Get Website Visitors With StumbleUpon

[Matthew Sherborne]

Get website visitors with StumbleUpon.com

Many people who start out using the popular StumbleUpon site with the goal of getting website visitors to their own websites
often wonder why they aren't seeing immediate results. Usually it's because the sites they submit are uninteresting, submitted
in the wrong category or never get the right amount of traction due to a low amount of friends in their network.

Below, you'll find out some things you can do to get up to speed with starting out and getting momentum to your Stumble
submissions. Stumbleupon will walk you through setting up your account preferences as soon as Firefox is loaded back up. I'll
go over each part of the toolbar below.

If you don't already have an account with SU, visit http://www.stumbleupon.com/

SU can now be used with Internet Explorer, but I prefer Firefox. Click on “Sign Up”. You will be sent to download the Firefox
extension. After a quick restart of the Firefox browser, you will notice the following at the top of the browser:

Stumble Button – When you click this button, you will begin “channel surfing” sites from whatever category you chose
during account sign up.

Box and Tag Icon – Add a tag for the current page in the box, then click the tag button to tag it.

Share – Send the current page via email or share with friends through Stumbleupon.

Pages – Shows you the pages you own and your “thumbs up” pages.

Friends – Shows you your friends and makes friend suggestions if you do not have any. This is a great behind the scenes
social networking tool.

Menu – Lots options here regarding your account, inviting friends, chat rooms, and more.


All – This is actually a menu where you can choose what to stumble through. Some of the options include pictures, video,
new, and more.

Thumbs Up (I like it) – If you like the site you are currently viewing, give them the thumbs up rating. It's not necessary to
do.

Thumbs Down – Tells SU not to show sites like that anymore.

Comic Cloud – To read reviews about the current page. You can leave reviews as well.



How to get the most traffic from StumbleUpon

SU is like channel surfing for the web. Most SU users are going to surf until they see something that catches their attention.
What I found to be the most profitable way to get their attention was to call them out:

“Hey Buddy, Check This Out”

Something like this makes the user say “Who, me?” Did that get your attention? This might raise the question “How do you
know the traffic is coming from StumbleUpon” well, you could do one of two things. You could have a script made to detect
when the user is coming from SU ($20 is all it should cost), or you could simply setup a page specifically for them. I do the
latter for tracking purposes.


Tag your submission with the right keywords and put them in the right category


Another tip for getting the most out of SU is to make sure you target. If you are selling a “make money” type of product, then it
goes in the business category, not the games category. It's also a good idea to test the categories as well. A product that
teaches someone how to make money online could go into a lot of related categories.

To be super successful on StumbleUpon.com:

1.Grab their attention with a headline made just for them.


2.Use a separate page (example www.yoursite.com/stumble) to track your results better.


3.Target your audience by putting your site in the correct category, or a closely related category.


4.Always make sure your page has a money making element on it such as Adsense, Yahoo Publishers Network, CPA* ads.
The only exception to this rule is if you are building your list and only want their email (for selling to them later).


5.See what others are doing. Spend an hour (or two or three) surfing the network and make note of what others are doing.
People have already been using StumbleUpon for marketing, you just haven't heard about it because no one talks about it
(why give away the secrets? ☺).


Best Ways to Make Money From Stumbleupon.com Traffic.

This is what you've been waiting for! These are the strategies I'm using successfully to make some extra money. Hopefully,
you'll be able to spawn other ideas from this list as well.

Keep in mind that StumbleUpon traffic is awesome when you manipulate it correctly. Many office workers are surfing SU while
at work, Stay at home Moms/Dads, etc (in other words, more people with money to spend). It's not anything like MySpace traffic.

StumbleUpon now has over 4,500,000.00 users.


1. Create A Video Page.

I'm sure you're thinking “Hey, isn't that what YouTube is for?” the answer is yes and no. YouTube is massive, but weeding
through all the videos can be time consuming. I found that by spending a bit of time searching for videos on a certain topic
and embedding them into my site, I could make some money from Adsense.

For example, you can setup a page that had videos about the new video game systems (Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii). You
can get dozens of videos that captured people fighting each other while standing in line for the system, etc.

CPA ads work wonders with this as well.


2.Create A Top # List.

Read some of the popular Digg.com posts or popular blog posts and you'll see plenty of “Top” lists. People love reading lists
for some reason. For example, you can create a Top 30 list of the coolest games online and stick it into a gaming category.
People love to discover new games to play online.

Of course this page should be full of your adsense ads and/or CPA offers.

Ideas for lists: http://www.listible.com


4.Use CPA Marketing Only

Put up a page that has some articles about niche topics, then place CPA ads on that page. For example, you can have a
few credit card articles on a page with a credit card CPA offer. Some of these pay $10+ for each person that inputs their
information.

5.Get Opt-ins For Your List

Give away a free report or something worthwhile in exchange for the stumbler's email address. You are basically using the
same opt-in techniques you would use any other time, but now you can do niche targeting within the StumbleUpon categories.
6.SUSO (StumbleUpon Special Offer)

This method is simple. Create a special offer for StumbleUpon users (just like in the WSO section). You can do this by first
getting their attention with a Stumbler specific headline. Then you can either setup a sales page just for them, or offer a
coupon code for your products.

7.Push Firefox to Internet Explorer Using Stumblers

This method has been the most profitable one for me. I didn't think it would work, or be worth the time, but I was wrong – and
that's a good thing.

StumbleUpon has been know for being a great Firefox plug in, but now Internet Explorer users can join in the fun. Google will
pay you up to $1 for every person you get to install Firefox. I know, $1, big deal right? Yes! It's easy to setup:

1. Go to http://explorerdestroyer.com/ and follow the instructions. They will show you how to setup the script (it auto-detects
IE).

2. Apply the script to your StumbleUpon page and watch the referral money pour in! (hopefully)

That's it. It all depends on how much traffic you are sending them, but I have made enough to take my family out to a nice
dinner a few times a month. In other words, you won't make a living referring IE users to Firefox, but you'll make enough for
some nice extras every month.


8.Push The Google Pack

Similar to the above technique, Google will give you up to $2 when someone downloads and installs any component of the
Google Pack. I have made referral money by adding a link to the Google Pack on existing pages as well as creating a
dedicated page to promote the Google Pack. Check out more here: Google Pack


StumbleUpon Strategies

These are a few ideas I thought of, but have not tested:

Use http://www.cafepress.com/ to advertise merchandise to a target market. (craft shirts to the crafty people, gaming shirts to the
gamers, etc)

Try collecting information with a simple poll or survey.

Setup an “Adsense page” for every single StumbleUpon category.

Send the traffic to your Squidoo.com lense to possibly become a top ranking lense (by traffic)

Send the traffic to your MySpace profile for more friends.

Run a contest

Don't only submit your own pages- go for a ratio of 15-1 or 10-1. Which breaks down to 15 site submissions for every page of your
own you submit.

Get more friends with StumbleUpon to propel your website submissions

After you've stumbled at least 50 sites and have added some friends you can begin integrating your own site submissions in to the
mix. Stumbling your own post works best when you give it proper keyword tags and a thorough review.

If your post is interesting enough it may get a bunch of people thumbing it up which will generate a huge rush of traffic to your site.
You can easily get hundreds to thousands of website hits a day using StumbleUpon. It's happened to me quite often. Not only that,
but the traffic continues to come in after the initial rush for weeks to months later.

Get the StumbleUpon Traffic Ebook right here to discover more ways to immediately boost your visitor traffic..