StumbleUpon

 

StumbleUpon is by far my largest traffic source from social media networks. I get a steady stream of new traffic from StumbleUpon to read my content everyday. I also find it a great service to use as a user not just as a marketer when I want to kill a minute or two.

 

How It Works

 

StumbleUpon (SU) works on the principal of “stumbling around the internet”. A user picks topics/choices of what he/she likes and then goes to random websites in the network that correspond with these choices.

 

Once on those websites the user can give it a thumbs up or thumbs down to say they like it or they don’t. They can also submit new websites to StumbleUpon to share with others.

 

With stumble upon there is the social media aspect where you can add friends, message each other and keep tabs on what your friends have stumbled.

 

Your Goal

 

Your goal is to get your content submitted into the SU network will bring you traffic. The more votes you get that are quality votes the more traffic you will get. You want your content to be in the right category with the right tags and hopefully bring you a ton of targeted visitors.

 

What You Can Do

 

I can’t stress the importance of a health friend group to help manipulate SU. Having lots of IM friends can help get your content submitted for you and get your content votes. As I will explain below, having varying friends is key for SU. Also there are your friends on StumbleUpon. I get a few a week adding me and I add about 2 a week constantly growing my network.

 

If you think it is a great idea to submit your own content all the time, it isn’t! Although your account may not be tied into your site, the algorithm doesn’t like seeing people only submit one site or submit the same site again and again. You can submit your site every once and a while but my rule of thumb for that is twice a month. I also have this rule for my friends submitting my content (most friends) and as a result, I don’t get punished by the system for having the same people submit my content.

 

I give my friends everything to submit for me. I give them a description, title, tags, and a category so they just have to cut and paste. I expect the same from them when I help them out, but I read their articles as well to make sure they are appropriate and users will like it.

 

The same thing goes for stumbles (votes). If you have the same group always voting on your stuff, you will quickly see your link juice fade and the traffic dry up.

 

Also, for submissions and stumbles, always stumble other people’s websites as well. This will not only yield you a few friends on SU but also give your profile a more “natural” feel. Now, I say natural as not being there for the sole purpose of marketing. Any social network and its users hate pure marketers, and as a result being one will get you no where. The best way to utilize a network is also to become a user and enjoy the network.

 

Frowned Upon Methods (Blackhat)

 

Disclaimer: I do not endorse or promote any of these methods. These are mentioned purely for educational purposes and should not be used as they violate the terms of service of the program being discussed.

 

As with anything there are blackhat methods to abuse StumbleUpon. Getting caught using these methods will get your account banned, and are 99% of the time not worth the effort. As mentioned in the disclaimer I do not endorse any of these methods and they should be used at your own risk.

 

Stumble Communities

 

These are little communities built solely for the purpose of garnering Stumbles. They can be small or quite large and seem to pop up in all sorts of places. StumbleUpon shuts these down as it can find them. An example of a community (which is now shut down), was the SU community on BlogCatalog.

 

The difference between these communities and your IM friend network is that in one case you have a private network that is not seen and as a result is not punished. The other community is public.

 

I can already tell that some of you will say that the private and public communities are both black hat. I don’t feel this is the case because the public ones are purely for the purpose of not reading content and trying to break the system. Your friends network will yield you friends that read the content and are happy to submit the content for you. On the other hand the public forums don’t give two craps about your content and as a result you get a lot of spammy requests and stumbles.

 

The users in the public communities are as a rule of thumb a lot lower quality than those that you will get on your IM network and are usually marketers who just want to get their own content out there. The difference you have to make between your tactics and theirs are you have to be smart about getting your content out there. No one likes spam that they don’t want to see and read.

 

 

Automatic Stumbles

 

There are automatic stumble programs out there that require the use of multiple SU accounts in return for stumbles. The one that springs to mind is StumbleUdon. This is a network that promises users a nice amount of random stumbles in return for the use of your account to do those stumbles for others.

 

While this seems like a great idea and undetectable, it can and has been found out. If you are caught doing this your account will be banned, and in the worst case your IP will be banned.

 

Polluting the water and the wrap up

 

If you submit spam to SU you will pollute the pond. I recently watched the Affiliate Summit keynote by Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo). I can’t agree with what was said there more. If more spam is submitted we will pollute the pond and drive users away from SU. As a result the traffic you get will be lower quality, a lower amount and ultimately not as valuable to you as a marketer.

 

If you submit spam you are shooting yourself in the foot. Ultimately what you are doing is killing yourself, so don’t submit spam.

 

StumbleUpon is a great source of lots of traffic if used properly. So, don’t be stupid about what you are submitting. Submit great content and just like any other field you will see the results flow in.

 

Tune in tomorrow for our segment on Mixx!