Today I was reading about generating traffic via the Stumbleupon social network. For anyone who isn’t familiar with Stumbleupon, it is a social network focusing on website discovery. As such, it is somewhere in between a search engine and social bookmarking, as you can record your favourite websites at the press of a button, thanks to the Stumbleupon toolbar. You can give a thumbs up for websites you like, and a thumbs down to website you don’t like. Better still, you can review a site and let fellow Stumblers (as they are known) know about the benefits of the website in question.
Generating traffic with Stumbleupon is easy – in theory. There are two limiting factors, the first being that you are forbidden to submit your own sites, and the second being that if your user account doesn’t have any ‘authority’ then you website will not be shown very often, if at all. Addressing the first issue is simple: you can pay to have your site displayed in Stumbleupon, and if you have created content of interest to the users, it will then be “stumbled” (thumbs up) by other users, and the organic traffic generation process will kick in.
The exact process by which Stumbleupon serves up website recommendations is secret, but it is relatively simply to guess at some of the factors influencing authority. The big one appears to be the number of sites favourited (given a “thumbs up”) by users who have given a thumbs up to this site also (My reason for stating this will be shown in the graphics below). Other factors, suggested on various blogs, include the number of reviews a site receives, but again, I would suggest that there is still some kind of authority system going on.
What happens when you get a Stumbleupon traffic surge? You get a sudden spike in traffic, visible in your website / blog stats. The amount will vary depending on the popularity of the niche that your website is included in, and of course depending on the authority of those giving the thumbs up (and hopefully reviewing) your site. Stumblers tend to be reasonably net savvy, so don’t expect to expect a rush on sales. However, the benefits for information sites and blogs are obvious, as it is an easy way to get known and build your reputation.
Stumbleupon Traffic Stats
As luck would have it, one of my sites got a surge of traffic from Stumbleupon, starting sometime last night while I slept. I know the approximate timing as I had been checking the stats on and off during the evening to see traffic generated from Reddit.com. The article on Reddit has received a small amount of traffic, especially compared to the article linked from Stumbleupon.
The Stumbleupon page generating traffic
As you can see (if you enlarge the image), three of the Stumblers have reasonably high numbers of favourites. In fact, one has over 23,000 (23K) favourites. I suspect this gives them a high amount of authority, and this has translated to a large amount of visits (that are still occurring as I write this).
Stumbleupon traffic generation stats
Here you can see the massive spike in visits, starting yesterday and continuing today. Yesterday there were 351 visits from Stumbleupon, and today (at the time of writing – some time after the screen capture of the above graph) it has reached 356 visits. What I have noticed though, is that visitors from Stumbleupon haven’t clicked outgoing links. Instead they have left the site, mostly without reading other pages, probably by clicking the “Stumble” (next site) button.
Stumbleupon referral statistics
Above, you can see the referral statistics for the website in question. The site is relatively small and new, so doesn’t usually receive more than 20-40 visitors per day. The boost of traffic from Stumbleupon is certainly useful, and I know from other sites that once a site is in Stumbleupon it is likely to get periodic surges of traffic as new and influential Stumblers give a thumbs up or review of the page.
If you are new to the concepts of traffic generation and Stumbleupon in particular, then you will find Caroline Middlebrook’s free Traffic Rush course invaluable. Caroline also offers a full, paid version of the course, but you are under no obligation to buy this. I have recently subscribed to the free lessons, and as I am already using Stumbleupon I can highly recommend Caroline’s traffic generation techniques. Click here to subscribe for free.
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