The StumbleUpon Effect

Posted on August 4th, 2007 by Ed Lau in Tech and the Net


del.icio.us Digg Reddit Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati
  1. Leo said on August 4th, 2007 at 2:42 pm

    Yeah, I have to say SU has been a significant source of traffic to my site and a far more friendlier bunch as a whole.

    Reply
  2. Charles Online Review said on August 4th, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    I just find so many bookmarking sites to use… It can be daunting.. Digg is really very hard to get on the front page now… Looks like StumbleUpon is the new “blue ocean” now…

    Reply
  3. ms danielle said on August 5th, 2007 at 10:23 am

    hey great article, it’s good that you included the bullet-points. i actually like SU traffic bc in the last month, i’ve gotten a lot of good traffic numbers from them. i’m seeing the same results, about 2.0+ ppv, and an average of almost 2 mins on the site. they also have the lowest bounce rate of all my top 10 referrers, so it looks like to me SU users are more likely to cruise around your site out of curiosity than the average surfer. i stumbled ur post the other day btw, you were offline. i hope you’re seeing great stats on that article too!

    Reply
  4. Michael Kwan said on August 5th, 2007 at 5:49 pm

    I just stumbled for this post:
    http://btr.michaelkwan.com/2007/08/04/how-exactly-is-that-a-deal.aspx

    And I got a few hundred visitors as a result. Contrary to what you mention above, these guys actually seem to click ads. I guess it depends on the topic?

    Reply
  5. derek said on August 5th, 2007 at 9:18 pm

    I too have found SU to be a very good source for traffic and it seems to sustain longer than the digg traffic. I recently experienced my first digg as well and had a huge spike for a few days and then it tapered off.

    But when you get a post on SU, it can bring you a nice level of traffic for weeks.

    Reply
  6. Namagem said on August 6th, 2007 at 5:02 am

    I just happen to have got here, to this page, via SU. I completely agree with your finding, I dedicate at least an hour a day to stumbling, and I often find blogs like this one that I thumb-up.

    Here’s to free publicity!

    Reply
  7. Dennis Plucinik said on September 13th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

    Stumbleupon has brought over 100k hits to a single post of mine in the last 2 weeks. I hope that’s news to someone. It certainly has shocked me.

    Reply
  8. Ryan said on September 14th, 2007 at 7:18 pm

    Haha, I found your blog on, you guessed it, SU. Nice article, :P

    Reply
  9. doug m said on September 20th, 2007 at 10:35 am

    stumbled here. good post, i haven’t seen a big surge from either yet but my blog is still new so we’ll see which one turns out to be better

    Reply
  10. mike said on September 21st, 2007 at 6:37 am

    Stumbled to this page. BTW, you dont have to have the toolbar even. Activate hotkeys and hide it. I, myself run a clean interface with only a firefox tabsbar at the bottom and only a thin menubar at the top where the adressfield an google searched field i crammed in.

    Reply
  11. Marco said on September 21st, 2007 at 7:07 am

    So while I hate messing up my clean browser window, even I have a StumbleUpon toolbar attached to the top now.

    Ghehe, you’re not the only one.. Same over here..

    Good post, Stumbled and you should make a post in a couple of days if many SU-user have read this article :)

    Reply
  12. Ryan of the RSL said on September 25th, 2007 at 7:50 pm

    I am a big SU guy – I think it’s a great service – but I have also seen the power of digg as well. I just have to underscore one major difference between the two and I will use your own words to say it:

    Digg is full of jackasses. It’s true…the haterade is strong on that site. StumbleUpon users are less likely to flame you but also less likely to leave feedback in general.

    Amen. I couldn’t say it better. So pick your poison or take both – but know that most people who have been properly exposed to both: regularly enjoy StumbleUpon and just use digg.

    Reply
  13. Moizelle said on September 26th, 2007 at 4:33 pm

    SU literally rocks. If the extra toolbar bothers you I suggest Firefox. You can with bit of toggling configure it to have only one added button, ie next to Stop button, clicking that will bring out the SU toolbar or hide it again. I stumble pretty much each day for 10 minutes, or well, sometimes bit longer ;O)

    Reply
  14. Legacyb4 said on October 19th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

    Yup, I’ve found that the content on Digg is pretty hit and miss while the stuff coming through StumbleUpon is far more interesting and varied. I’ve seen a lot more of the Web through SU than Digg in the past few months…

    Reply
  15. Netscape Bookmarking and PR9 Backlinks Go Bye-bye | the.[ED]ition said on September 24th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

    [...] well, I still get plenty of love from StumbleUpon. Heck, most recently, my post regarding how awesome StumbleUpon is made it to the top of SU and brought in close to 10,000 visitors over the weekend. That in [...]

  16. StumbleUpon posts get Stumbled a lot said on September 26th, 2007 at 9:23 pm

    [...] I was stumbling along when I was supposed to be working as usual when I stumbled on this article about getting stumbled. Whatever, I give a lot of seo/webmaster/affiliate stuff the thumbs up so that makes sense. But [...]

What do you think? Join the discussion...

How do I change my avatar?

Go to gravatar.com and upload your preferred avatar.