One of the recent phenomenons to take hold online has been the rise of social networking sites. Perhaps the most unique of all these sites is the exceedingly popular stumbleupon. Stumbleupon offers users the ability to install a toolbar on their browser and browse the web in an entirely new fashion: randomly. It isn’t entirely random, it’s even better than that, it groups sites by category and lets users rate which sites they like. It then uses these ratings to try to send you to sites you will enjoy. The network is large, and a lot of people are using the site, or stumbling, in their terminology. Stumbleupon is not just a great way to find new and interesting websites; it is also a great way to promote your website! By putting your site in their database you can be guaranteed an increase in traffic, but it is important to take certain steps when going about using the service.

Stumbleupon often sends traffic that isn’t looking for whatever you are selling or posting on your site. While a certain percentage of this traffic is simply going to press the button again, if you offer them something compelling users will stick around long enough to convert into a sale or a regular visitor. In order to achieve this, you need to concentrate on only submitting pages with interesting content to the network. If you have a blog, it is always helpful to submit it to stumbleupon, especially when you can easily submit different posts to different categories. You may also want to offer web applications to users, even flash games, which are a popular category within stumbleupon.

You can also improve traffic by improving your own stumbleupon account. The more you use the software the more your recommendations are weighted. You should also encourage users to rate your site and leave feedback comments. These will increase the rate at which users are sent to your site. Remember, the traffic generated is usually coming from individuals who are looking to be entertained. Starting off trying to sell them something is a mistake, and generally the users are savvy enough to realize when a site is trying to market to them. You can avoid losing these users by offering real, quality content they want to see. That is the true key to using stumbleupon wisely.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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