flyingrose/su

I'm beating the DIVERSIFY NOW drum so here is one method to consider and a post detailing test results from someone who tried SU's advertising program.

From the page: "StumbleUpon is known by most website owners and bloggers as one of the best sources of free traffic available. However, SU also offers paid traffic and it's advertising program is a lot different than other alternatives.

With StumbleUpon you can pay $0.05 per visitor and you can choose to target visitors that have selected certain topics, such as web development or blogging, as some of their interests. You can also target visitors by their age, sex and location if you wish.

The interesting part of the program is that your paid traffic can lead to even more free traffic. If some of those visitors that you have paid for give your page a thumbs up, it could spread just like any other page submitted to StumbleUpon and lead to hundreds or even thousands of free visitors.

This potential for extra free traffic encouraged me to give StumbleUpon's advertising a chance (it's the only type of paid advertising that I've done for this site so far). StumbleUpon has consistently been one of the top sources of traffic for my blog so I thought I would see if I could increase traffic to a few specific blog posts that haven't gotten much from SU.

For each of the blog posts listed below I spent $10 for 200 visitors. Here's a summary of my results..."

Do you use the StumbleUpon shortcuts?

From the page: "there is a `Shortcuts' tab under `Toolbar Options'. When enabled, the toolbar provides you 5 keyboard shortcuts to accomplish the following tasks:
Functions:

1. Stumble!
2. Rate "I like it!"
3. Rate "Not-for-me"
4. View Reviews &
5. Toggle Toolbar

Shortcut:

1. Alt+`
2. Alt+1
3. Alt+2
4. Alt+3
5. Ctrl+F11

New StumbleUpon reviews. From the page: "We're really excited about this announcement. We've been hearing great feedback from you about our SearchReviews feature that has been in beta, and allows you to see StumbleUpon ratings layered on your searches on the major engines - Google, Yahoo, Ask & more. This feature helps you discover great websites whether you are pressing the Stumble button or searching the web. Today we are officially launching SearchReviews for both Firefox and Internet Explorer, and announcing some really cool enhancements."

Brian Wallace (Nowsourcing) writes some really insightful stuff. This is yet another gem in his blog which is one to which you may want to subscribe.

I can't remember if I stumbled a post he made where he confirmed with analytics something I already knew. (Unlike many who want statistics to prove everything, when I observe something repeatedly I have no need to spend the time to prove it to myself.)

I bring that post up for this reason: he saw that many stumblers had already looked at something and did not put a thumbs-up on it, then someone influential had reviewed it and THEN they put a thumbs-up on it.

I would like to encourage people to act on THEIR OWN thoughts and feelings. Get in touch with what you like and don't like. Be interested in YOUR interests instead of following someone else.

Few people are going to encourage you to do that because it is very useful to them to have people act like sheep so if they have the right mouthpiece they can lead them anywhere.

I am encouraging everyone to THINK FOR YOURSELF - do not blindly follow ANYONE. Sites like StumbleUpon are great places to practice this idea. What is the worst thing that could happen to you if you put a thumbs-up on a site or write a review?

Someone else might not like the site? So what? There is nothing in life that everyone likes. Even the sites that someone influential reviews positively will also have thumbs-down and negative reviews. That is fine. It doesn't hurt - really it doesn't.

So just go for it. Practice expressing how you really feel. Go ahead and be the first to thumbs-up or review something you like. (I recommend focusing on what you LIKE and ignoring what you don't.) I want to be the first to congratulate anyone who takes this first step to freedom. Bravo!

From the page: "The more I use and observe social media, the more it seems like psychology to me. I had the pleasure of attending SMX New York last week, and one of the highlights of it for me was listening in on the panel featuring the founders of Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. Something that really got me into thinking was in the Q&A section where a member of the audience asked Garrett Camp, founder of StumbleUpon, on how SU dealt with spam. The answer was basically that the system eventually corrects itself. People flock to good content and it continues to rise, while mediocre content will eventually fail. Anyone attempting to game the system will reach a level where it cannot go any further and the general community will give it a thumbs down. So, the key point here is to have authoritative content, not a power profile. Power profiles might get your content noticed, but at the end of the day, it will still get thumbed down on StumbleUpon.

This got me to thinking more about flocking behavior."

From the page: "In honor of passing my 4,000th thumb this week (and Lindsay Lohan graduating from rehab), I thought it the perfect time to come clean with my fellow stumblers. These are my StumbleUpon confessions."

Too funny. Check out that headline: "I Stumble Kittens and You Can't Stop Me!"

Wall Street Journal promotes StumbleUpon

From the page: "StumbleUpon - Sometimes the most fun we have online is when we stumble upon a random website. Perhaps we read something really interesting, like someone's take on afterlife or perhaps we discover another neat website like YouTube or Flickr.

Enter StumbleUpon. This great service attempts to do what almost all search engines (yes, even Google) can't offer you. You select your interests from dozens of choices and the program, which rests quietly on your Firefox or Internet Explorer toolbar, finds a random website based on what you wanted.

"Next time you want to wander the Web, forget about Googling it. Stumble it."
-The Wall Street Journal"

From the page: "StumbleUpon - Sometimes the most fun we have online is when we stumble upon a random website. Perhaps we read something really interesting, like someone's take on afterlife or perhaps we discover another neat website like YouTube or Flickr.

Enter StumbleUpon. This great service attempts to do what almost all search engines (yes, even Google) can't offer you. You select your interests from dozens of choices and the program, which rests quietly on your Firefox or Internet Explorer toolbar, finds a random website based on what you wanted.

"Next time you want to wander the Web, forget about Googling it. Stumble it."
-The Wall Street Journal"