Get Involved with StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is by no means a new tool, however, I have found that a lot of people who should be all over this, webmasters in particular, have no idea what it can do for them.
StumbleUpon is an extremely unobtrusive toolbar that lets you rate websites as well as find new websites that would be of interest to you. There are several very targeted categories that you may look under to find sites and best of all, it helps you promote the sites that you love so that others will be able to enjoy them as well. Now, when you think about it, if StumbleUpon lets you promote websites, doesn’t that mean that you can also promote your own website with it? Why yes it does.
When you join StumbleUpon, you are given a page of your own where every website you rank will show up on, so all of the people who view your StumbleUpon profile can browse through the sites that you have promoted. This has been a very influential tool for me thus far, running two websites of my own as well as lending my expertise to other websites in order to get them a bit bigger than they already are. A great tip when using StumbleUpon is that when you submit your main page, don’t just stop there. People may be interested in your site, but if your website has a splash page where you have to click enter in order to view it, or you believe people just must see one page on your website, you can submit them individually. What’s great about this for bloggers, specifically, is that while you can promote your website, you can also promote every post you write just by clicking one button in your StumbleUpon toolbar.
When using StumbleUpon, we must adopt the online realm of thinking when it comes to viewers. While submitting your site, all of your pages and all of your blog posts to StumbleUpon, that isn’t going to do much if you have no friends and you’re the only one who visits your page. While countless people use this tool on a daily basis, there are also countless websites being submitted to the same categories you are submitting to, so the likelihood of people seeing all of the great content on your website through this tool, is pretty slim. I also have the answer to that problem!
StumbleUpon groups, I can say from experience, are absolutely amazing. A StumbleUpon group is a group of people who send emails to other members asking them to Stumble a page they have submitted or would like to promote something to a wider audience. All that is needed from you is to go through the submissions and click the thumbs up button on your toolbar saying that you like the post and when you submit posts or websites of your own to them, they will do the same. There are many groups out there with a large number of participants, so gaining attention to your website has now become quite easier.
After installing the StumbleUpon toolbar, I also recommend that you join the StumbleUpon group, StumbleMe. Become involved with other bloggers and help them gain an audience while spreading the word about your site as well; it’s a win-win.
The StumbleUpon toolbar comes for Internet Explorer as well as for Firefox and can be downloaded here and don’t forget, once you’ve downloaded the toolbar, join StumbleMe and see your hits increase dramatically!
Dan on Wed, 26th Mar 2008 11:02 am
I love StumbleUpon. It’s a great way to find sites that interest you and a good way to drive some traffic to your site.
Margo on Wed, 26th Mar 2008 1:08 pm
I have to admit, I am addicted to StumbleUpon. I just like the community there, and the people I have found are so willing to help you out in any way they can!
Jean on Wed, 26th Mar 2008 4:35 pm
Just a word of caution i know that StumbleUpon will limit/stop your ratings of certain sites if you are trying to promote it…so you can add you content but if you stumble too many of the posts from the same source as you suggest, you will be blocked from doing so. not sure what the limit is it seems more than 5 but less than 30… i have a friend who can’t post any more from this one source cause he posted too many from it. stumble told him to reread the terms and to stumble other things
moggy on Wed, 26th Mar 2008 6:57 pm
Jean makes a good point so beware.I enjoyed the blog Thanks!
akavar2050 on Fri, 28th Mar 2008 4:03 pm
how does it compare with delicious and reddit? is stumbleup the best of them?
~Jenny
Dee on Sat, 29th Mar 2008 9:17 am
Thanks for reminding me about this. I have the stumbleupon toolbar but forget about it most days. This has given me the push to start stumbling again.
Victoria's Secret Models on Sat, 29th Mar 2008 9:56 am
StumbleUpon is one of my favorite networks.
You can always find something interesting to read.
Caroline on Sun, 30th Mar 2008 6:11 pm
Thanks for the tip. I signed up and found it a bit confusing at first. Now I will go back and devote more time to it. Do you think there are specific types of articles that do better than others?
Becki on Mon, 31st Mar 2008 11:15 am
Hmmm…I’ve heard a few mentions of this lately.. I just may eventually make it over to check it out!
Thanks!
Hottest Wife on Mon, 31st Mar 2008 6:40 pm
I’ve used Stumble Upon for a number of different sites, but always suspected I was never really using it properly.
Thanks for the link to your Yahoo group, that seems like a great idea.
Compost Guy on Tue, 8th Apr 2008 5:17 pm
I’ve also had the toolbar on my browser for a while and haven’t really used it, but your post reminded me as well. Couldn’t hurt to try other sites like this.
Caroline Middlebrook on Fri, 11th Apr 2008 2:02 pm
Be careful submitting your own posts to StumbleUpon. There is a law of diminishing returns in effect that will cause each subsequent submission to the same domain to drive less traffic than the last. Eventually, your own submissions will drive no traffic whatsoever, and could even lead to your domain being banned! Its best to save your submissions for just your very best content and allow other people to submit your work the rest of the time.
Kingwood on Wed, 23rd Apr 2008 9:27 pm
StumbleUpon is great for web site owners, but I have to admit my favorite use of it is just mindless browsing. I’ve come across some pretty cool sites that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Robin on Wed, 14th May 2008 10:29 pm
I’ve heard about stumbleupon but haven’t really understood how helpful it could be to my blog. Thank you for the great information!
Data Entry on Mon, 4th Aug 2008 9:38 pm
I did not think of that! I’ll have to promote my own website.
Thanks!
Anita on Sun, 17th Aug 2008 10:18 pm
Thanks for the information as I had never really taken the time to really look into this site and figure out how it could help.
This was quite interesting, thanks!
Anita
Tom WMD960P on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 6:55 am
stumbleupon is great for promoting sites that are boring such as the one my name links to. but its really important not to overdo it. i rate and comment on many good sites with stumbleupon and only every now and then promote one of my own sites.
Katie on Fri, 10th Apr 2009 5:30 am
Stumbleupon is a great tool to promote any website but its not about promoting your own site but you can stumble great sites on a given topic. Try searching for “Breast Cancer” and you will see a list of sites which have articles on breast cancer so its kind of great way of finding articles you search.
One thing is still unclear how they are rating the sites? All i can do is thumbs up and thumbs down a site but i can see lots of sites with rating
cPanel Hosting / Reseller Hosting on Tue, 12th May 2009 8:16 pm
I am very excited about the possibilities of Stumble Upon and the amount of traffic I can get… I didn’t realize how powerful of a tool it was.
Thanks!
Carla on Wed, 4th Nov 2009 4:01 am
Thanx for the info I better get registered there
Carla on Wed, 4th Nov 2009 4:29 am
After reading all this I better go n make an account on stumble