I’ve been a fan of StumbleUpon since I gave my first thumbs up in February 2008. At first I didn’t quite understand the concept, but knew what Stumbleupon was doing to my traffic. I actually found StumbleUpon by reviewing my traffic stats and seeing over 1,000 visitors originated from a single stumble. I’ve had several pleasant experiences since then. StumbleUpon is simply an incredible viral means to drive a large amount of traffic to any website over a short period of time with lingering effects that can recharge weeks and months later.
StumbleUpon has such strong potential in maximizing brand exposure and fits nicely into a long term site building strategy.
I’m going to share some personal observations on using StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your website, as well as other strategies you might try in order to retain StumbleUpon visitors while monetizing your website.
What is Stumble Upon?
Stumble Upon is a social website that allows users a different way to experience the Internet. Instead of searching for specific items through classic search engine methods with Google and Yahoo, StumbleUpon users simply need to tag personal or professional interests and then ‘channel surf’ the web by simply clicking on a button located in the StumbleUpon tool bar.
Users will be randomly directed to websites that fall within their listed interests. Users can choose to tag the webpage they are on, give it an additional ‘thumbs up‘ or ‘thumbs down.’
Users can use the StumbleUpon toolbar as a form of social bookmarking. By surfing the web and tagging or submitting specific websites, each user can keep track of which websites they like and share them with others.
Get started with StumbleUpon
Start by installing the toolbar, which is compatible with I.E. and Firefox at StumbleUpon’s website. Once installed, you can check to see if your website is already listed on StumbleUpon. Do this by visiting this page StumbleUpon Website Reviews and typing in your site’s URL.
If your website is not listed, you can start using your newly installed toolbar to tag and review. Simply click on the blue thumbs up symbol located in the upper left of your screen in the StumbleUpon toolbar and has “I like it!” next to it.
This will open a pop-up window that allows you to categorize your website, write a short description and tag with specific keywords. Once you’ve give it a thumbs up, your website will be included in StumbleUpon’s database and will show up when other users with interests similar to your tags use the StumbleUpon toolbar to surf the internet.
Why should You use Stumble Upon?
StumbleUpon is known for generating massive amounts of traffic to a specific webpage or website that’s been stumbled. If you just wrote a great article or created a website that offered interesting or useful content, you’ll want as many eyes on it as possible.
Once your website gets stumbled, it’ll usually begin to receive visitors from all over the world instantly.
What this allows you to do is:
1. Generate rapid exposure for a specific website.
2. Establish a reader base for your blog quickly.
3. Gain backlinks from StumbleUpon visitors with websites.
What type of traffic can You get from StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is different from a search engine. Search engines offer targeted traffic that matches keyword searches with the content on your blog.
The very nature of StumbleUpon invites exploration of different websites based loosely on tags selected by other users.
My own experience has led me to the following conclusions on traffic from StumbleUpon:
* Diverse demographics – Visitors from StumbleUpon come from many countries, while a sustained 45% plus comes from North America.
* Low Adsense or contextual CTR – There’s really no reason to click on ads when you can simply stumble to the next site within a set topic category.
* Good web design is important for StumbleUpon visitors. The average time spent on a web page is usually under 10 seconds so stumblers are more like window shoppers then actual readers. Make your storefront more appealing and you might just snag a loyal reader.
* Fickle RSS subscribers – While my feed subscription does increase when certain posts received a lot of traffic I noticed the unsubscribe rate increases within a week or so of the influx. Whether that has anything to do with the whole stumble process or not, I don’t know. Just an observation.
* Traffic is long-term – I’m still receiving periodic bursts of traffic for pages that were stumbled several weeks and even months ago.
How can I get repeat visits?
The very nature of channel surfing is to assess with a single glance and determine if the channel is worth watching. StumbleUpon works much the same way. Visitors are people who will evaluate your website instantly and decide to either continue browsing or click ahead to the next channel.
Stumblers are usually attracted to interesting news, appealing design and unique content. Applying all these elements can increase your chances of receiving a thumbs up and repeat visits.
Points to consider for improving the rate of repeat visits
* Content – Your website should be full of content that cannot be digested in one single visit.
* Ads – You shouldn’t have too many poorly blended ads. You don’t want to appear amateurish.
* Site Design – Your website should be visually appealing, with an attractive design.
* Exclusive on-site materials – Offer offer tools or material that can only be found on your website.
* Feed/Newsletter Subscription – Prominently ask visitors to subscribe to your blog feed or newsletter for updates.
* Branding – Provide a memorable branding or an easy to remember URL.
How to use StumbleUpon to increase blog feed/newsletter subscribers
It’s likely that you will experience a mini spike in feed subscription, that could decrease gradually over time. Your goal is to retain these subscribers and make them a part of your reader base and community.
There’s really no definite method that will guarantee success but here are some suggestions that will increase the possibilities of converting StumbleUpon visitors into feed subscribers.
* Content quality – Only stumble the best content available on your website.
* Offer email subscriptions – Providing an alternative subscription option can be helpful for different types of visitors.
* Offer subscriber-only benefits – A classic trick to use if you want to build up your marketing list or feed subscribers. Give away free materials available only to subscribers.
* Welcome new visitors – You may want to include a welcome message to all stumblers if you notice that your web page is being heavily stumbled. WordPress users can install the What Would Seth Godin do WordPress Plugin which encourages all new visitors to subscribe to your feed.
* Use signature links – Include links at the end of your post that push for readers to subscribe for updates.
* Produce great content after stumbles – When you notice a spike in traffic from StumbleUpon, it’s important to take advantage of the opportunity and put out exceptionally great content. Perhaps something similar to what received a large number of stumbles. The topic was appealing once, why not try again?
* Increase the comments on your blog – A blog with a large community will encourage participation, that motivates readers to return.
* Host a contest – Everyone loves winning free stuff or money. By offering tangible benefits, you can convert one-time traffic into a continuous stream of repeat visitors.
How many visitors can you expect from Stumble Upon?
An average of 100+ to 8000+ daily unique visitors for a specific web page that is stumbled is fairly standard. I’ve stumbled several posts as an experiment and the best performance was just under 2,000 visitors in a matter of hours.
What determines how much traffic you receive from StumbleUpon?
There are so many factors that could have an impact on the number of visitors you receive.
StumbleUpon doesn’t reveal the traffic algorithm they use so these are just factors I think can positively affect the amount of traffic you receive.
* Number of StumbleUpon users who thumbed up or tagged your webpage. This the most important factor.
* Number of users in your network – A wider reach should translate to greater influence when it comes to tagging or thumbing webpages.
* Number of StumbleUpon friends you have – This seems to increase the authority or strength of your stumbles.
* Number of profile reviews and thumbs up you currently have might legitimize you as a user.
* Types of users who tagged or submitted your website. Are they power users with a lot of Stumble authority? That might be a powerful variable in increasing your overall influence.
It’s easy to assume that the easiest way to increase the number of visitors you receive is to increase all of the factors listed above.
Observations following experiments on different websites.
* You need other StumbleUpon users. The traffic you receive depends on other users submitting and reviewing your website. When other users review or submit a specific post, it generally receives traffic immediately.
* Self-submission and review does not always lead to SU traffic.
* Your StumbleUpon profile plays an important role. I’m thinking the number of friends, the range of your network, the number of stumbles you’ve offered and the number of profile reviews you’ve received determines how much stumble authority you have.
* Broad tagging helps. Try using tags that are more general and less specific. For example, some tags which have worked for me are ‘weblogs‘ , ‘internet‘ and ‘money‘.
The fact that you’re limited to five tags per submitted item suggests that you should use terms that are more general Unique tags may work but my thought is to leave the unique tags and keywords to Google and Yahoo – Stick with generalized tags on SU.
Ways to maximize power of StumbleUpon and increase the traffic
Build your network, personal and site profile.
Network with high profile StumbleUpon users by adding them as your friends list or reviewing their profile. This can help you win a few friends while ehancing your social profile on StumbleUpon.
Stumbling websites that link to you
Let’s take a look at a hypothetical example. Say someone like Shoemoney linked to me yesterday in a post, what I’ll do is visit his website and stumble his post and get other users to do the same.
Thousands of StumbleUpon visitors will visit his blog and read the specific post. They’ll likely visit my blog through the link in his post. The end result is that I’ll eventually get traffic by pushing stumbles towards his website. How sweet is that?
How to monetize StumbleUpon Traffic and make money from it
StumbleUpon visitors are just not that into contextual ads. There are a few other ways you can monetize the massive amount of visitors.
* CPM advertising – Idiot-proof and easiest way to monetize your website. Get a good banner company that pays you a good CPM rate. Also try private ad arrangements and negotiate specific CPM rates.
* Use affiliate banners or affiliate text links within content. Cloak the links to improve your CTR – I’m not the greatest at cloacking all my links, but I’m improving. For those links I don’t want to, don’t have time to or can’t cloak, that’s where VigLink comes into play quite nicely!
* Video advertising – YouTube used to partner with Adsense and Revver, I believe still allows you to put up videos and get paid whenever anyone clicks on ads within the video. Video advertising has changed over the last year or so, but I’m sure there are plenty of offers out there – just find the one that suits you best.
* Monetized image hosts. Several image hosts allow you to earn money whenever anyone clicks on a thumbnail which leads to the full image on their website. Great for picture intensive sites or blogs. Here’s a list of image hosts that pay.
* Use subscription based monetization. A good example would be an online magazine, business networking community or forum that offers a premium section for paying members.
* Buy sponsored stumbles. You can run an advertising campaign with StumbleUpon Paid Discovery and pay as little as 5 cents for every targeted person they send to your website. You can target according to personal interest, history of rating similar sites, location, and demographics such as age and sex. Very useful if you’re focusing on long-term monetization strategies and plan to build a community such as a social networking site or niche forum.
One should also take note of StumbleUpon’s suggestions on content monetization in their advertising FAQ:
Some content doesn’t work well with StumbleUpon. A hard-sell offering little introduction or supporting information will seem out of place to StumbleUpon’s community members. Remember that they’re using the service to find something new, something different. Pages that contain little more than a list of ppc or affiliate links also will not perform well.
Final thoughts
I love StumbleUpon, it’s the easiest way to get hundreds of new visitors who are eager to learn more about your website.
While monetization is something that I am concerned about, I think StumbleUpon works very well as a brand and link building tool. You have the ability to increase exposure across a wide demographic. That in and of itself can help to build online communities or a blog’s reader base.
Remember to stumble the websites or blogs you like because it’s a great way to help them get some much needed exposure.
A little over a year ago I had to start over with a new StumbleUpon account because I didn’t plan ahead when I chose my username. I highly recommend you select one you know will stick with you for a very long time. Starting over stinks.
QUESTION FOR READERS: Have you had a post that has really benefited greatly from StumbleUpon? If so, leave a comment and a link in the comment section below. I’d love to see how diverse some of top posts for my blogger friends are. I’ll even give them a new nudge just for you sharing the link with me.
Follow me on StumbleUpon – I’ll follow back 
Have fun stumbling!
My Comment Commitment: If you leave a comment on any of my posts, I will visit your blog and “share it” in some way whether on StumbleUpon, Twitter or Facebook depending on if I can find a nice fit. This is my way of saying thank you!
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My way of saying “Thank You!”
My Comment Commitment: If you leave an approved comment on any of my posts, I will visit your blog and “share it” in some way whether on StumbleUpon, Twitter or Facebook depending on if I can find a nice fit.
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