Some Things You Must Know About StumbleUpon
Regular readers of my blog know that I have written a lot of articles about my traffic ranks lately. I have been doing this for a couple of reasons, building traffic measures your success as a blog and it also brings you the opportunity to monetize your traffic if you so choose. It depends on what your personal goals are with your site.
I told you that I would be sharing some of the methods I have been using to drive traffic to my site and this is part 1 of that promise.
Social Media is something that I have only recently been experimenting with but I have already seen the effects that it can have on your traffic and honestly you would have to be a fool not to take advantage of what it has to offer.
I have experimented with Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Blogging Zoom so far and the best results in terms of sheer volume is hands down StumbleUpon and it has quickly become my favorite so far. I will be sharing my results with the others in the near future.
If you aren’t familiar with them then take a minute to read this article and check them out yourself. If you become a proficient Stumbler and understand how it works then you can easily average 1000 pages hits a day, I know because I am doing it.
Some Facts About StumbleUpon
1. The Quality of your “Stumbles” makes all of the difference in the number of visitors you receive. The more “friends” that a stumbler has and the more sites they have “stumbled” then the more weight SU gives them for their stumbles. What this translates to is this….you want to build up a large friends list and use the Stumble Bar regularly. It’s very easy to do and you can build yourself into a “power” stumbler in no time.
2. The Quality of the sites that you Stumble will improve your Stumble Authority as well. If other Stumblers give sites that you discovered or submitted the thumbs up then you will add to your authority…so submit quality sites and you will be rewarded.
3. StumbleUpon traffic will come in waves. If you are fortunate enough to get a hot article that is garnering approval from the Stumble community then you can count on hundreds of visitors and occasionally into the thousands and even tens of thousands of visitors over the next few days. Another benefit of SU traffic is that it doesn’t “age.” What I mean by this is even your older posts can be stumbled and draw traffic which is something that Digg doesn’t allow.
Downsides of Stumble Traffic
1. Stumblers are a fickle bunch. It is so easy to blow on to the next site so you want to make sure you catch their attention early. Catchy headlines and intriguing pictures at the tops of your posts can’t hurt. If you have an ugly site…then you likely won’t garner a thumbs up.
2. Some Stumble detractors will argue that Stumble traffic won’t benefit your site. That they come and go and are rarely repeat visitors. Well I say yeah but so what. If you gain 5 RSS subscribers out of 10000 hits then so be it. You have no downside to Stumbled traffic. They are no different than any other visitor, if they like what they see, then they stay, if they don’t then they leave. Write good content and you’ll be fine.
We’ve shared some upsides and downsides of StumbleUpon traffic and now it’s time to share my stats with it. I have read a lot of posts from people crying about how Stumble traffic is bad traffic, that you can’t monetize it, that it isn’t loyal, even implying that it is “trash traffic.” I say baloney. Check out my stats for SU for the last month.
This is difficult to see in my picture due to the resize but my Stumble traffic breaks down like this:
- 6914 hits over the previous 30 days. (Bear in mind I’ve only been using it a few of those weeks.)
- Visitors visited 2.12 pages on average. Meaning they didn’t just read the stumbled post…but at least 1 other.
- They stayed on site 1:42 seconds. This is a bit low but as an average not horrible. The ones that come and go quickly skew this average quite heavily so don’t get too wrapped up in this. Page views is more important in my opinion.
- 94% of users were new to my site. Great exposure.
- 27.64% bounce rate. If you’re not sure what Bounce rate is then this is the percentage of visitors that click in and out of your site within just a few seconds. Their first impression is bad enough that they don’t stay.
A few things to be aware of…this snapshot is for the previous month, but I’ve only been trying to be active in the StumbleUpon community for about 2 weeks…so if this trend continues I can look forward to about 15k Stumblers alone in an average month.
The best part is this…Stumble is only one of a NUMBER of Social Media outlets that you can use to drive traffic to your blog. A number of bloggers simply won’t take the time to work the Social Media scene. They’re lazy. They think their blog is a gift to the world and that hordes of readers will just come like magic whenever they post.
It is my opinion that beginning bloggers should allocate as much time “promoting” their sites as they do in maintaining it. It’s that important. TV Shows, Movie Premiers, new books, Broadway shows etc ALL promote themselves in order to attract traffic. Learn from that, embrace Social Media and watch the visitors roll in. Get Started Today.
I’d love to hear about other people’s results with Stumble……argue with me or agree with me..just make sure you tell me what you think and maybe, just maybe if you like my article, you could help a brother out and Stumble It. 
Great post! I started using StumbleUpon a few months ago but haven’t really spent a lot of time improving my SU “rating.” I’ve recently read a lot of articles similar to this one, encouraging me to work on it so I can increase the traffic to my site and build a loyal fan base.
I agree with the fact that 5 subscribers out of 10,000 isn’t the best conversion rate, but it’s better than nothing! I seem to have been saying this a lot lately, but no traffic is bad traffic.
Great post! Thanks
Erica DeWolf’s last blog post..Argument for Email
Hey Erica….I agree. Just to clarify my “5″ out of 10k was just picking numbers out of the air….I don’t know what my conversion rate is from SU traffic. It would be quite a feat to be able to measure that.
I might experiment with Google to see if I can set up some kind of conversion goal. In any event simply looking at the facts that the SU traffic for my site has a pretty low bounce rate and reads more than 2 pages each is encouraging.
[...] Here’s another interesting post I read today by Bill [...]
Great post! I’ve been using SU for some time, and I am still finding ways to improve my success. Like Google rankings, there is a lot of mythology out there, but the points you made seem to be on target.
Regarding the “junk traffic” complaint, I tend to agree with you. I would point out that it is important to weight the amount of time you invest into getting that traffic. Like your post on sexy themes….if you spend all your time surfing sites with SU just to increase your SU authority, then your time might have been better spent doing something else. That damn SU is addictive!
Jim’s last blog post..How Do You Measure Blogging Success?
Nice, informative – I’ll be checking it out.
tim
Hi. I have been stumbled a few times as well as my blog. I do find it is fleeting and it would nice to know if any of the stumblers are converting into RSS. How were you able to see about your stumblers? Is this through google analytics. When I looked at the articles that were stumbled, my page view and time on the sites are longer than the average jane who comes to the site.
I have 2 programs that I use-google and ex-slimstats for numbers. Google is so much lower than ex-slimstats. 3:1. Google does not give me an answer and ex-slimstats says something about hook and also feed traffic. Still I can’t explain the difference. Any suggestions?
Anna…yes Google Analytics will give you that info. This might be difficult to explain in this post but I will try.
Call up your site on GA.
You should see a graph going across the screen like normal but scroll down and look on the left hand side. There should be a pie chart titled Traffic Sources Overview.
Below that pie chart you have a “View Report” link…click on that.
Now a report should come up showing the referring URLS….at the bottom of that is another link that should say “View Full Report”…..click on that.
This screen should show you time on site and other info by referring URL.
Let me know if it works for you now.
Thanks.
Wow! Great tips! I’ve been a SU member for a couple months and I occasionally “stumble” through sites when I’m bored, and try to remember to “stumble” cool sites I run into along the way. I’ve stumbled my own, of course, and a few of my sites have gotten a LOT of traffic, but the others just kind of sit there. Thanks for this great info on how to make SU work to your advantage!
Jen’s last blog post..Update! Help Chance Get a Second Chance!
Jen…as noble a cause as you have there on your site it is me who thanks you. I am a dog lover and applaud the work that people like you do. You have a great looking site. If you ever need promotion help then feel free to ask. I will do what I can.
I have to agree that StumbleUpon can bring in the traffic. I’ve had two posts stumbled and had 300-400 visitors each time. On the downside, they didn’t seem to stay long, but it’s possible I’ve picked up an RSS subscriber along the way…it all adds up in the long run.
Bill, what are your thoughts on stumbling your own work? I’ve done it as I saw others doing it, but then I read somewhere that it’s considered bad form, tacky, or something along those lines!
Julie – I have one blog that I am developing that I haven’t promoted, published or tried to bring traffic to in anyway. Someone happened across it somehow and stumbled a post and I had 260 visitors in one day. I now have 3 RSS subscribers, so I KNOW fact based that stumbling can produce repeat visitors if they like what they see. The detractors who say otherwise must be the cup half empty kind of people, I don’t know.
As for stumbling your own work I personally see no issue with it. You put it out there for everyone to see and if they like it they vote on it, if they don’t then they thumbs down it. Bloggers are a vicious group in some ways, they will tell you on one side of their mouth not to stumble your own work, all while stumbling theirs out the other side of their mouth. They do this to keep you small and unknown while trying to get ahead.
That’s my own theory anyways. I have a number of MSN chat names that I have chatted with and I can confidently say this, if it’s bad form….then it’s happening a LOT around the internet. It’s even more crucial when you are small and starting out.
Bill-thank you for telling me about how to figure out my stumbling numbers on google. Actually what I saw is they stay longer and exit % is less than regular new readers.
Julie-I stumble my own work sometimes when I think I wrote something good. I also will ask my friends to stumble something that I think people will really like. I wrote an article about an organic vodka not just from the perspective that it was organic but also the business, the taste, and the morals of the company. It is a fasinating story with alot of cross appeal. My friend was very smart and he stumbled it under beverage rather than enviromental. I had over 2000 stumbles on the article. I guess he figured more people would want to read it about the taste than the fact it was organic. Bill, perhaps you can answer this. Was that a smart strategy for the long haul since I am an green site or do you think it did not matter?
Bill, I have some questions. If you have an article that may have cross appeal, should you stumble in a different area? Would you consider advertising with stumbleupon?
Anna – glad you came back…I was wondering if you were able to find the stats from that poor explanation that I gave. I am glad you did. My stats agree with yours…my stumble visitors are visiting more than just the page they come in on and they tend to stay on site.
I think your friend was very clever to do that. The “organic” market is very small compared to the “alcohol” market so better (imho) to put it in front of as many as possible as many of them might like what they see when they hit your site, green or not. They might not have been “green” when they came in but maybe they will be “green’ when they leave thanks to your blog.
I understand your concern but I still think that starting out, the best thing you can do is get as many eyeballs on your product as you possibly can. This would apply to your cross appeal question as well….you can stumble it in the main category but add tags that would help others find it. You can add a bunch of tags if you choose down below the discovery box and I have had my best results when I have 3-5 tags along with the original category.
As for advertising….I haven’t considered it but at this point I would have to say no. I am not saying no for any kind of ethical reason, just not for me yet.
Great conversation.
Thanks for the feedback Bill & Anna. I haven’t been around long enough to see some bloggers as a vicious lot, but I wouldn’t be surprised!
Bill, thanks for the tag idea. I totally forgot. Also, thanks for the broader idea of my stories as well and perhaps tagging more in subcategories. I agree–great conversation.
Oh, I forgot to tell you. It is so nice when the author converses with his or her commenters. I don’t see this practice enough. I practice it. Kudos, Bill.
Anna – I enjoy the comments section. I enjoy the feedback that the comments section provides. In some cases it tells me how well or how poorly I wrote the article, whether it was on message and more importantly I always like to hear what other people have to add to the topic.
The collective genius that is available in the blogosphere could probably solve any issue laid before us if we could only harness it.
Thanks again.
[...] If you are not familiar with either then you probably shouldn’t even bother reading this article but you can read about Entrecard here and StumbleUpon here. [...]
[...] Media – Partake in as many social media outlets as you can find the time to engage in. StumbleUpon and Digg are my two favorites. Either of these two sites can bring hordes of visitors to your site [...]
I’m new to Stumble Upon so will go and do some stumbling now as you recommend. I’m glad you found your site.
Ashley Ladds last blog post..Another writer trait (I forgot during the Thirteener Thursday)
I may have to try stumbleupon. I have been using link referral. Only been geetting 3-4 visitors a day using them. Don’t know if it is worth the time it takes to complete all the steps they want you to complete. It can be painstaking trying to visit so many sites in return for a small amount of visitors. I may just sign up for this site.
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