Mark Forrester

The StumbleUpon effect

This month has seen a nice surge in website traffic, this is not attributed to the Digg effect or the Slashdot effect, but the ever growing StumbleUpon effect.

I’ve written about StumbleUpon before, when I first discovered it through my web stats almost a year ago now. It continues to impress me, both in the content it finds me, and the hits it sends me.

“According to eBizMBA, StumbleUpon ranked at number 6 for the 30 most popular social bookmarking sites for July 2007. The site was ranked above both Slashdot and Reddit but still is one of the least appreciated sources of traffic. The reasons for this are because people misunderstand the nature of the site. Because StumbleUpon was conceived as, and continues to be a site that is heavily used to explore content consisting of art, design, and photography, people think that other kinds of content cannot become popular on the site. “

Source: The unappreciated Stumbleupon effect – Pronet Advertising

The most recent of my posts that has been “stumbled upon” is probably best described as a mash up of photography, design and humour. It’s some cheesy, but funny, images taking the mick out of the movie “300”. How much traffic has it driven me this month- about 20 000 visits and counting.

Not bad at all, especially when added to all the visits from the CSS galleries I have recently featured in, and the backlink from the BBC Rugby World Cup Blog (that enjoyed the Schalk Burger jokes).

I was pleasantly surprised to see I’m now sitting at first place on Afrigator Top Sites. I don’t think it will last long, but it does prove the power of the StumbleUpon effect.

Stumbleupon effect

In

13 responses

  1. Imar Avatar
    Imar

    I signed up for StumbleUpon this week after noticing that it generates a fair amount of traffic for me too. I figured that I should sign up and see what it’s all about… But it destroyed my life in 3 days. I now suffer from severe loss of productivity and no sleep. That’s the REAL StumbleUpon effect!

    Reply
  2. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    Hey Imar, I know exactly what you are talking about. It’s addictive stuff!

    Hopefully it retains its high level of good content and spammers don’t abuse it. I do find a growing number of spam looking sites in the search results.

    Reply
  3. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    According to my awstats web traffic report my Stumbleupon traffic for the month is now sitting at 30 000 visits.

    Reply
  4. Imar Avatar
    Imar

    I have now gone 24 hours without stumbling… just… trying to… be… strong…

    Reply
  5. Mostly Lisa Avatar
    Mostly Lisa

    i have just joined. for the stats. not the time wasting. i will hold you personally responsible if any of my precious mostly lisa time is wasted!

    Reply
  6. Mostly Lisa Avatar
    Mostly Lisa

    ps what plugin are you using for comments?

    Reply
  7. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    Hey Lisa,

    I think I’m a dead man then cos I’m sure lots of precious time will be wasted on Stumbleupon 🙂

    I’m using the standard comments form with some tweaks to the template to make my comments look different. I use Subscribe To Comments to allow for comment replies to be emailed to you.

    Is that what you asking?

    Reply
  8. Justin Tadlock Avatar
    Justin Tadlock

    I’m becoming more and more addicted to StumbleUpon every day. I signed up over six months ago, but didn’t really use it. When I started seeing why I had a lot of traffic coming from StumbleUpon, I decided I needed to take a look into it.

    It’s now my 4th biggest traffic provider, which isn’t saying that much, but I do like the StumbleUpon effect.

    Reply
  9. Brock Noland Avatar
    Brock Noland

    I am seeing a ton of stumbleupon traffic also. I saw a ton of it after being dugg earlier this year. Now I am seeing a significant amount of traffic on posts for which I am getting little or no traffic from other social bookmarking sites.

    A friend of mine found stumble last year when they were first starting….It was really slow, but had obvious potential. Still I was surprised to have something like 100,000 visitors to the previously mentioned post…

    Reply
  10. Brock Noland Avatar
    Brock Noland

    PS, I love your theme! Its awesome!

    Reply
  11. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    Justin: As long as it’s not a span site, any form of traffic is great! Hopefully the Stumbleupon traffic grows even more next month!

    Brock: Hopefully my next traffic source will be Digg, but it would be nice to be Digged, or Stumbledupon because of a post that required some effort to write, not a regurgitated email joke I found 🙂

    Glad you like my theme.

    Reply
  12. Nic Avatar
    Nic

    Mark, I must be honest, I joined stumble but I am sure I am not making use of it effectively, I haven’t really noticed a massive increase in Stumble hits, in fact, I have almost no hits from stumble.

    Two options: 1. My content is crap and not being stumbled
    2. I am not utilising the tool correctly. Any hints for a stumble-begginer?

    Reply
  13. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    Hey Nic, Stumble can be used to find great web content according to what you are interested in, that you have complete control over in your profile.

    Getting Stumble traffic to your site is something you don’t have much control over though. It depends solely on other Stumble users finding your site and liking your content enough to submit it.

    Obviously SA Rocks content is mostly localised content and might not appeal as much to teenage yanks (which I find are a good chunk of Stumbleupon users), but as the Stumbleupon userbase grows I’m sure you will get more hits. My traffic did take a good long while to grow.

    I suppose the only advice i can really give you is to use the tool, Stumble other blogs, make sure your profile is up to date and comment on other people’s Stumbleupon blogs. Entice them to visit your site.

    I hope that helps. Have patience my son.

    Reply

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