Ok, you want traffic to your website, who doesn’t?

Wouldn’t it be great if it was easy, just submit a link and traffic will come flooding in ridiculously fast and contribute toward building your audience?

There is one tool I use which takes about 10 seconds, if that, to submit a link and it regularly drives a bucket load of traffic.

There are smaller details of course – the right kind of content, understanding the platform and not every link shared goes crazy. But a chunk of them do!

The tool is called StumbleUpon – you guessed it, just as I mentioned in my headline! I’m so mysterious aren’t I?

StumbleUpon is like the internet’s version of ‘flicking through the channels on your TV – remember that annoying thing your cousin did that time when you stayed over as a kid?  It wasn’t long before you screamed “just pick a channel!!“

Well, you can be one of those channels, but on the internet.  But if you don’t put something up that’s interesting or grabs attention then people will simply click through to the next channel.  But if they like it, it’ll get the thumbs up and possibly go insanely viral on their platform.

Just the other day I followed this exact strategy on one post and got 2,167 unique visits in 2 days to it from StumbleUpon alone! It was free.

After all, StumbleUpon is the social media platform on the internet for referring website traffic in sheer numbers – it overtook Facebook a couple of years ago! (source)

Here’s the numbers:

Sound Good to You? Here’s What You Can Expect

Possibly a massive influx of visitors and even a large spike in your Google Analytics dashboard.  But there is a downside – StumbleUpon traffic converts lower than most other sources of traffic, but it’s still very useful.

The first main point is that you get your content in front of tens, hundreds or thousands of eyeballs and that will always be a good thing if you’re looking to grow and promote.  If you get a lot of visitors then your content is obviously popular because people are liking it and hitting that thumbs up button.

All I can tell you is from my experience – every time a page or post of mine went viral on StumbeUpon, I got some Facebook likes and subscribers but the biggest difference – my SEO traffic to that page always increased noticeably. 

So you get the benefit of lots of traffic initially from StumbleUpon, you also get the repeat traffic from StumbleUpon and increased traffic via Google if all things go well!  That’s sounds pretty awesome for simply submitting a link.

Impress people enough and they will want more, so you have to make your page something good – this will only happen if people like what you submit.

It’s all about Quality.

If you submit a crappy, unoriginal article you’ll get no visitors. If you type up 500 words and think “that’ll do”, it won’t.  This goes for everything, not just StumbleUpon.

Remember that Blog Post Checklist? Follow that as a rough guideline if you’re submitting a post.  But there’s some common ground to good content that goes viral on StumbleUpon, try to make the page you link to one of the following:

• Actionable – if someone can walk away from your page and have a new ability (not X-ray vision or anything that fancy), then you’ve got a good chance of gaining that first like that sprouts into many.
• Entertaining – if someone is ‘channel surfing’ through StumbleUpon for entertainment, then you’ve got the opportunity to put on your Jester hat and get some likes.
• Inspirational – people love to be motivated.  People who work hard and have big goals treat motivation like fuel, when they’re getting low they fill up their tank. Give them some of your fuel.
• Resourceful – Epic lists with substantial resources are popular.  It could be a list of awesome blog posts or websites, online tools, weight loss strategies or tips.  If each tip is substantial and worth it’s weight in gold then people will feel like they’ve ‘Stumbled’ onto hidden treasure – likes and therefore traffic ensues. Resource lists are especially powerful if done right.
• Use imagery – images are very viral.  They’re easier to take in than reading 1000’s of words.  Use some stunning imagery and you’ll attract more stumbles.

Pick one of the above and add uniqueness to the mix. If it isn’t unique don’t bother, turn around and walk away from your computer until you want to create something that actually contributes to the internet. Put this epic content above the fold and right in front of the visitors eyes so they’ll be more likely to have their attention caught.

At the end of the day good content helps this massive knowledge base known as ‘the internet’ grow.  Contribute quality and it will reach far on this platform.

Now let’s get started!

Go to StumbleUpon, and sign up – the big green button up the top that says “Join for Free”, or simply sign in with Facebook.  You know how to do this, it’s dead easy if you follow the prompts.

Go through and pick some interests, you can add more later, then you’ll be taken to the ‘Stumbling grounds’ as I like to call them.  If you’ve never used StumbleUpon before, click the Stumble button at the top, ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ some pages you like and dislike.

Learn the platform and how it works for 10 or 15 minutes. Have fun.

After your first date with StumbleUpon, try sharing your link of choice. Click on the top right little photo of you on the Stumble toolbar, and click ‘Add a Page’ on the drop down menu.

Now simply put in the address, pick a category, some keywords and write up a description. Be sure to choose relevant keywords and at least have some experience or explore the category your posting to to make sure you’re posting content of a similar theme. You also need to upload a photo of yourself and wait 24 hours before submitting a link.

Once you hit ‘Add this page’ you’ll have submitted your link. Pat yourself on the back.

There’s one more thing though….

On the next page hit ‘Start Stumbling’.  You really need to stumble after a submission, this isn’t concrete but I’ve found that the more I use StumbleUpon the more it seems to spread my links around.  So have some fun and stumble!

Now, see how thing go!

You can go do something else now, let people discover your content, like it and hopefully it will spread virally throughout the network.

Remember, if you don’t get a lot of traffic, that doesn’t mean you failed – some things take off while some don’t.  But sometimes you’ll get a massive influx of traffic months after the link is submitted.  Also it can be hard to get those first few people to like what you submit and get the momentum going.

Luckily, there’s something else you can do to give your link a little more ooomph….

Put your StumbleUpon link on Steroids

Yeah, you can do even more with this platform.  Kim Roach over at Buzzblogger got 201,126 visitors to a blog post by combining StumbleUpon and the Paid discovery feature!

No, she didn’t pay for a couple hundred thousands visits…

…she paid $100, which bought her 1000 views.  That’s 10 cents per visitor! How did she get over 200,000 views though? She created some top notch content and let the organic viral nature of StumbleUpon take over from her paid stumbles.

It was called “Top 30 inspirational picture quotes to rock your day” – so a string of motivational images!  Imagine your killer content getting the same treatment!

So this is a good option to really get things moving when you have a little extra money to get things pumping.

Sounds Easy?  Give it a go!

Have a go at StumbleUpon and let me know what results you get.  Try it on several different articles over a few days.

Make sure you keep stumbling regularly and liking pages to give your profile some weight.  You can also explore other people’s profiles and add them as friends – they may add you back.  Get stuck into it and have some fun experimenting.

If you found this page useful, please subscribe to my newsletter below or share this post.

Even better, submit this page to StumbleUpon! That’d make my day :) Thanks for reading

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