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Increasing your StumbleUpon Audience

StumbleUpon is one of those social sites that many people ignore, although it is not as popular as Digg or Del.icio.us, it can drive a lot of traffic. Back in September I wrote an article on How to get StumbledUpon and how I received 17,209 visitors from using the techniques described in that
article. Since then a lot of things have changed on StumbleUpon and I have learned a lot more about it, if you are looking to leverage it here are some of my thoughts.

Stumbleupon

Audience

Each user is given an audience number. The number could be 1 or it could be in the thousands. The overall goal is to get your audience number as high as possible because then when you stumble stories more people will see them, thus increasing your traffic. The following are some ways to increase your audience number:

  • Use StumbleUpon on a daily basis - by stumbling and submitting stories (as well as voting) on them on a daily basis your audience number should go up. Just be careful because their algorithm is quite complex and your goal should be to stumble and submit stories you like as well as ones that the community will like.
  • Add friends - the concept of friends is that when you stumble stories your friends will also see them. StumbleUpon lets you add up to 200 friends, so be careful and make sure you add friends with similar interests or it could hurt your audience number.
  • Join communities - there are communities within StumbleUpon where people with common interests such as "Apple" or "Web 2.0" hang out. Join the communities that you are interested in so that when you stumble, web pages that will interest you come up.

If you do these simple things and become an active member in the community your StumbleUpon account’s audience number should get higher. If you have a high audience and submit a website that the community loves, you should be able to drive thousands of visitors to that website.

February 5th, 2007 | Posted by Neil Patel in Uncategorized | 35 Comments

Steve Singer on Feb 5th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

I’d like to get involved, but really dislike the idea of having to download and use a toolbar, which is what I understand you have to do.

It feels like spyware.

Rxbbx on Feb 6th, 2007 at 3:22 am

Absolutely right.. people should not ignore Stumbleupon. Stumbleupon can bring you a lot of traffic. One thing for sure.. if you get hit bij StumbleUpon.. it goes fast.

I agree with steve about installing the toolbar. It is not one of my favorites things too. Just try it for some weeks. You could start with submitting / listing your sites and creating your Stumbleupon Profile. Then remove the toolbar if you re getting tired of it.

kelvin in brighton on Feb 6th, 2007 at 5:18 am

I have been surprised the amount of traffic that stumble can bring, I voted on a story on my site on a new blog I set up. Not very established and not a hugely compelling story.

And low came quite a torrent of traffic. Nothing huge but quite a bit for a small site just getting started. Now if I notice anything that would make a good stumble well worth thumbing up.

rxbbx on Feb 6th, 2007 at 10:37 am

With SU you can have high peaks. If you deliver a good story SU people will come.. Traffic can be 1000% bigger as normally.. (there are always limits.. but i have to give an example)

Cameron Olthuis on Feb 6th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

I’ve seen as many as 7k uniques in a day from StumbleUpon. Most popular stories are around 1-2k per day though.

engtech on Feb 6th, 2007 at 5:15 pm

It’s like any online community and you have to make friends in order to get the numbers rolling.

Great site though, you can friend me at
http://ninetimessix.stumbleupon.com

Fashion Industry Ceo on Feb 6th, 2007 at 10:08 pm

sounds very helpfull…I have received traffic from stumble upon to one of my blogs without even joining the community so joining could definitely help!…thanks

Video Rambler on Feb 6th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

By adding friends are the traffic numbers actually going to increase? Do you have anything to support that? Just wondering if having friends well actual increase traffic to the sites I like.

Mallory on Feb 6th, 2007 at 11:39 pm

I’ve been using StumbleUpon for probably a couple of years now. I haven’t been spending much time using it recently, but I’ve definitely seen its benefits lately…quite a few incoming links to various posts on my blog. I’m going to try to commit more time to actively using it. Maybe I can increase those stats further through StumbleUpon.

MJ on Feb 7th, 2007 at 12:27 am

We had an article stumbled and got 9000 hits that day, pretty cool stuff. That was last week.

Mattias on Feb 7th, 2007 at 4:09 am

Can you see this audience number anywhere or is it a hidden value all members have?

taromaru on Feb 7th, 2007 at 6:47 am

I dont think the most important thing on SU is Audience. I am enjoying the experience, overall, and even when my audience has dropped from 2000+ to 200+ :P
New users I am getting into SU are also discovering the power of social bookmarking, and I find it obvious to give SU the web2.0 social bookmark and tagging award.

Besides, I am getting to know the most incredible people on there!

julien on Feb 7th, 2007 at 4:37 pm

thanks for the tip. this worked remarkably well with a recent post of mine.

Edward on Feb 7th, 2007 at 11:37 pm

Just joined, we’ll see how it goes. Anyone can friend me at http://othersingles.stumbleupon.com

geeknik on Feb 10th, 2007 at 3:51 pm

I love SU. Check me out @ http://geeknik.stumbleupon.com/ (NSFW).

Hdr on Feb 10th, 2007 at 5:45 pm

That’s amazing, I don’t get anywhere near that kinda traffic from Stumble.

David Blanchet on Feb 11th, 2007 at 8:52 am

wow, does anyone besides myself work for a living, its becoming a trend visit sites daily and become involved in communities, where do you all find the time? I send most of my time trying to make a living lol!

anyway, the way i see it, on logopond SU traffic ebbs and flows in a sort of pattern. it usually comes at the end of the month for me, every month, so i think your number just gets cycled into a certain rotation.

Melissa on Feb 12th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

Usually Steve, yes. But on this one, you are missing out if you haven’t downloaded it yet.

ubunoob on Feb 13th, 2007 at 6:07 am

Hey, i work for a living…..good hard work.
I dont have much of a “real” social life no more though and my lifes been taken over by these machines….virtually:-)

I spent a fair bit of my first few months with a pc Stumbling around the place last year and it was thanks to SU i eventually came across Ubuntu so even though i mabey dont do soooo much stumbling nowadays it`s still one of the first extensions i install on any new setups.

Wouldn`t be without it now,it`s one of the “good” toolbars:-)

Nate on Feb 23rd, 2007 at 9:03 am

SU sent me 700+ visitors on my first submit. Which did wonders for AdSense. Def. give this a shot.

Austin Luna on Feb 24th, 2007 at 10:55 pm

Stumble upon is such an outstanding creative website that I would download the toolbar everyday if that’s what was required.

Martin on Apr 28th, 2007 at 10:38 am

I have seen many people getting really good traffic from stumble. Some have said that if you maintain a constant of 30 stumbles and reviews to your site per day, then you should be recieving over 500 unique visitors per day.

Martin
http://traffic-building-optimized.blogspot.com

Robin Sampson on May 10th, 2007 at 11:46 am

I can’t find how to set up a stumbleupon community. Is it still available?

Thanks… a thumbs up for you!

Austin on Jun 2nd, 2007 at 11:50 pm

I think that feature is enabled when a member purchases the full or pro version of SU.

Matt Ellsworth on Jun 5th, 2007 at 10:58 pm

Great tips - I love stumble and encourage others to use it all the time!

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white_boat on Jul 17th, 2007 at 12:16 am

Even i hated to download and use the toolbar….but when i saw the bummmper rise in traffic… i can say that it is worth it!!

Alek on Jul 20th, 2007 at 11:56 am

hello! nice Site!

lucian on Aug 2nd, 2007 at 1:07 pm
V. Hog on Aug 25th, 2007 at 9:24 pm

I hope Stumble doesn’t turn into a “clique” sites like Digg and Reddit. Where the same people continually have their stories dugg or read.

pete on Sep 2nd, 2007 at 8:50 am

I have just started using it, so far I have not seen any benefits but it’s early days.

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chloe on Nov 29th, 2007 at 7:43 am

how do i add my site on the stumbleupon list?

speed yeoh on Dec 5th, 2007 at 1:18 am

you have to provide a proper guide how do i operate it. I have register it but it take me a month. until now I still don’t know how to operate it.