Build Massive Traffic With Stumbleupon

Webtrepreneur.net is a new blog. Whenever you create a new blog, the problem of getting traffic is always top of most people’s list.

It can be a little demoralizing, when, after creating a great article, you check your stats and see that only 3 people have read it. You have probably followed many of the standard tips for gaining traffic. You have written good quality content, used meaningful titles and created something you are proud of, but still you can’t seem to grab an audience; your blog simply isn’t being found.

You are not alone, this is pretty standard, even with all of the proper techniques, returns can be long term, rather then short term. For many people, this can cause them to lose interest after a few months. It doesn’t mean that the content they produced lacked quality, or was of little value, just that there was little return for the effort.

The fact that you are reading this post shows that you are interested in finding a quicker way of increasing traffic to your blog; but who isn’t right? At least you are doing something about it, you are looking for the edge to increase your readership. There are numerous techniques you can use to drive traffic to your blog, but the one I have been experimenting with for this blog is StumbleUpon.

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is a free social website that enables users a different way of locating content. When you join, you can install a toolbar to your browser. Finding content is as simple as clicking the ‘Stumble’ button on the toolbar, which presents a random website based upon interests entered by the user. At each Website, users can tag, give a ‘thumbs up’ or thumbs down’ or write a review.

The StumbleUpon toolbar also makes it possible for users to submit Websites they find interesting for others to view, and this is the bit that should interest you. You can use the StumbleUpon toolbar to tag and review your site by clicking on the blue thumbs up symbol. In the pop-up panel that opens, you can categorize your site and assign keywords. This allows your Website to appear to other users when they use the toolbar to search for similar content.

Why You Should Use Stumble Upon?

This all sounds very interesting, but why should you use StumbleUpon? Many people try and get a story onto the frontpage of Digg, hoping that it brings a boost in traffic. This is possible, but it is much easier to gain traffic using StumbleUpon, which has the ability to bring massive amounts of traffic to a site that’s been Stumbled.

There are over 3 million users worldwide using StumbleUpon, so used correctly, the potential for gaining traffic is quite high.

How Does StumbleUpon Rate Stumbles?

I don’t know the StumbleUpon algorithm, so this list is an educated guess, but some things that seem to increase the value of a Stumble are:

• The number of Thumbs Up and the number of reviews a post gets; the more the better.
• The stumble score of the person who stumbled your post.
• Whether your post is in a popular topic area.
• The tags used in the review. Popular tags will give you more chance of being discovered.

There are a few things you can do to increase the value of your own stumbles.

• Contact other Stumblers in your niche, especially the top ones. If they Stumble your site, you can gain massive traffic.
• Add friends to your StumbleUpon profile, this can help increase the value of each Stumble.
• Add a Stumble Button to each post. If you are on WordPress, there are plugins available for doing this. If the user has the toolbar installed they don’t need it, but it still helps.

Gaming StumbleUpon

This is something I would not promote, but there are people out there gaming StumbleUpon, whether you think this is ethical is upto you. Having said that, there are sites and services out there geared specifically for exchanging Stumbles between users. If you search on Freebies at DigitalPoint lists several posts where users are offering to exchange Stumbles, with ratios from 1:1 to 1:6.

Types Of Traffic

StumbleUpon users seem to be more particular about what they will read then the average user. This is probably due to the rapid nature of Stumbling. If it doesn’t grab them straight away, they simply Stumble to the next site. Some points worth noting are:

• Have a good Web design. The more aesthetic and professional, the better.
• Wait until you have a reasonable amount of content before you Stumble yourself. You don’t want to get lots of traffic and have little for them to read and explore.
• Provide interesting quality content; without this the whole purpose is wasted.
• Do not plaster your site with lots of ads. StumbleUpon users are not good at clicking ads.

How Many Visitors Can You Expect

Anywhere from 100 - 13,000. I Stumbled a story here and received 244, so not bad for a very new site, with very little content. SEOmoz used a bit of linkbait and received 13,000 visitors. As you can see, the potential is great, so get Stumbling. Also, if you like this story, why not give it a Thumbs Up…..