02.21.07
Is Stumbleupon traffic worth getting?
I recently decided to do a test at www.stumbleupon.com. Stumbleupon for those who don’t know is a site that offers a toolbar to put in your browser. The toolbar has a button that automatically goes to sites they think you might be interested according to how you set up your account. You can then choose what you think of the site by clicking on a thumbs up or a thumbs down or reviewing it.
There are 2 ways to get into Stumbleupon. One is if people who have the toolbar decide they like your site. The other is paid. You can pay $0.05 per visit. You just charge your account with money and Stumbleupon will use whatever you tell them to.
An expert SEO friend of mine William Cross told me that Stumbleupon was a good way to get some traffic and that a lot of Stumbleupon users have the Alexa toolbar installed. So I sent them $100 and told them to only send 100 visits a day and added my site to the web development category. Sure enough every day I got 100 visitors. Previous to this I had never had any Stumbleupon traffic.
My Alexa rating went up over this time. I forgot to write down what it was before but if you look at the Alexa chart you can see it going up over that period. From my referrer stats I can see that at least twice I got some free traffic from Stumbleupon. My number of community members at www.mybloglog.com has gone up a little every day or so since then as well. I have posted some stats of all www.Stumbleupon.com traffic.
Overall I think it was worth it. It is a good way to grow a website community and get new readers. You have to have a quality site that matches the category you submit to. You have to provide stuff people want to read.
Technorati Tags: mybloglog, alexa, stumbleupon, web stats, web traffic, stumbleupon traffic
Stumble it!
shandyking said,
02.21.07 at 8:52 pm
I don’t think it is worth it at all. I tried this out 5 months ago or so and nothing really came of it. I got more traffic for those days but it was short lived.
David Dalka said,
02.22.07 at 1:11 am
Interesting post, I understand the details behind StumbleUpon now a little better.
Marios Alexandrou said,
02.22.07 at 7:32 pm
This in an interesting idea. I didn’t know StumbleUpon allowed you to buy your way in. I think ultimately this will diminish the value of the service though. I spent a little time using it today and it already looks like a lot of the sites are coming from advertisers. Of course, that won’t stop me from giving it a whirl. Thanks!
hayathp said,
02.28.07 at 1:53 pm
Interesting Post I think it was worth it. It is a good way to grow a website community and get new readers. You have to provide interesting stuff which people want to read.
Lyndon Antcliff said,
03.27.07 at 5:35 pm
I’ve had about 1500 people find their way to my blog so far this month. The stuff I submit to stumble is tagged with the keyword seo so most would have found it by searching for seo, or are regular visitors to my stumble page.
So just how useful is it getting people to your site looking for seo information. Very, if you have info available that is. About 70% of stumblers view two or more pages, some even comment. To me that is success as I am not selling anything, merely raising my profile and establishing a brand. The brand being me.
It’s not that it’s worthless traffic, it’s different traffic and you must adapt to it to utilise it. Could it be as simple as finding out what stumbler want and then giving it to them. To define a bunch of people using a tool as worthless is short sited and misses a trick.
I know the comments here are mostly positive but it surprise me to see a lot of online marketers not really trying that hard to maximise the opportunity.
It’s cool that you used the paid for option. Next time save your money and give me a shout, I will stumble your site with my mature, loaded account. It usually sends a few hundred people and if they like what they see and stumble it too the traffic should last for months.
Holly Kees said,
04.04.07 at 8:08 pm
Essentialy I use blogger and google pages for a hobby. But I receive a significant amount of my traffic from stumbleupon according to google analytics. I have to say, not only has it generated traffic, but I really enjoy what it has to offer and the community itself.
Adam said,
05.23.07 at 12:22 pm
I didnt even realise there was a paid inclusion options in stumbleuppon. I actually joined for free, made a profile and I submit all of my pages and blog post to stumbleuppon. the funny thing is, after one particular post I got over 1000 hits in one day from them. Although the Adsense clickthrough ratio wasnt that great, its still eyes on your site which will help for subscribership, members and sales, so i highly recommend it.
PS you dont have to pay anything.
Tech reads said,
05.25.07 at 6:56 pm
From my experience stumble traffic is quite useless. It results in really low CTR for ads. It’s basically just an annoyance in my stats log. However, it’s good that it’s not all at once like Digg or Slashdot. I don’t mind it, but it’s not good from a publishers perspective. Maybe good for getting track backs.
Eliena said,
06.17.07 at 8:11 am
Hii,
do i really need to pay them to get traffic. I have been using stumbleupon for 2 months, and not getting single traffic though i submitted 4 pages to stumble upon ????
ogletree said,
06.17.07 at 8:43 pm
No you don’t have to pay. Stumbleupon is just like any social network. It is not easy to get into it. Nice thing about Stubleupon is that you can pay if you want to. You just need to have something that is interesteting to that crowd. Social Network Optimization is not easy.
aimClearBlog | StumbleUpon Gets a Facelift, Beta Upgrade Unveiled said,
07.26.07 at 8:55 pm
[…] Is Stumbleupon traffic worth getting? […]
SEO 2.0 | Top 10 StumbleUpon Traffic Optimization Articles said,
08.25.07 at 10:34 am
[…] Ogletree SEO: Is Stumbleupon traffic worth getting? […]
Donetsk said,
09.26.07 at 10:44 pm
Never did get any real success with stubleupon. In fact all social networking has failed for me so far, sadly.
Regards Don.
65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles | Newest on the Net said,
11.08.07 at 5:47 am
[…] 34. Is StumbleUpon Traffic Worth Getting? […]
Your Responsibility to Your StumbleUpon Friends : Blog Resources Online said,
11.08.07 at 10:46 am
[…] 34. Is StumbleUpon Traffic Worth Getting? […]
Top Internet Business said,
11.18.07 at 2:09 am
Top Internet Business…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
Blog Web World » Blog Archive » Your Responsibility to Your StumbleUpon Friends said,
12.01.07 at 7:10 pm
[…] 34. Is StumbleUpon Traffic Worth Getting? […]
Amie Stilo said,
01.10.08 at 3:48 am
I did try them out a few times but just didn’t seem to get any real traffic.
Maybe I am doing something wrong?
Mayhem said,
01.17.08 at 12:53 pm
My colleagues and I have been having this debate for sometime now and I just wrote a posting about it last night with an example of my normal traffic and then a day of Stumble! traffic. It’s interesting to see the analytics behind it. I get tons of hits but nothing of real value. Most of those visitors are just hitting the Stumble! button repeatedly until something REALLY catches them.
I say, be patient, comment on other blogs and do some SEO efforts - don’t leave it all up to Wordpress or whatever platform you’re using.
Ray Edwards said,
01.27.08 at 8:31 pm
I found this article by Googling “stumbleupon traffic” so I guess that SU is working!!
I did the search because I notices that I just started the social networking traffic gig and SU has given the greatest number of hits within a very short time. Just hundreds but the other sites DIGG, de.licious, ect are below 10.
I suspected that the quality of traffic was poor as well. I’m not really selling from my blog but do run Adsense and a few other paid ads programs.
I’m glad to read about the experiences of others.
Video Websites said,
03.15.08 at 3:01 pm
The quality of “visitors” Stumblebum sends is pure unadulterated crap. I know from personal experience both from paid advertising with them and from tagging site pages w/ SU.
SU users seemingly blind to content, haphazardly click their toolbar’s Stumble button visiting websites at speeds up to 10 sites a minute. Zero to minimal prequalified visitors is the norm - and you can forget about any conversions - it’s a celebration of mindlessness.
Their tagging system is a complete joke - you can only see 7 sites for any given tag - sometimes none. Sites disappear only to be replaced by those maybe a year older without even any reviews. Searching SU is even worse - results contain a mishmash of irrelevant nothingness.
Stumblebutt has a really good thing going - for them that is - they sell advertising for a nickel a click - and with millions of users they’re making a killing. Only problem though is that advertisers get zip in return for their money - only elevated uniques in the site stats - no sales, no comments, no clicks, no conversions whatsoever.
Essentially, Stumbleblunder sucks. There are far more productive and measurable means by which to garner traffic - read - visitors that have conversion potential.
ogletree said,
03.16.08 at 2:53 pm
Video Websites I think your right.
Life Near Philly said,
03.17.08 at 1:25 pm
Great article - I didn’t know paid inclusion was an option. I submitted my site but didn’t do much after - I’m going to give it another whirl and be a little more ‘hands on’ and see if I can’t use the social networking aspect to my advantage! Thanks!
StumbleUpon Traffic Optimization: 10 Articles That You Need to Know | Problogging said,
03.24.08 at 10:00 am
[…] Ogletree SEO: Is Stumbleupon traffic worth getting? […]
estetik said,
04.17.08 at 6:32 am
I think stumbleupon is a good way to get traffic but you should setup your account very carefully.
huoyangao said,
06.23.08 at 3:03 pm
Good experiment. The question is are the StumbleUpon visitors come back later or not?
Richard Janes said,
07.07.08 at 11:03 pm
We’ve had some good spikes in traffic with 100 - 150 hits in a given day and then nothing for a month.
For our site we have a lot of text which I don’t think works too well for StumbleUpon traffic. The site has to REALLY grab you visually… Not that ours isn’t visually great it’s just that as a community of over 30 film bloggers the content has to be king to give all the bloggers access to the front page which we rotate constantly.
Having said that I personally LOVE Stumbleupon and use it regularly looking for photos.
Ashok said,
07.08.08 at 9:36 am
I am also using stumble upon but i am not getting any traffic.
http://onlinelar.blogspot.com
Chris Mikaitis said,
07.08.08 at 10:00 am
I love Stumbleupon and have been using it for quite some time. Many people in the comments complain about the lack of ad revenue they receive from stumblers. This is probably true because many stumblers are relatively savvy users and have Firefox and Adblock plus. Stumbleupon is a new way of searching for things you don’t know you might be interested in. If your business is in providing a service (which can be things like webcomics, lolcats, etc…) where money is made through sales of tangible goods related to your site, and not through traditional ads, I think you will have better success (I purchased an xkcd t-shirt after repeatedly stumbling upon comics of theirs that I enjoyed). That said, I understand why some people are upset, and perhaps stumblers aren’t the users they are looking for.
Web Design Company said,
07.24.08 at 1:15 am
Thanks for sharing this interesting information about paid StumbleUpon services. Though I have used StumbleUpon previously for a client’s web site to direct traffic to their site, I never knew about the paid option before I had read this post.