Having noticed StumbleUpon come up regularly in my referrer stats I decided to try and increase the amount of StumbleUpon traffic for this blog. A traffic stats graph from SEOmoz shows StumbleUpon’s fantastic ability to drive traffic, the amount of referrals I have been receiving recently are around 50-100 visits a day which I hope will continue to improve.
What is StumbleUpon?
Social bookmarking websites such as Digg and Del.ico.us are an excellent method of gaining large quantities of traffic in a short space of time but the concept of StumbleUpon is slightly different. StumbleUpon has over a million users and generally refers a lower (but still significant) amount of traffic at a more consistent rate, whereas sites like Digg can send thousands of hits in the space of a few days for promoted stories which have made the frontpage.
How does StumbleUpon work?
Here is the definition of how StumbleUpon works but basically instead of listing popular stories on the homepage StumbleUpon works by downloading a toolbar which allows you to rate a website as thumbs up or down and view relevant websites (by clicking Stumble!) based on your own preferences.
StumbleUpon Toolbar
To begin receiving traffic from StumbleUpon you must have at least one of your webpages submitted. You can add this yourself by downloading the toolbar and browsing to your website, selecting the thumbs up ‘I like it!’ button will add this page to StumbleUpon.
How to increase StumbleUpon traffic?
The main methods I have found to improve StumbleUpon traffic have been:
- Rating websites
By getting involved in the community and rating some of the websites I visit helps my website appear for StumbleUpon users who have similar interests to my own, therefore they will be more likely to rate my site with a thumbs up! StumbleUpon is time-based, although not to the same extent as Digg, which means the more votes you can get in a short period of time the more traffic you will receive. - Adding friends
By adding friends you will increase the amount of users who will see your newly added webpages, making them more likely to give your site the thumbs up. - Submit new webpages
Once I have created a new blog post for example I will submit the URL to StumbleUpon using the toolbar, it is perfectly fine to promote your own website providing you don’t overdo it. This will help to increase the amount of my webpages I have present in the StumbleUpon database and improve the likelihood of my site being ‘stumbled upon’. - Carefully selecting topic titles
It is important to categorise webpages carefully to ensure that it will be displayed to relevant users. - Adding multiple tags
By using multiple tags you can help to attract a wide range of users and by keeping these as relevant to the content as possible will help to keep the traffic targeted.
Tags: StumbleUpon, Social Bookmarking, Website Promotion
You hit the nail on the head since that’s basically what I have done and about 75% of my traffic is from there.It’s a super way to increase traffic.
Have you seen on your computer
or heard from anyone about
the stumbleupon toolbar
containing any “ware” ,
such as spyware, adware, etc ?
I appreciate your input, I found
you from a google search about social bookmarking.
Thanks, Steve
No, there isn’t any adware or spyware. Clearly it tracks what you stumble to make sure you don’t keep seeing the same things, and to keep rating records for sites, but you never have to give information you don’t want to. I’ve used it for several months and found it very useful. They make money from user sponsors (20$ a year) and sites paying to get viewed (I haven’t noticd a difference so I couldn’t tell you who pays for placement in SU). I use the free account and I’ve found a couple dozen really great sites, hundreds of photos and humour pages… all sorts of stuff i’m interested in basically.
It really is a great extension for your browser :)
Boy I dunno man. I use stumbleupon to find sites in a particular topic. I don’t use it to find people who suggest the sites I find useful. Your ideas are ok _if_ your assumptions turn out to be correct. However, they wouldn’t be correct for my case and probably aren’t right for others either — but with close to 2 million users, even a few stumblers visiting yoursite would look like a lot in certain situations.
that is a comprehensive article. By the way how did you change your header?
regards
I got ‘stumbled’ the other day and when I looked at my logs it showed 300+ visitors in a day (I typically have about 40). Thats pretty good qualified traffic.
I recently tried their paid program for a client (I do SEO) and they currently charge a flat rate of 5 cents per view. A 20 buck test got my client a bunch of traffic and 7 thumbs up yesterday. Now they are in the stumble rotation and will continue to grow. The pay route is a good way to get a jump start on the stumbling as I am sure the more stumblers like the page the more it will go into the rotation.
Not good for all clients, but pretty useful in particular instances.
That’s interesting thanks hornswaggled, most people seem to view paying for stumbleupon traffic as a waste of money because the quality of visits is generally poor, but if this can lead to more votes and a further increase in traffics maybe that would help to increase the amount of free stumbles.
Thanks for the useful information. I will focus on stumbleupon in order to drive traffic to my blog. Lets see the response.
Thanks for the StumbleUpon comments, Kev. I was looking for this sort of thing when I was googling around and your blog popped up. I’ve since put in the remaining sites I control and am looking forward to receiving additional traffic.
What do you mean by not overdoing it? Is it OK to submit all of your own posts to Stumbleupon? I know somebody who did this and, after a while, he was no longer able to submit posts from his site to Stumbleupon.
A great post thnx :D
I have used stumble upon for the past few days and i am receiving an extra 100-200 UNIQUES a day
Today I wrote about stumbleupon traffic myself and guess what I got over 3.000 unique visitors in about 4 hours , i can’t wait to see what will happen tomorrow!
check out
http://www.bontb.com/2007/06/07/one-day-stumbleupon-experiment-traffic/
you could stumble it too tho
As a member of the DP forum I have used all the stumbleupon threads to increase the exposure of my site on stumbleupon and am averaging 2k plus referrals from stumbleupon daily to My proxy network I can testify that stumble will drive traffic to your site. It will provide better results if you get friends and reviews provides you with even more exposure.
nice post, now I will try to do as directed,thank you
Thanx Kev…again, nice job.
hey ,
i am trying to build up my social network too .. if anyone would liek to stumble my game, please do :)
http://www.stumblegames.com/cucaracha.html
Nice Post… A very informative one for new stumblers :->
A problem however is that it seems like stumbleupon creates “fake visits” due to it’s prefetch mechanism. I really appreciate the real traffic it drives to my site, but I think it is kind of ugly of stumbleupon to increase their application’s speed on behalf of load on our sites and faulty statistics.
Look at:
http://www.chrisbusse.com/2007/05/many_of_the_stu.html#comment-76237684
Thank you !
Very helpful tips :-)
Thanks for the tips. I have been reading several articles about StumbleUpon, and yours has answered my questions.
Thanks for the tips.
I’ve been stumbling for a while, but haven’t seen many results from my labours. Your tips should help me focus on driving success.
Useful info and it could help me a lot in getting more traffic.
But the thing is, stumblers normally:
(a) rate a post/page, or
(b) do nothing and stumble the next post/page.
Many aren’t bothered to leave a comment. So that takes us back to square one: Who is benefiting from all this visits? Definitely not the blogger because what good would it do to the blogger is his page views increases but not his number of comments/subscribers?
is this a natural traffic? i really want to generate an organic traffic.
I would really like to try this out (as i am a user of StumbleUpon myself..)
But approximately how much thumbs ups or reviews does it take to get some significant traffic to your site? i am not active in their community too.
I’ve been using StumbleUpon to drive traffic to my newer blog and it’s been working out really well. I’ve picked up new readers and had good success with visitors to specific pages that have been given the thumbs up. I think the most I got on one article was 407 in one day from StumbleUpon.
Great advice :)
I never got traffic with it.
Good information thanks for the tips. I am using StumbleUpon for traffic and wrote a review about all the mainstream traffic sources. StumbleUpon is the best for sure..
I am new to Stumble. This really helped me! Thanks!
This is some really great information. I actually read this on other sites but the didn’t suggest on putting your own posts on here. This has increased my traffic tremendously.
What I’ve started doing is created the http://www.addthis.com button and rotating with my posts through each social bookmarking site. This way, I don’t get blacklisted on any site and can still get exposure to my site.
Thanks,
Richard Rinyai
great tips! Stumbleupon is a great resource.
I have just started using stumble. Seems to be a great resource. I’ll get sit back and wait for the traffic to pure in. lol.
Thank you. I have often wondered about using Stuble Upon.
Great ideas! I will definitely use them for promoting my content!
very useful article – I have tried! stumble really can give traffic!
thanks for the article, I guess I’ve already figured out all the tips you listed here just through trial and error over the last year or so I’ve been doing StumbleUpon. Anyway, you’re article is definitely a good read for people who are trying to get traffic from SU, so I stumbled your post !! cheer !!
But I heard the quality of the traffic is low at least for adsense.
I found this blog post by doing a search for “stumbleupon traffic”.
Thanks for the information.
SU sends me the most traffic of all the social network sites that I use
but I’m not so sure about the quality of the traffic.
Another great guide. You consistently bring good content like this so i have added a link to your site in my blogroll. Keep up the good work. I am an avid fan, and will continue to do so with content like this.
Im about to go and do some stumbling i think!!
Thats a great tip, i have just started to use social bookmarking on my websites and although i am not getting a lot of traffic right now i will put your tips into practice!
great tips just gave you a thumbs up
Great tips and check out StumbleUpon to see what they have to offer. My blog is somewhat similiar to the one you have here. Of course I hope to have the same kind of popularity for my blog like the one you have here. I did come up with a couple of articles with regards to blogging. Hope you can drop by to give a comment or two about my article. Many thanks in advance. Here are 2 articles that I have written.
http://4u2invest.blogspot.com/2008/03/making-money-from-blogging-part-1.html
http://4u2invest.blogspot.com/2008/03/want-to-start-blogging-part-2.html
Hi,
Thanks for the info. Will check it out. Much appreciated.
I just signed up with an account with them an also purchased some credits. I’m courious if this traffic will be valuable
I just stumbled you and gave you a thumbs up…how about sharing the love.
Thanks for the info, much appreciated. Gave you a thumbs up and added you to my technorati favorites.
Bumping an old post here but it has withstood the test of time. These tips are still paramount when looking to increase stumbles. Good writing!
Kevin you should definitely check out my wordpress plugin for stumbleupon http://www.preblogging.com/increase-sociability/
Basically this plugin helps to get social media votes by reminding people fromthose sites to upvote you.
B
This is quite instructive. Short and straight to the point. I am encouraged to put into use those tips. Thanks
I have started using SU and my traffic has gone from 40 to 170+-. Most of it from SU. However, it is not consistent. Why is that? Help apretiated.
I have been having a hard time trying to find out how to add those buttons to my site.
Thanks for an interesting article. How many pages of one’s blog should be stumbled? I read sometimes that people stumble every post they make but this seems to be overkill and not right.
Is it advisable to auto-stumble?
I am new to stumbleupon and I really appreciate this article..I still have to put to test whether it will work on my page or not..I am starting to put thumbs up and rate some websites that I stumbled on..Thanks for the help
great information! found you by searching how to get stumbleupon traffic! Just launched a site which is basically a directory for indie companies, specifically t shirt companies! If your into that stuff check us out! http://www.iamthetrend.com
happy stumbleing!
In my opinion this is an interesting article through which i gathered a lot of information.
================
Taylor
Social Bookmarking
Many people make the false assumption with Stumbleupon that they can sign up Stumble their own page and immediately get a rush of traffic. Nothing is further from the truth. A helful Stumbleupon technique is to avoid only stumbling your own pages. Make good use of the Send to: function to give your post some momentum.
your site has an interesting article through which i gathered a lot of information. thanks a lot dude
great optimizing tips that is highly appreciated for your hard work .
StumbleGenius Stumbling on thru, StumbleUpon thumbs up to you, hope to see you in more clicky stumble trips soon. Happy day merry seasons greetings an all that jazz.
Read you later or tweet me on Twitter @StumbleGenius … tweet you soon ???
Great tips – my StumbleUpon traffic went through the roof in the past few days. The spike is so big that I’m still trying to work out whether this is genuine traffic or not.
This is a great simple to understand article for users like myself who have never used Stumbleupon. Using the toolbar as suggested seems very easy and straightforward, ‘I’ll be back’ (as Arnie says) to visit this website for frequent tips for my blog Thanks
what a impressive article. last days I didn’ t read post like that. I am now your blog’ s follower thanks for this useful blog. I am now your blog’s rss follower.
Very helpful, thanks
Came across this blog and comments and found it useful for helping to do more with traffic increasing.
I was really surprised how effective is stumbleupon. I have been a member since months but nothing happened first. I thought it was the same waste of time as other community sites (blogcatalog, mybloglog etc)but when I accidentaly stumbled one of my own posts..I got surprised :) I think doesnt make any sense to cheat the system..stumbling all your post and leaving. If your site is a nonsense..you will have a lot of traffic without any further interest. Stumble helps but wont make your blog better. Thanks for the interesting post..now I understand better why it works!
It’s quite effective, but working less well for non-english websites.
Awesome article, I have been looking at StumbleUpon as a viable way to increase my traffic to my blog. Amazing tips for anyone looking to make money online blogging professionally, definitely use Stumble Upon social media marketing
Got 2,000+ in one night after just a single stumble upon post!!! Neato!
It’s difficult getting SU traffic. I try and try but never get anywhere, however, I get random spikes, some days receiving over a thousand unique hits from SU. I wish I could figure out how to get that daily. lol
I wanted to note that I ran about $150 over 6 days on stumbleupon. I got a couple of conversions, but the sad thing is the free traffic was almost nil, and the last 20 days have brought exactly 0 hits from stumbleupon. I can’t say I would recommend this as a good method of paid advertising.
Great article thanks, most of our traffic on our sister website GlobalGrasshopper.com comes from Stumble Upon. The trick is to think of attention grabbing titles and use some great images.
Stumbleupon traffic SUCKS! (At least in my experience) It’s completely useless. Looking at my analytics the conversions on my website are great, but when a few of my pages got stumbled and I got a flood of visitors (I’m talking THOUSANDS) do you know how many of those people opted-in?
ZERO!
StumbleUpon traffic is not targeted and I don’t know why you’d waste your time. And I hear they now offer paid advertising??? I wouldn’t touch it.
But hey maybe someone else had better results?
If not I hope I saved some people some time and money by not considering this as a legitimate source of traffic.
This was very helpful information thank you. I just checked my Google analytic stats and found that Stumbleupon is referring more people to my site than facebook, and I am active on facebook too!
Thanks a lot
Hello Kevin,
You provide such a subjective and comprehensive information. With help of StumbleUpon you can get unique visits towards your site or business. I am not so much active with StumbleUpon but trying to became an active member to gain the benefit of StumbleUpon for getting more traffic.
Well, this article is pretty old but still seems to be relevant. I pretty much stopped using Stumbleupon a couple years back and all my traffic from the site stopped a while later. This post seems to explained why. When you stop using the site stumble stops sending people to the sites you suggested. .
I would occasionally add a new site but when I went back to look a while later all the sites I added after I stopped being active only had one view. Over the last few days I’ve started to stumble and rate other sites again, it will be interesting to see if all those sites with only one visit start to get visits.
StumbleUpon definitely works in bringing traffic to your site.
Initially I had trouble sorting out my account profile details(Certain data not showing).
Though, apart from that , I have noticed traffic coming to my site within minutes of submitting webpages.
I think if you stay active and stumble many sites, apart from your own(Include your site pages in-between) write some reviews, etc, then the traffic should continue.
I am in stumbleupon and it’s true that it drives more traffic than any other referral to my website. I generally share the blog posts of my blog to get the thums up.
Are backlinks from stumbleupon recognized by the search engines, most notably Google? It would be nice to get backlinks credit for SEO in addition to visitor traffic from stumbleupon.
I am a stumbleupon member but have not been very active. After reading all this, I am going to install the toolbar and try it again. Thanks everyone!
Dam dam dam hot technique, I never saw such a perfect technique to bring traffic to website. I did a try on every alternate day and found that when I stumble some pages and rank/comment on other sites, I get huge amount of hits on my pages too.
But I am not sure about how good this technique will be for increasing sale, did any one observe any sale through StumbleUpon traffic, because I notice that there is 90% drop off from this traffic.
But still really a nice website to increase hits.
Sale oriented stumble uses please share your experience.
Thanks
Dhanesh Mane
I searched in Google why I see lots of visitors comming all of sudden when I submit my page in Stumbleupon. I don’t know if this is a fake traffic or real traffic. The observation I made is when ever I submit my site to Stumbleupon I see 10-20 visitors from NewYork location, Later after few seconds no one from stumbleupon visit me. thats really bothering me a lot. Best Google Adsense Alternatives Shall I continue to submit my posts to Stumbleupon? one more question is does the dofollow apply for stumbleupon. Please reply. Thanks you for sharing your post.
really helpful for increasing traffic websites ……..
I always have a problem driving traffic to my blogs, it seems like the seo game keeps changing.