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“Why am I not getting any traffic from stumbleupon?”
I hear this a lot, and most urgently from people who were previously doing very well with StumbleUpon traffic. So what is the answer?
There are two main reasons why someone who previously received a healthy amount of Stumble visits might no longer be doing quite as well:
- Their account is weak
- Spam control measures
To understand how this works you need to look at things from StumbleUpon’s perspective. What do they want in a membership and in terms of submissions they receive?
- Good quality submissions
- On a variety of sites and domains
- That are viewed and voted up naturally
- Leading to organic distribution of stories and friendships
Is that what you are doing? If the answer is “no”, then you know what you need to do.
Here is what most people who are promoting their own sites do:
- Write a so-so story
- “Discover” the story in SU using the toolbar
- Email and “send” the story to all their friends
- Wait
- Complain that SU is broken because it doesn’t send traffic any longer
If you look at my two main reasons above, you will see the pattern of behavior raises red flags for both reasons.
By only stumbling your own stuff, and not particularly red hot stuff at that, you weaken your account. Instead you should be looking for cool material to discover and vote on, with your own best stuff mingled in to the mix.
Plus don’t vote on your own domain more than once or twice a month. This is typical spam behavior.
What about all those lovely votes you begged for and received?
Well, it is a little known fact about StumbleUpon that if you get a strong account to discover your page then the overall effect will be far greater than using your own lame, flagged as spam, no-friends account. So build up your account and make influential friends. Oh, and when you ask for votes, use IM or email, and don’t always send folks directly to the page. SU can tell how your friends found the page.
Got any more stumbleupon tips? Disagree with anything I say here? Share in the comments …
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