Bloggers and webmasters are discovering and capitalizing on the potential of Web 2.0 social networking applications for the series of benefit they can offer. From the countless applications and networks popping up everywhere there are some that ‘stand-out’ in terms of the results they can bring. I started using StumbleUpon a few weeks ago and I am still impressed with its effectiveness in bringing in traffic. Not any kind of traffic, highly targeted traffic, visitors that are interested in your topics, read more than just one post and sometimes subscribe. I wrote a general post of the benefits of using StumbleUpon a few weeks back; if you are new to the concept feel free to read my StumbleUpon Guide. Now, having been using it for a while, I would like to write a few things I have been doing to maximize the StumbleUpon potential.

Tips for using StumbleUpon

Good Content
Sometimes it goes without saying, that the better the content you stumble the better the results will be. When Stumbling your own posts, make sure you stumble the good ones, the lengthy interesting ones that you think people might find interesting. Be informative, comprehensive, and honest and you will pretty much already have outperformed millions of other sites in your niche.

Tagging
When you submit an article, a post, or a website you need to make sure that it is tagged properly. That will ensure it gets categorized properly and allow targeted Stumblers to find it. Try to tag your submission with keywords that are relevant to the content but at the same time will allow your submission to be viewed by a lot of people. Try adding a few broad and a few specific tags.

Headlines
The headlines as well as the description of what you stumble is your chance to get someone’s attentions in the few seconds they are reading through vast lists of content. Be descriptive, make sure they are short and sweet but also give an idea to the reader on what to expect. Too short and too long might not be as effective. Don’t write your life story in the description, think of it as a teaser to your content, something that will make the reader, want to read more. Avoid writing short descriptions like: Good Post, Great Info, Great advice.

Keep Backlinks in Mind
This is something that not that many stumblers realize. When a web page gets stumbled, you automatically get a backlink. Make sure that for every stumbled page you use the desired keywords for both the title and the description. Aside from providing the right description to your stumblers you get a one way backlink that in the long run can and will help your site rank better in search engine result pages.

Make Friends
Add as many “StumbleUpon” friends as possible. Keep in mind that just going in there and adding anybody and everybody might not be the greatest idea. You can add a maximum of 250 friends, so you have to pick and choose. Make sure they have similar interests as you and they have strong StumbleUpon profiles with clout.

Support your friends
When you give thumbs up to someone in your network of friends, they get more clout. The more clout your friends have the more visitors you will get when they stumble your posts and pages.

Support Each Other
Stumble your friend’s posts and they should stumble yours. Plain and simple networking and a message to each other once in a while can help create the necessary rapport between stumblers that will down the line be detrimental in bringing more traffic per stumble.

Do this even when someone that is not added to your list of friends stumbles your post. Stumblers appreciate stumbles and will reciprocate. The more stumbles they receive the more traffic you will get when you get stumbled by them.

Stumble sites that link to you

You can find out which sites link to yours by checking out the dashboard of any traffic analysis application you might be using. If you think that those pages are stumble worthy, Stumble them. You can also find out which pages link to yours by searching in any search engine. Use Yahoo and/or Google and type in

“Link: your site’s domain name”

In my case I would write link: ideasandmoney. The idea behind this is that as you stumble one of these pages, they should get traffic that might spill out to your site. Do this once in while so you can also get an understanding on how your backlink building is coming along.

Discover New Sites

Try to stumble site that haven’t been stumbled before. Surf the web for new, interesting and informative content. Keep in touch with what’s going on in the world, stumble fresh news, that somehow relate to your topics of interest.

Here are a few reasons why stumbling new content can be beneficial:

You are providing new content

Because you discovered the content your profile picture and link will be seen when people add comments, for ever….

You will eventually become a credible and popular Stumbler, get more review and move up in ranking. (Your stumbles have more weight)

People will also add you to their friend list

If your Stumble becomes a top pick your profile will be seen by a lot more people.

Getting the most out of StumbleUpon
Making money directly with StumbleUpon is difficult due to the fact that it brings in visitors that are reluctant to click on advertisements because they can always go to the next page with the StumbleUpon button. I don’t recommend relaying on this kind of traffic to make money. When using StumbleUpon do it for the other benefits it offers:

Increase traffic
Increase readership
Get more subscribers
Get Backlinks

….just to name a few. Once you get all this monetization will be easier.

Notes: Make sure that your RSS button is in a prominent place. My subscribers almost double after a few good stumbles.

You can also give your StumbleUpon readers incentives to join your RSS by, for example, writing an e-book and making it available to your RSS readers.

Provide incentives to your StumbleUpon visitors to come back; incentives such as contests, free stuff and Great info.

Subscribe to my feed if you like.

StumbleUpon is an excellent way to increase traffic to your blog.

It is a social bookmarking site that allows you and other users to “Stumble Upon” sites, blogs, articles or anything else… bookmark them and share them with other fellow StumbleUpon users. The way it works is fairly straight forward. You find a site, you ‘stumble’ it, and once it is included in the system other users will be directed to it every now and then. When the page you included gets stumbled by someone else traffic increases. The more likes/ reviews a page gets the more traffic will be directed to it. The more votes of confidence a site gets, the more traffic it will get. Reminds you of something?

Although, I registered with stumble upon a couple of months ago to increase traffic to my blog, I never really gave it a shot. I think I downloaded the tool bar for my Internet explorer but because I mostly use Firefox it was never used.

The reason why, all of a sudden, I decided to write a post about stumble upon is this:

The ‘spike’!

Which is not necessarily a spike in the particular case, it is a steady flow of StumpleUpon users, Stumblers who have been visiting and stumbling posts of this make money blogging blog. The following photo shows my traffic sources for the day this blog had 492 visitors. Usually, and before stumble upon, this ‘how to make money’ blog was getting about 150-200 visitors a day. Then one day, one of my posts got stumbled. That is the smaller spike a few dayw before the big one. Anyhow, I was intrigued by this as you can imagine, and started looking in to the ‘stumble thing a bit more’. A stumbled some sites, photos blogs, things of interest…added some friends through the Entrecard community and then a few days later I published a fairly interesting post about how to make money with Entrecard. Then, the same night traffic exploded. Exploded for my standards…

As you can see there where 354 visits form StumbleUpon. That day there where 1,200 page views, at a rate of 2.3 pages/visit with less than a 40% bounce rate…see for your self:

So, all the above photos and blabbering are to describe my second and more intense StumbleUpon traffic spike. Why? Because I want to

1. Demonstrate that Stumble upon works.

2. To lead up to an outline of how one should go upon and reap the benefits of this exceptional social bookmarking service.

StumbleUpon provides members with something that resembles a guide to the internet. Downloading the Firefox and Internet Explorer integrated toolbars; StumbleUpon brings relevant content directly to every user. You choose what your likes are and every time you surf with their toolbar you can find content that better suits your interests.

After you sign up, create a profile, you can start submitting sites that you like. It is recommended to download the toolbar so you can add websites photos blogs on your favourites directly and faster. The way it works is: you submit your website or your post, it gets listed in your favourites on your profile page and other StumbleUpon users see it and they visit your blog.

The toolbar looks something like this:

It appears in your browser and as you can see in the photo it has a series of functions:

The Stumble! button

When pressing this button your browser automatically takes you to a random StumbleUpon page, a website which has already been stumbled by other users. You can calibrate the options and only see relevant pages or of your interest. You can do that by selecting a particular channel next to the channel button. So you pick a category and you start stumbling. That’s great. You can press the stumble button over and over to take you from webpage to webpage. Content delivered to people is targeted to their personal interests and demographic profile.

The I like it! Button

When you come across a page you like, then you can click the corresponding button, the I like it! button, to add the particular page to your liked pages. If you are the first one to discover a page, you will be asked to write a short description or review for that page and place some tags. Writing up reviews and tags are essential when stumbling. Think of the description as a ‘teaser’ for other stumbleupon users that might be interested in the post/page. The tags are also important because they are used to classify your post in the specific category.

The more popular a site, video, photo, etc, the more people will see it the more traffic it will get. Using the StumbleUpon toolbar, members rate content "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down". The more people who vote "thumbs-up", the quicker it will spread. Well designed and targeted content often starts to spread virally through StumbleUpon. The more people who see it, the more they pass it on to their friends.

If you are new to this service it is highly recommended that you start stumbling sites and make friends. Making friends is important because it provides more exposure for the sites/blogs/posts/photos you stumble. So the more exposure you get on your StumbleUpon profile page the more traffic your stumbled sites will get.

As your profile page gets more exposure:

1. More people will add you to their friends list-more traffic for your stumbles

2. Your favourites, the pages you have reviewed, will get more exposure and traffic

StumbleUpon Goals

The best way to get massive-explosive traffic from StumbleUpon is to make it to the buzz page http://buzz.stumbleupon.com/. The buzz page gets tons of traffic because every member can access it directly from their profile page. There are a few things you can do so that eventually you can get on the buzz page.

Stumble good Content

Don’t stumble crap. When stumbling your stuff, stumble the good posts, the ones that you think will get the most traffic. Make sure you review and tag properly.

Get a ton of Thumbs Up/stumbles, reviews.

Ranking higher in the StumbleUpon pages and potentially on the buzz page it is essential to get stumbled by popular users, who have stumbled, discovered a lot of pages.

To have this high StumbleUpon magic power, one should have reviewer a large number of pages, discovered a large number o pages and be part of the system of a while.

StumbleUpon is effective because it does not disclose the algorithm used to rank users within the system.

Get on the ‘What’s New’ page.

You can acces this page from your profile, every profile page has a tab like this. There you can find the latest stumbled websites by your friends, so even if you couldn’t make it to the buzz page you still have a chance to get some traffic through this page, at least in the first 24 hours of being stumbled.

Get Searched

There is a search box in StumbleUpon that could be used in your advantage to drive a fair amount of traffic to you so, make sure you tag all your submitted posts well, using the proper tags.

Make More Friends

The more people you have on your friends lists, the better the chances of your stumbled pages to be seen.

It is highly recommended that you Stumble new and interesting things. Pages or posts that have not been stumbled before….yes your new post! This works to your advantage for the following reasons:

1. You are providing new content
2. Because you discovered the content your profile picture and link will be seen when people add comments, for ever….
3. You will eventually become a credible and popular Stumbler, get more review and move up in ranking. (Your stumbles have more weight)
4. People will also add you to their friend list
5. If your Stumble becomes a top pick your profile will be seen by a lot more people.

If you have some money to spare you can also pay for a campaign on stumbleupon, I believe it is 0.05 for every visit.

The down side

There is one thing I am sceptical about. The tool bar idea. I am not a big fan of toolbars to begin with. I guess StumbleUpon must make money somehow.

So there you have it. Hope you found these tips helpful. If you did feel free to add me as your StumbleUpon friend, the URL for my profile page is: http://ksc7.stumbleupon.com.

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