Speed Stumbling
Wednesday 28 March 2007 - Filed under web
StumbleUpon is turning out to be a really great source of traffic for this blog. In fact I get over 1200 referrals from StumbleUpon per month and I imagine it will grow. The wonderful thing about StumbleUpon is that they don’t discourage you from submitting your own site or promoting friends. Their algorithm is tailored to the individual so moderate self-promotion is not an issue.
Like all such services, you always want to submit something you like as quality. Some guidelines I adhere to when stumbling are:
- Don’t submit news topics
- Down vote really old sites that aren’t being renewed (some people are importing bookmarks into their stumbles)
- Be selective of blogs
The StumbleUpon toolbar for Firefox has a really nice messaging system built into it that allows you to send your friends links as potential stumbles. If you have a message you see the red count and the next stumble you press will go to the recommended URL and be accompanied by a message.
This is a great tool for promotion. Now, one of the things I like to do is after voting is to add a couple more stumbles of my own.
If you’ve been following the advice out there you know that the best way to extend your influence is:
- Stumble lots: the most influential people have a long history of participation and a crazy number of Stumbles. Much like del.icio.us.
- Make friends: there’s a 200 maximum so be selective. It’s better to have influential friends but more importantly mutual friends.
- Join groups: You want to join as many groups/communities as your interests allow. This not only broadens the pool of stumbles available to but it also gives you an avenue to send your stumbles if the subject matter matches.
Now stumbling is really easy and only takes a couple clicks but what I like to do is configure it for even more speed. This allows me to do more stumbles in less time. All these preferences are available via the toolbar under Tools > Toolbar options.
The first setting is to set “stumble after rating”. This way, when you vote on a site you’ll automatically stumble to the next one.
The next is to set keyboard shortcuts for your stumbles.
This way I’ll just cmd + an arrow key and I’ll stumble my way through the web. Happy stumbling!
2007-03-28 » baron
28 March 2007 @ 2:51 pm
Thanks for the stumble tips they are greatly appreciated!!
hugs
28 March 2007 @ 4:26 pm
Have a stumble on me.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/baron.vc/speed-stumbling/
28 March 2007 @ 6:40 pm
Thanks guys! Hit me up with a StumbleUpon message any time!
Lyndon,
I’ve added you as a friend.
29 March 2007 @ 1:12 am
There is a limit to 8 posts from the same source to each user…
29 March 2007 @ 1:24 am
Rusty, I knew there was some kind of limit.
Thing is, it doesn’t matter as you don’t need to have your vote their forever, plus, if your content is good enough and other people stumble you it will have a life of its’ own.
29 March 2007 @ 2:04 pm
Baron, great review! I’ll spend more time stumble now (instead hooking into the first web game I stumbled on!).
29 March 2007 @ 3:12 pm
Rusty,
I can’t find any documentation on that. I’ve got lots of thumbs ups on certain sources and they seem to show up.
Lyndon,
I agree with that.
Andy,
Thanks! Be sure to add me as a friend:
http://labratz.stumbleupon.com
29 March 2007 @ 7:18 pm
What Rusty meant is that there is a monthly limit to submissions to a certain domain. Nothing is documented, but try submitting baron stories every day and you’ll see that eventually you’re blocked. After a while you can re-submit (hence the monthly limit theory). If you have enough friends, they can submit it for you of course. I think they don’t want people submitting their news site stories 10 times a day and flooding the system with useless stuff.
29 March 2007 @ 9:41 pm
Oh okay, see you in April!
30 March 2007 @ 3:57 am
1,200 per month? Looks like you received more than that just with this article!
SU is a fantastic resource for getting exposure and driving traffic quickly. My site is only 6 months old, but just for March received over 80,000 visits (~20-25% of all traffic). Plus some people browse the “buzz” list looking for stories on other sites, so it’s a good way to get links back as well.
30 March 2007 @ 6:05 am
Baron, I have added you. username: skyer
1 June 2007 @ 1:21 am
[...] that I only found today which is already impacting the way that I use StumbleUpon. Titled, “Speed Stumbling,” Baron discusses ways you can hasten the stumbling process. One method mentioned that I just [...]