Drive Free Traffic to Your Site or Blog with Stumble Upon

[Andrew Michaels]

Hey guys. I'd love it if you'd stumble my site. It's called Lifecrafting

Let me know what you think

[subfreq]

I am really enjoying this site but I am not sure how people get thousands more hits worth of traffic out of it. Do you stumble several pages from your site to increase traffic site wide?

I really only want to get more awareness of the index page so people know the site exists.

The best thing about Stumble is that it throws up loads of brilliant sites i would never have gone to. I can see myself becoming quite addicted to the site.

[Andrew Michaels]

Oops. Forgot to ad my username. It's DocHolliday2006. Please ad me and I'll ad you back. Mutual reviews all around. My site is lifecrafting

[JohnPlace]

Originally Posted by Andrew Michaels

Oops. Forgot to ad my username. It's DocHolliday2006. Please ad me and I'll ad you back. Mutual reviews all around. My site is lifecrafting

I have stumbled your site and added you as a friend.

[Andrew Michaels]

Dumb question, but how the hell do I add friends? I'm in the friends section, and I can see those who have added me, but I can't find a place to input user names and ad them to my friends list.

[believegecko]

You can go to that person's profile page and click the button that reads "Add as Friend." I think it is in the top right of their profile.

[richie]

I was not able to submit my post to SU since last few days .seems there is a problem with the plugin i used with WP.SU has brought great traffic to my blogs and the visitors of SU are far better than Digg.

[JohnPlace]

If one of you kind souls could stumble this, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Read-Set-Go! Free eBook to the First 50 People Who Ask.

For some reason, I can't stumble it myself. I think my toolbar is messed up. I can vote something "thumbs up" if it's already been discovered by someone else, but I can no longer discover new sites -- the transaction just hangs when I click submit.

Anyway, thanks for the help. I much appreciate it.

Now off to see what's wrong with my toolbar...

[mentalmosaic]

Originally Posted by believegecko

You can go to that person's profile page and click the button that reads "Add as Friend." I think it is in the top right of their profile.

Oh - I'll look! I'm am truly stumbling & staggering my way through this site. Really - hope I don't get a DUI!

[mentalmosaic]

Argh - I am even having trouble just figuring how to get to someone's profile page!

Time to hit up the "Help forum" methinks...

Ciao!

[mentalmosaic]

Well, this isn't exactly kosher... but I am going to profile pages by typing it into my browser, i.e. I found Sagegoat's profile page (finally!) by typing:

StumbleUpon » sagegoat's web site reviews and blog

[Michelle]

The Stumble toolbar makes my browser crash at least 3 times a day. Still, it is a fun concept indeed.

[believegecko]

Becky Prank Calls - Little Becky Barry from Dublin, Ireland
I just added the above page. It's really funny and will brighten up your day. If you like it please stumble it.
Please feel free to contact me if any of you need any help with your pages.

[JohnPlace]

Originally Posted by believegecko

Becky Prank Calls - Little Becky Barry from Dublin, Ireland
I just added the above page. It's really funny and will brighten up your day. If you like it please stumble it.
Please feel free to contact me if any of you need any help with your pages.

Gecko, I was happy to stumble those prank phone calls for you. That little girl is quite hilarious, and those phone calls are mandatory-listening for anyone looking for a good laugh!

I could use a bit of stumble-love for this one:
13 Simple Words that Could Change Your Life Forever

[Chet]

I can't get get the stumble tool bar to download

[Jonathan]

On a related note, has anyone had any experience with advertising on Stumble Upon? Seems like quite a good (and simple) mechanism: people get taken direct to your site, and you pay 5 cents per visitor.

[believegecko]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

On a related note, has anyone had any experience with advertising on Stumble Upon? Seems like quite a good (and simple) mechanism: people get taken direct to your site, and you pay 5 cents per visitor.

Jonathan - I have tried three different pages with paid SU placement at 5 cents per visitor. On each page I set the limit at $5.00 per day, or 100 visitors. I did not see any major positive impact yet, but those pages were pages I personally believed in, but was having trouble getting stumbled. I am interested to hear what experience anyone else has had with paid stumbles.
If I had a large budget I would toss in $50 to $100 per month, but I get most of my traffic organically. My PPC spend is about $5.00 per day - not much.

[Chet]

Ok I finally got a tool bar and stumbled most of the people in this thread.

[JohnPlace]

Originally Posted by Chet

Ok I finally got a tool bar and stumbled most of the people in this thread.

Chet, I stumbled the Batty Old Bat site in your sig, and was honored to do so. It's a great concept and an under-represented point of view.

Just so you know, I tried to click on the link to follow through to your forums, but the link is broken.

[Chet]

thanks for warning about the link ... the one at the top of page or at bottom of article? (could explain why I am not getting comments in the forum :P)

[JohnPlace]

Hey guys, I'd like to throw my two cents into the mix here. I've noticed something about StumbleUpon visitors during the last week: They're truly excellent visitors because they're targeted and they're interested.

They are targeted because they are stumbling through sites in a category that they have chosen.

And they are interested because they are actively searching for new sites and therefore want to explore yours to see what it's all about.

By way of comparison, most Digg users stay on my site for about 2 seconds. Stumble visitors hang around for 3 or 4 minutes -- some of them hang around for an hour or more! (Because they are finding something they like, undoubtedly).

So, in my opinion, Stumble Upon is a truly excellent resource, and we should all be working to keep it that way.

So if we have suggestions for our friends in this thread to help make their site better for our precious Stumble users, we should share those suggestions.

Just my two cents.

Keep the stumble-love goin' round, friends.

[JohnPlace]

Originally Posted by Chet

thanks for warning about the link ... the one at the top of page or at bottom of article? (could explain why I am not getting comments in the forum :P)

The one beneath the article on your front page, in this sentence:

We hope you will visit the forums and share your ideas with us.

[JohnPlace]

For those of you interested in the potential of Stumble Upon for driving traffic, I just want to reiterate that I can now vouch for what others are saying.

One of my posts has been going viral on SU for the last 2 days. At this rate, I will have had over 10,000 visitors from SU by the end of the day.

What's interesting is that I didn't really try to promote this particular article at all. Someone at SU found it and it exploded.

[Michelle]

I have also had three of my biggest traffic days ever thanks to StumbleUpon. I never would have guessed so many people are surfing the net!

[Phil Newton]

Originally Posted by JohnPlace

What's interesting is that I didn't really try to promote this particular article at all. Someone at SU found it and it exploded.

I can second that. I've only stumbled one or two of my own pages, and they've not done particularly well. However, a while ago one post got picked up by someone else on the network and pulled in thousands of visits in just a few hours. I'm guessing it's a built in way of preventing the system from being gamed by webmasters.

I've not had enough experience with the other networks to say which is best for targeted traffic, but StumbleUpon still provides a steady stream of visitors even months after initial submissions.

[JohnPlace]

I've noticed something really strange that I'm hoping one of you SU experts can chime in on.

At the top of the SU comments page for one of my pages (well, all pages that have been stumbled, actually), there is a section of the page that says "people who liked this site" followed by a number of people in parenthesis, and beneath this heading is a list of icons representing every person who has clicked "thumbs up" for that particular page.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

Anyway, I quickly figured out that the "number of people who have liked this site" never rises above 40, despite the fact that 100s of people have stumbled this particular page.

This seems normal -- Even Steve Pavlina's front page only shows 40 people, so it's clear there's a cap.

But what's weird about my page is that the "number of users" didn't just rise to 40 and stop -- it keeps fluctuating between 30 and 40 (and the cast of characters in the icon section is always revolving). That makes me think that people might be taking their stumbles back, but I find it very odd that so many people would be in the habit of rescending stumbles.

So why is that number fluctuating? Very strange.

Either way, the article in question is getting a lot of attention --- someone apparently put it on de.li.cious too. But I'd like to know what's up with that fluctuating number.

[Peter S C]

I too am experiencing the Stumble effect

John funnily enough I was "stumbling" last night and the second article I was brought to was your one "How to Memorize Anything". I'm curious, is this the one that is doing so well?

[believegecko]

Originally Posted by JohnPlace

I've noticed something really strange that I'm hoping one of you SU experts can chime in on.

At the top of the SU comments page for one of my pages (well, all pages that have been stumbled, actually), there is a section of the page that says "people who liked this site" followed by a number of people in parenthesis, and beneath this heading is a list of icons representing every person who has clicked "thumbs up" for that particular page.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

Anyway, I quickly figured out that the "number of people who have liked this site" never rises above 40, despite the fact that 100s of people have stumbled this particular page.

This seems normal -- Even Steve Pavlina's front page only shows 40 people, so it's clear there's a cap.

But what's weird about my page is that the "number of users" didn't just rise to 40 and stop -- it keeps fluctuating between 30 and 40 (and the cast of characters in the icon section is always revolving). That makes me think that people might be taking their stumbles back, but I find it very odd that so many people would be in the habit of rescending stumbles.

So why is that number fluctuating? Very strange.

Either way, the article in question is getting a lot of attention --- someone apparently put it on de.li.cious too. But I'd like to know what's up with that fluctuating number.

John – I have seen this too. I don’t think it is people taking their thumbs up stumbles away. I think it is just SU rotating the list out to introduce you to more people. SU is a very community driven site and needs interaction between people for it to work. Folks roll through SU so fast that I don’t think very many people would take the time to go back and remove stumbles. Your articles are good too, so there would be no reason for anyone to go back and change their mind.

[JohnPlace]

Originally Posted by Peter S C

I too am experiencing the Stumble effect

John funnily enough I was "stumbling" last night and the second article I was brought to was your one "How to Memorize Anything". I'm curious, is this the one that is doing so well?

Yes. That article has officially gone viral. It will have 15,000 visitors, mostly from SU, before the end of the day. And the wonderful thing about this is that most of the users who read that article go on to read other things.

The flow of people into that article is a raging river that separates into a multitude of smaller streams flowing in every direction through my site.

My subscription rate has increased by 66% in the last 2 days. People are actually signing up for accounts. And "direct traffic" to my Website has multiplied by a hundred.

And the rest of my articles are getting stumbles too. My most recent article was stumbled by someone on SU's "top stumbler" list.

In terms of the social networking sites that I have used, the potential of SU is really through the roof. Give stumblers what they want, make it easy for them to stumble, and wait for something to catch fire.

[Peter S C]

Good advice John.

I have followed your lead and added the Stumbleupon It plugin to the end of my articles so that it is easier for people to Stumble articles. The Sociable plugin I was previously using included Stumbleupon, but I think it's a good idea to make it obvious that people can help you by Stumbling your page.