How To Get Stumbleupon Traffic

I have being using Stumbleupon to drive traffic to one of my other blogs for a while now, and since I have it has being my number one source of traffic by a clear margin. When used and utilised correctly, Stumbleupon has the power to send massive amounts of regular and sustained traffic to any website, both in the short and the long term.

Stumbleupon is a social media website that allows its users to experience the Internet in a different way. Instead of merely searching for keywords of interest on Google, users select a number of categories that are of interest to them, and then randomly “stumble” through websites and articles in these categories, which have been submitted by other SU users. If the Stumbler likes the article they give it a thumbs up by clicking the “i like it” button, if they don’t they can thumb the article down. The basic premise is, the more thumbs up a website or article gets, the more hits it will receive. Stumbleupon users can also review articles and share them with other friends on Stumble, which again can equal more traffic for your site. Stumbleupon now has over 8 million users and is 50% bigger than Twitter, which is an eye catching and surprising fact considering the amount of comparable media coverage Twitter receives. If you provide good quality content there is a group of Stumble users out there who will like and share it, and you will get traffic.

The 2 main reasons for using Stumbleupon are:

• Getting hits to your site, which not only makes Google take you seriously, but also allows you to start building a reader base and getting people to sign up to your site.
• Building Backlinks. This is done in the form of other Stumbleupon users adding you to their site, and also non-webmasters submitting your content to other social media sites.

Getting Started With Stumbleupon.

If your website or blog isn’t receiving traffic from Stumbleupon, it should be! You can get started with SU by visiting the homepage here: Stumbleupon, and clicking “join Stumbleupon” at the top of the page. You can then select what suits you best from the list of categories, thus ensuring you only receive stumbles that may be of interest to you. Once you are signed up install the “SU Toolbar”, which is compatible with all the major browsers, then you are ready to go.

The first step to take is to check whether your website or blog is already on Stumble, you can do this by clicking here, and seeing if your site is already submitted, and if it is what kind of reviews it has received.

If your site hasn’t been submitted, you can add it by clicking the “I like it!” thumbs up icon on your toolbar whilst you are on the site of your choice. This will bring up the option to either quick submit or review your site. I highly recommend reviewing your site as this will make it more appealing to other users and also ensure it is placed in the proper category.

First select the category for your site like shown in the image above. Then add about 4 or 5 other relevant tags that will make your site more discoverable to other Stumbleupon users. Finally write a short review describing your post/article and its key points. You can then start using the Stumble button on the toolbar to start exploring the content, which allows you to gauge what works well on stumble and what does not.

What Traffic To Expect From Stumbleupon?

Stumbleupon can send you a very diverse range of traffic from all over the world, although the majority of traffic I have received has been from the main English speaking nations: USA, UK and Cananda. The traffic can come in bursts, and you will see spikes of visitors followed by lows. However, if the community continue to “thumb up” an article you can still be receiving traffic for months afterwards. SU users can often only stay for a short amount of time and you should make every effort to grab their attention straight away before they Stumble on. High quality web design and a low number of adverts are well known to be a combination that can guarantee SU success. Sites that conform to this and have interesting content can receive over 10,000 hits in just one day. The most viewed article that I have seen on Stumble had over 2 million views! Articles about things people haven’t seen before tend to work well, as well as humour and photography based sites. However, there is a category for most niches and Stumble has a very wide base of users.

What Decides How Much Traffic I Get From Stumbleupon?

There is no exact science which decides how many hits you will receive from Stumble, and there are a number of factors that are taken into consideration by the Stumbleupon algorithm when distributing traffic.

• Number of thumbs up by other users: This is the most important factor when trying to get sustained traffic to your site, if people keep thumbing your site up the hits will keep coming.
• Number of subscribers you have: You can subscribe to other SU users and they can subscribe to you. The more subscribers you have the more trustworthy you are seen to be by Stumbleupon and also your subscribers will receive your favourites and hopefully thumb then up meaning more hits for you.
• Number of reviews and thumbs up your stumble profile has: This shows that other users of SU rate you and therefor shows that you are a trustworthy user, meaning Stumbleupon will show your page to more people.

As well as these key factors, it is also important to build up your stumble profile as much as possible. Liking alot of other peoples pages and sites helps you to become a more powerful user and will make it easier to get subscribers. If you subscribe to someone and they don’t subscribe back it may well be worth sending them a message and requesting that they add you as a friend. If you can get other users to submit your pages or sites this looks good as if you keep submitting pages from the same url, SU will catch on sooner or later and reduce the amount of traffic you get.

This image attempts to visualise how the system works:

Summary

You can get massive amounts of traffic from SU, however it is much better to focus on becoming a valued member of the Stumble community, rather than just targeting using the site to get traffic. By subscribing to others and having them subscribe to you, by making Stumble friends, and by using the “stumble” feature, you can meet people who will be happy to help you promote your site and also discover alot of new things you never knew about before, on the topics you are interested in. Stumble is a fantastic tool for educational and networking purposes, and by getting involved in the community as a whole, you will not only learn something and make friends, but can also guarantee large amounts of traffic for your site or blog.

You can add me on Stumble to get started building your friends list at: one3rdnerd