that I pointed to with the red arrow
1,262 !!!
That represents the number of times people hit the stumble button and her post was recommended to them by StumbleUpon. That’s pretty hot, don’t you think?
StumbleUpon seems to be and yet untapped source of traffic (by me), i should really get into it and see if i manage to pull the same results.
Nice tips you provided there, they’ll definitely help.
I’ve used StumbleUpon but never really delved into all it has to offer. Between you and Kikolani…I am learning some great SU tips! I do agree on not adding your email/Twitter contacts and finding new contacts. It’s all about the real estate. 😉
Hey Maria, there’s a good deal of health related topics on StumbleUpon that I’m sure will interest you. Let me know how it goes.
Congratuations Ileane and thanks for sharing.
I guess I have to try out stumble upon as i have never really done that.
I’ll let you know the outcome in due time.
Hi Kofi, welcome to Basic Blog Tips! Great to see you here today. I’m happy to share any tips for blogging and social media optimization. StumbleUpon is more social than most people think, it’s just that you need to find new and interesting friends outside those you normally socialize with on Twitter and Facebook. It’s not a “rinse and repeat” situation like Chuck and I talked about in earlier comments.
Look for users that have a high number of faves and/or something they discovered has a high count. Then visit their profile to see if they’ve been active recently – otherwise there’s no point in following them, right? – then accept their shares on your toolbar. If you have shares from your StumbleUpon friends, you’ll see this on your toolbar:
Try it and let me know how things work out.
Enjoy your weekend Kofi!
I sometimes get lots of StumbleUpon traffic too, but notice the bounce rate from SU is high so as of now I cannot consider StumbleUpon as being highly targeted 🙁
btw,
Nice illustrations you got here though!
Caleb, I can’t explain why the bounce rate is so low on my blog for StumbleUpon traffic other than to say that in general I have a low bounce rate here. Thanks for visiting.
I am stumble my every new post in the past I usually was receiving 100 visitors for every new article. But after a while this numbers decreased receiving only 2 visits for every new article. In my opinion StumbleUpon is not giving target it traffic and I am not really taking it a lot into consideration.
Right, if you are wanting to actually make money, SU is only good for getting a few backlinks – that’s it. Blogging in general is NOT the way to make money online in the first place.
“Your Referring traffic is dominated by Community sites. That shows how active you are on Blogging Communities.”
I have over 150 sites and my traffic is dominated by search traffic, not community sites. “-)
Hi Chuck, how are you today? You are sooo right about search traffic. I didn’t show you guys that earlier, because in the post I was talking about referral traffic. Let me go and get some updated stats showing All Traffic Sources. BRB.
Here’s a screenshot of what I see on Google Analytics today (so the number is slightly less for StumbleUpon)
The search traffic is close to ten times more than the StumbleUpon traffic, so it appears that I’m getting some help from Market Samurai and SEO Pressor (plus I made a sweet deal with the SE goddesses) 🙂
You payed for Market Samurai and SEO Pressor to drive traffic to a site just to help people for free? I guess I’m asking the question to the general public because many people pay for tools, spend the time learning to use them, drive traffic to a site and still don’t make any money even when they are trying to make money. I know MANY bloggers running on that wheel. If you want off that wheel, stop blogging – it doesn’t pay. As Ileane said, this site makes no money despite all the SEO tools and work, all the blog posts, all the comments, and all the social networking. Why? Blogs that target “free” bring in just that. Again, my comment is to the general public and those people who do want to make money. Nothing wrong with blogging for fun. “-)
Chuck, just to clarify – I purchased Market Samurai and SEO Pressor so that I could learn how to use them and share my experience. Because one of the main reasons I’m online is to learn – the other is TO TEACH! I didn’t buy those tools to drive traffic to my blog, but it would be great to demonstrate to others that it can be done. Like we discussed earlier, learning is always a good thing – and you never know when learning something new will help you make money in the future.
Once again, I’d love to see you write a blog post on the topic of making money and share some of your outcomes and your goals. For example do you think you would have the same success rates with your niche sites if you never purchased MS or SEO Pressor? Are free tools good enough or do we need to invest in paid tools?
Come on give us the details in a blog post or link to one for us to check out!
“Come on give us the details in a blog post”
Nope. lol… I don’t sing and dance for free. I’m into mutually beneficial exchanges. I don’t teach people how to make money online. I provide a service to small businesses getting them top listings, as you can see on CyberSmart. They are happy to pay me, and I enjoy getting them results, and getting payed. That’s a mutually beneficial exchange.
“do you think you would have the same success rates with your niche sites if you never purchased MS or SEO Pressor?”
Yep. I don’t use SEO Pressor at all and only bust out MS every now and then. It’s not just tools. I was a roofer for over 20 years. You could give the man next to me an air gun, and I could use a hammer, and I would install more shingles with my hammer if the other man did not have the same experience with roofing. Tools are fantastic, but it takes more than that.
If you want to learn a good method for making money with sniper sites, then I would suggest Brian Johnson’s Commission Ritual. The best $97.00 you could spend on the topic. What I like about this method is that you don’t even need a Twitter or Facebook account. Non-social marketing!
Ileane, it looks like you could be making some good cash with your skills. Just sayin’ 🙂
The reason I decided to comment on this subject has to do with a general atmosphere that I see. It’s not personal with you Ileane, but has to do with what I see in general. This post, along with thousands of other posts online, has to do with driving traffic to websites. I asked two questions:
1. Why do you want to drive traffic?
2. Does your effort put $$ into your bank account?
Your answer to the first question was to teach people. The answer to the second was zero. And that’s all fine and well, and my comments are directed to those people who read this that would answer the questions differently, i.e, people that DO want to make money online.
I understand that my ‘opinion’ is not inline with the common trends concerning this topic. I often find myself walking against the tide, but, it’s my opinion based upon my experience as a blogger since 2002.
Chuck so I’m the lucky one that gets to benefit from your disappointment with what you’re seeing in the rest of the blogosphere. Lucky me! LOL!! 🙂
I hear you loud and clear.
I don’t claim to show anyone how to make money online I only try to help them use blogging software and social networking tools. I’ll leave the MMO blog posts to those who know what they are talking about – and I make a point to avoid those that don’t!
I’m not sure who else is following along with the responses on this post but you certainly gave them an earful. There’s always two sides to a coin and I thank you for presenting the other side. In the meantime I hope you have a chance to give me some feedback on the post I was trying to write as I was responding to you. I’d love to have your feedback on Finding the Best Social Media Apps to Boost Your Brand. And be prepared to accept the blame for any typos in the post!
What’s interesting about this conversation as a backdrop for that post is that I share two FREE tools that developers were kind enough to provide to the rest of us who are struggling to make heads or tails out of the concept of “social proof”. It will be interesting to see what you have to say, because I wouldn’t dare to take a guess….
I got about 500 visitors from Stumbleupon per month.
Hi Ileane, its amazing to see your stumbleupon visitors bounce rate. For me stumble upon comes below the Google’s organic traffic, but the bounce rate is close to 80%. I am still figuring on how to bring down this bounce rate. Can you help me to bring down my bounce rate?
Sathish
Hey Sathish, you and I have the best kind of connection on StumbleUpon. By that I mean you and I both accept shares from each other. This also means that when I open my Stumble bar every day – I get shares from you each time you publish a post. Therefore, when the toolbar sends me to your blog (I think this counts as a “view” in StumbleUpon but I’m not certain about that) but you will also see this as part of your StumbleUpon traffic in Google Analytics.
Most of the time I read your post and I’ll leave a comment and possibly retweet and share on Facebook. But there is no point in me clicking on any other articles on your blog, because I know that I’ve already seen everything from the SU toolbar.
I’m sure everyone else you share with does something similar – in fact they might not even spend more much time on your blog because they have other shares to check.
So to make a long story short – here’s what I do. The same thing I do with submissions – I don’t share my own content. Remember you’re content should show up when I hit Stumble on the toolbar anyway because we have similar interests and we keep liking the same kind of stuff.
My advice is to try not sharing your own posts for a week or two and see what happens, ok?
Sounds like a good idea to me. I will give this a try and I will update you with my status after two weeks. BTW Thanks for your suggestion.
Satish, in the end you always need to keep testing and evaluating what works for you, based on the outcomes that you want. If you try my suggestion and your StumbleUpon traffic drops really low, that’s not good and you’ll be thinking “Why did I listen to her…” LOL!!
Any time we add a new traffic source or if we start depending on one source for traffic (even if it’s search traffic) we always need to pay close attention to the bounce rate of that specific traffic source. It’s always going to indicate if you’re doing something right or not because we want traffic, but we also want those “people” behind the numbers to find what they want on our blogs.
You have great content on your blog, so I suspect that your overall bounce rate is low, you just need to find the right balance that works with SU.
Keep up the great work Sathish. I’m headed over to your blog now. 🙂
Great Post Ileane. It’s time for me to get on the StumbleUpon bandwagon and this is a great post for making sure I don’t treat it like I would Twitter!
Hey there my new Blog Engage buddy! Thanks for visiting and please don’t forget to vote!!
Ohh wow this is cool. i am also following you on stumbleupon 🙂
I’m not a big fan of social media traffic but from my experience SU users have very low bounce rate and they engage more with your article than your typical social media user.
Hi Ileane,
This is a great find, what were your techniques to acquiring such traffic?
Ash, did you read the post? I also gave away all of my StumbleUpon Traffic Secrets in the comments, so take a look! Thanks.
Hi Ileane,
Just watched your StumbleUpon tutorial on your YouTube channel. It was very helpful–mostly to remind me that I’m not using the features of the site to their potential for driving traffic to my site. I really need to do this for all of the sites more actively!! I spent about 2 hours stumbling over the last two evenings and came across several sites in my niche–some new and some I’ve seen before. It really is addictive. Thanks for the post and video tips.
Hi Laura, I’m totally addicted to StumbleUpon and it’s really paying off big time. I enjoy finding sites that pique my interest more when I can see them visually. The time I spend on StumbleUpon is very refreshing and stress reducing too.
The Chrome toolbar makes all the difference for me. Thanks for watching the tutorial, if you get a chance can you leave a comment over on YouTube. I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!!
SU used to top my my blog stats as well some weeks back, but now FB ranks on top and Google traffic! 🙂
Saksham – Where would we be without Google traffic right? 🙂
I’m glad you’re getting some visits from Google, maybe those visitors will become loyal readers too.
Hi Ileane,
I must admit, I’m still figuring out how StumbleUpon works. I end up stumbling around to lots of sites and using the toolbar a lot to do the thumbs up. Nonetheless, StumbleUpon is a big traffic generator for me, so I figure I must be doing something right. 🙂
Hi Rich, glad to hear that you’re building a following and getting some traffic from StumbleUpon too. Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for the article, it was really useful, it may sound stupid, but I didn’t even know that you can follow people on SU! 😀 So really-really thank you for this article, it was a real eye-opener 🙂
Hi Daveido. StumbleUpon is one of the more challenging networks to master. I hope I’ve help shed some light on usage of the toolbar for you. I appreciate you input too. 🙂
I also viewed my Google analytics account and there is a traffic coming from Stumbleupon. I’ll be using Stumbleupon more often now.
Hi Raymund, thanks for leaving a comment. Happy Stumbling!
Yeah, I totally agree stumbleupon can bring good amount of traffic. Beside this I also uses twitter and facebook, those are also useful for traffic generation.
Rajesh, are we following each other on Facebook? I’m starting to get traffic from Facebook now too. That’s a big surprise for me because I didn’t change anything about my networking – it’s just happened. Speaking of Facebook, have you tried PostPost yet? That’s a cool way to look at your Facebook stream.
Su is great for views, exactly what a photo blog needs!
Greg – you are SOOO right! Some of my favorite finds over on StumbleUpon are photos and graphics. Don’t get me wrong I like finding good tech and blogging articles, but the best place to find awesome imagery is on StumbleUpon. Check out this one I saw earlier today – 106 of the most beloved Street Art Photos – Year 2010
106 images sounds like a lot, but at the end I still wanted more!! 🙂
Thanks for the great advice on increasing SU traffic…. Will follow your tips
Hi Salman, thanks for commenting and please let me know how you make out with StumbleUpon. My friend Tuan from @Tek3D tweeted me this morning that my tips helped him get over 3,000 views. I just checked and the post has 5,688 views now!
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/tek3d.org/awesome-unpopular-google-products
Sure …I’ll let you know
Thanks Ileane,
I have posted to Stumble Upon but have not had a lot of traffic. I have a good amount of traffic from Twitter but the quality is so low.
Do you feel that Stumble Upon is the most valuable of them all?
I want to know, like all of us, how to best generate qualified traffic.
What would you say are the top 5 to use for traffic?
Thanks
Selina
I’d forgotten all about Stumbleupon, and had long ago consigned it to the “untargeted traffic, what’s the point” pile… but with the bounce rate you mention maybe there is room for it after all!
Hi Mark, come on back over to StumbleUpon and join in the fun. I’ll look out for you 🙂
Also, if you are not a SU user or just don’t have the time to do it you can outsource people to maintain and participate with others in order to get a stronger network of similar interest users.
Just make sure you find someone with experience. SU can be great for generating traffic and getting your posts/pages viral.
Garen
Hi Garen!! My fee is $25 per hour. (just kidding)
If the person knows what they’re doing it could be worth the money. I see some users on the site with tens of thousands of favorites, so no doubt some of them have outsourced once upon a time. Good point.
LOL, your hired then!
Yeah, I am considering hiring people to manage my FB accounts, Twitter, ect. Social media is being factored heavily into Googles algorithm in 2011. I have already seen proof on this 🙂
Garen,
Could you please explain how you see it effecting your blog already? Is there a good article you can point me to about this and how to get the most out of the social networks for the Google Algorithm? How do you find people to outsource to?
All questions I know but I am like a baby out here. Learning as fast as I can.
Thanks
Selina
Hey Selina,
Here are a couple good articles on social media and how the algo change is favoring it in 2011:
http://kercommunications.com/google-algorithm-social-media-seo/
http://thesemblog.com/2011/03/social-signals-and-seo-can-facebook-and-twitter-help-my-seo/
It has to do with how people are “really” sharing content. It’s a way to combat spam and blackhat tactics.
Garen
P.S. I use oDesk to outsource my work. Go with people in the Philippines as they seem to be of much more quality vs India. 🙂
I love stumble upon. It has been one of my biggest traffic sources for my blog. While not all of my posts get stumbled a few of them do which results in a huge increase in traffic.
Sean, it can be a little exciting to see that bump in traffic coming from StumbleUpon and I hope I introduced you to some new ways to keep the momentum going! Thanks for the visit.
Hi Ileane,
Just coming – better late than never!
So happy you’re experiencing SU traffic – it’s a great social site 🙂
Many thanks for the mention on the pic!
Starting slowly to move my social machine including SU, of course 😉
My first long “new” post is coming after the delays I’ve had.
Stumbled and RTed!
I’m seeing your images have links to outside, nice idea, any motive or just sharing to the sources?
Have a great weekend 🙂
Gera
Hi Gera,
You’re the one who encouraged me to take another look at StumbleUpon – and I’m so glad you did!
Image linking is so much easier with WordPress and I recommend you give it a try. I try to link images when I feel the links will benefit everyone.
Thanks for the visit. I’ll stop by and check out your long post soon!
Hi Ileane,
This is my first time on your blog (I was recommended over by Brankica), and I must say, I’m really impressed so far. I’ll definitely drop by in the future!
I’ve been considering becoming an active member of StumbleUpon for a long time (at the moment, Twitter has most of my affection 😉 ). However, I think it’s time to branch out and find another love (not to replace, rather to supplement). After reading this post, I’m going to give StumbleUpon another look.
Thanks for the tips! I’m definitely going to give StumbleUpon a shot. 🙂
Christina
Hi Christina, welcome to Basic Blog Tips! Please make sure to send me your user name on StumbleUpon so I can keep up with your stumbles. Looking forward to seeing more of you around here. Thanks!
Hey Ileane,
I finally got to creating that StumbleUpon account (username is CashCampfire)! I’ve even stumbled several posts already. 🙂
The crazy thing is, I’ve been receiving several spikes in traffic from StumbleUpon recently since my account was created. Earlier this month, I received over 100 visits (quality of visits wasn’t that great – high bounce rate – but I was happy with the increase in traffic nevertheless). Then, just last week or so, I received around 200 visits (though, still poor quality). And yesterday, I received 40!
I think my traffic spikes were mainly because of one StumbleUpon user stumbling several of my posts. That’s my only explanation anyway. Otherwise, it’s mind boggling!
Thanks so much for the useful tips and support!
Christina
Chritina, love that you came back and updated me on your progress with StumbleUpon. I’m proud of you for putting together a strategy and getting results so quickly. You go girl! Thanks for the feedback.
Hey Ileane,
Congratulations on your StumbleUpon success! Thanks for sharing these fantastic tips – I’ll be implementing them to take advantage of this traffic generation source 🙂
All the best,
Mavis
Hi Mavis, I’m glad you were able to gain something from the post. StumbleUpon is a lot of fun, the extra traffic is a nice bonus 🙂
Ileane, awesome share of information. I admit I was searching high and low on google about Stumbleupon and how the algorithm works but with no success for the last 3 hours until I landed on your page. I have been an avid user of Stumbleupon for over 1.5 years now and back in the day when you could review your own article and get heaps of traffic, they suddenly changed it late last year. So someone told me not to review/stumble own articles at all. I have since stopped but now, the traffic is so low, it doesn’t even hit 3 digits.
Maybe you could shed some light on the quiet algorithm changes that SU did in the last few months? Also about the ‘suggested posting time’ box that also messed up a few months ago. Nowadays when I suggest/stumble/review a same-niche site, it does not help at all on my end. Just plain confused at the moment and thanks for any feedback. Keep up the excellent work!
Hi David, I was dazed and confused for a long time about StumbleUpon too, but the Chrome Toolbar -which I heard is a “watered – down” version of the IE and FF versions -was just what I needed to simply things for me. Either way, it’s the “approach” that really makes a difference. Here’s how I changed my approach – I started looking for users with high numbers of Stumbles and tried to mimic their behavior. The easiest way to find these users is by searching through the groups, but you can also look at users who has submitted sites that have gone viral. If you look through the favorites of these users you’ll start to see the types of posts they are discovering patterns that develop according to their interests.
I notice SU doesn’t use the word “algorithm” they call it a recommendation engine. So once you start accepting shares from the users I mentioned earlier you’ll also want to send them your shares too – just don’t overdo it.
Hope you find these tips helpful too.
I don’t find any reason why people would not stumble such an awesome post ! When you said that the bounce rate was 13% I was startled because normally SU traffic are the “hit and run away” case 😉 well above 80% bounce rate . But after I read the post , it explains in itself why people prefered to stay on the article and read the entire of it in addition to check out more articles . Cool piece of information here ! Stumbled ! 😉
Hi Rohan, what a nice compliment, thanks so much! Since the time I wrote this post my bounce rate from StumbleUpon is increasing and I’m not really surprised. I love using it anyway though!
I am pretty new here and trying to find out about sites and traffic. it was helpful for my little brain.
Hi Ileane,
I never use SU in my blogging career, I have just started using SU from past one week and see hugh results, and for sure my blog traffic has just increase to 20%.
SU is a great source to get traffic immediately.
Thanks for sharing
-Imran
Hi Shariff, I’m glad you’re finding StumbleUpon is a good traffic source. It’s also such a wonderful way to find interesting articles and gorgeous and unique graphics that you won’t see on other social sites.
Yes, i am totally agree that StumpleUpon is great source for generate traffic for website. I am not so much active user of StumbleUpon. But trying to become active user of SU. Its really great and perfact website source of Social Bookmarking as well as sharing videos, photos, News and many more for generate website traffic of your business. Thanks you for providing unique detail information related to generate website traffic with help of StumbleUpon.
Hi Nitesh, Do you have a blog? I just visited your site and the blog link wasn’t working yet. If you’re just starting out, you might want to try some social networking on Twitter and Facebook before you start using StumbleUpon to build traffic. If you want to talk more about it let me know. Best wishes!
I am still in the stage of mastering the art of Stumbleupon traffic generation. These tips will help me a lot. Great post!
Hi Raymund, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!
There is something amazingly incredible once you know that you have generated a great pact of legions of followers and make the traffic really moving the success of your web page will all depend on how people respond to sources and seo channels
Making a great tool to increase search and traffic can create a very important instance that a blog can gain instant popularity and knowing that more people can like it and share interest and attention
Hi Ileane
When I checked my Google Analytics statistics today I remembered reading this post a couple of months ago. It was after reading this post I learned about StumbleUpon and went to their site to sign up. After a slow start something interesting happened today. I have had more than 65 referring hits from a single post just today. That is pretty awesome for a little blog like mine. With that in mind I just wanted to thank you for introducing me to StumbleUpon. Thank you Ileane.
Thomas, you just made my day! I’m so glad you’re getting traffic from StumbleUpon, that’s awesome.
I’ve been an SU member for years, but I always used it as a source of inspiration or even a bookmarking service. I’ve completely skipped the community side of things and I’ve really been missing out. Yikes.
Hi Jessi, it’s never to late to join the SU party. Thanks for following me there. I’m at my following limit, so I’ll unfollow someone so I can keep tabs on your Stumbles. 🙂
First of all congrats for getting high traffic by either means. I found a long before stumbleupon was a good source for receiving unique traffic. Moreover you have mentioned here some great tips to use this strategy in a well manner. Thanks Ileane!!!!!
Hey Princess, I’m glad you plan to use these tips. Come back a let me know how you make out.
wish you good luck to get highest traffic from stumbleupon specially with good bounce rate. Moreover thanks for briefing its better use to get vast results. Thanks!
Yap! This is splendid information on SU. For having good and highest traffic StumbleUpon is a distinctive front. Thanks for reveal this awesome door.
Hi Lily, best wishes to your success with StumbleUpon!
StumbleUpon is amazing! I use Short Stats and StumbleUpon is second after Google for 3 of my blogs. I think I may have submitted my site once or twice. I suppose other people may have stumbled it, I use the Sexy Bookmarks on my blogs and they have a counter for overall use but don’t specify which sites were used.
Regardless, SU needs to be a part of anyone’s online work for traffic.
Hi Jackie, I haven’t tried Short Stats but I can appreciate that you are tracking your incoming traffic. I use WordPress.com stats and Google Analytics. StumbleUpon gives us a nice traffic boost doesn’t it? 🙂
I tried the WP Stats and can’t remember why I like Short Stats more…lol.
I think the WP Stats was a lot more robust and seemed like it was more information than I needed. Have you seen short stats?
Stumble Upon is unreal. I would never have imagined it with as little as I have done. Now I try to be consistent with posting my new posts to SU.
Thanks for the amazing site!
Ileane, I wanted to see what the plugin you use looks like and there seems to be two WP stats plugins. There is WP Stats and WP Stats Dashboard. Which one do you use?
Hi Jackie, it’s called WordPress.com Stats http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/
You’ll need an API key from WordPress.com or Akismet in order to use it. I already had one from my first blog Ms. Ileane Speaks, but it’s very easy to sign up for one. Let me know if you need my help with it. Have a great weekend Jackie.
Ileane,
Just got back from a business trip, did not have access to the Internet ): and was so happy to see your reply. I installed this plugin and it is really great. Thank you!
Hi Jackie, I was really hoping you would come back and let me know if you installed it or not. Thanks! Chat soon.
A marvelous success in your blogging career. Congrats! Also thanks for informing us in a pretty way to work with stumbleupon with the correct strategy.
Hi Isabella, thanks for your support too!
Wow……….you Expert Guy need support form us?, as most of us are newbies in the blogging ocean.
Its your luck Ileane, not every blog could got a huge traffic from stumbleupon. Nice and useful briefing about stumbleupon with charts and simple explanations. Thanks so much….!
Hi Tom, if you haven’t checked out StumbleUpon yet or if it’s been awhile since you visited, you should give it another try. It’s working great for a lot of bloggers that were like me and didn’t like it at first.
I’m very much impressed too with your continuous in touch with the readers and encourage them in a right way. Thanks so much Ileane!!!
I’ve never used StumbleUpon or sites like Digg before, I think this is due to a lack of knowledge about the sites over in the UK. Do you think that such sites are more useful to bloggers or do you see an avenue for businesses to try and evolve in such areas? I’m currently debating whether to dive in, or still walk around the pool a bit more to see what it’s all about.
Great post though, very insightful!
AH
Skeleton Productions
Hi AH,
One site that I highly recommend for business owners is BizSugar. I wouldn’t waste my time on Digg if you’re trying to promote a business unless your in the news industry.
StumbleUpon has a paid service that can attract targeted users to your site, but depending upon what you’re selling, that traffic might not convert well. To find out more about the advantages of using SU for business, check out this post from Kristi Hines 4 Ways to Increase Your Traffic with StumbleUpon
Thanks Ileane, appreciate the follow up, will check it out this afternoon.
Have a great week.
AH
Skeleton Productions
This marvelous success I think its all due to the hard working and full concentration on your job. just stumbleupon is a source this time might be next time you got a huge traffic from other sources. Anyhow Congrats to you.
Hi Lauren, it’s not good to put all your eggs in one basket, and I love to get more traffic from other sources outside of StumbleUpon, but it hasn’t happened yet! I’ll keep looking though 🙂
Stumble upon can bring great traffic if used consistently and making sure the information is of value. A catchy title and all the other “marketing” applies.
I need to go Stumble… (:
Thank for the info Ileane. You are write. SU is one way of gaining new visitors. I have seen it in my blog and as soon as I invite and stumble. Traffic is coming in but it is not much compared to facebook and BE.
Hi Joseph! I’m glad to hear that you are getting traffic from Blog Engage. Let me know if you want to share your testimonial and I will blog about it over there. Thanks!
It’s really amazing and informative post. It’s very useful for every people so i am thankful to you for sharing such a helpful knowledge with us.
hello, thanks for this info,, i want to try stumbleupon for get trafic
Great article Ileane, I have recently signed up with stumbleupon and am still trying to get my head around it and this has helped.
Wow, you really figured SU out!
That is some nice traffic you pull in from SU, with a bounce rate of just 13.5% that is really good!
Great explanation!
I admit, my bounce rate has gone up since I posted this article.
Success with StumbleUpon seems to hinge on what I call indirection.
If you don’t aim directly at getting traffic, you’ll probably get it. But there’s no getting around the fact that being engaged with SU involves a time and effort commitment. That’s what morphs a good idea (such as this) into a “Someday I’ll find time to do that.”
Hey Ileane,
I do get SU traffic but the bounce rate is very high (>70%). Your low bounce rate (1%) is very impressive. I’ll follow your advise to follow popular users and find more people with similar interest 🙂
Great one for me to delve into SU!
Cheers,
Ming
Its good to know that there is something that can be done to gain more traction with fellow stumblers. thanks for the heads up.
articles sounds good!!!
Probably this could be because of the RESTful url’s, they are to doing good job for facebook still stumbleupon attracts huge traffic.
~logical
Traffic charts helps you monitor the website statistics.
I have till now not been able to crack stumble upon
Manoj, StumbleUpon is vastly different from any other bookmarking site on the web. That’s why is takes awhile to sink in 🙂 Thanks for your comment.
i am also trying for use stumbleupon.i will try to use the su.pr .thanks for your tricks 🙂
Hi Ms. Ileane
Thanks for the tips – a lot of SEO friends preach about Stumbledupon – but haven’t been able to sum up exactly how to go about doing it like you have!
John
Thank you very much for your article. Undoubtedly, StumbleUpon is great source for generating traffic.
It’s pretty amazing finding out your site got upwards of 600 views in just one morning from a Stumbled post (happened to me today) 🙂 . Content is key, but so is a great title and relevant image.
nice post @Ileane Awesome information About stumble but can you say me how can i increase stumble follower in my account.
when i follower any user stumble give me this massage
“Sorry, you have already reached the maximum Follow limit of 500 Stumblers”
what is this i don’n know plz tell me about this
hello ileane mam,
i am a newbie and i must admit that stumble can become a great source of traffic.once i got almost 800 visitors from stumble after 4 or 5 days of launching of my blog, thanks for sharing your experience and tips
I used to get good visitors from SU. But nowadays whenever I submit any post on SU, it shows 0 views :/ Need help! What am I doing wrong?
Hi Ileane,
Nice technique for generating traffic, but its increasing bounce rate of the website. Do you have any idea why?