I’ve been involved in online business long enough that I’ve tried pretty much every single form of advertising you can do on the Internet. With ad blindness on the rise, it’s up to webmasters and site owners to constantly be on the bleeding edge of innovation in order to get decent ad conversions.
Top Posts @ the WhyDoWork Blog
Before we get started, take some time to mouse over the “Top Posts” at the top left of the page. It will show how many readers have read each post. If you’re an RSS or email subscriber this means you’re going to have to actually visit the site to participate! The top three articles on this blog have all been read more than 18,000 times.
Keep in mind that all these articles are less than 3 months old and that is an amazing statistic. I credit this success entirely to StumbleUpon Ads. Well maybe my writing played a role in it, but it was StumbleUpon that was the spark to get things going.
How to Effectively Use StumbleUpon to Advertise
If you’re not sure what StumbleUpon is, take a break and check out this demo. StumbleUpon gives users a way to quickly “channel surf” the web and find sites they might not have normally visited. With their advertising program, you can pay $0.05 cents a visitor to have someone look at your page.
If a visitors gives your page or site a thumbs up, it will be shown on their homepage and it’s likely their friends on the site will see your page too. Check out this graph of a few days of my campaign:
Important things to note in the image above are the text in blue, green, and red. Blue is the number of visitors I paid for, green is the percent of visitors that gave the page a thumbs up, and red is the number of visitors who gave the page thumbs down. Ideally you want the green bar (and the number of thumbs up) to be much larger than the red.
Having users give your content a thumbs up can translate into thousands of additional visitors. With a small budget of $10 per day and choosing to advertise specific articles (instead of just whydowork.com/blog) I’ve seen some great results!
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We did try using StumbleUpon Advertising. We definitely go the visitors, but they were not quality visitors.
According to Google Analytics, those that come from StumbleUpon did not stay around very long or look at many pages. They are by far the lowest quality traffic we get.
Maybe it is that our blog is not very conducive to attracting the StumbleUpon audience. Or maybe they have a really short attention span.
Whatever it is, we have decided that while StumbleUpon is great for boosting site visitors, they are not of the quality we are looking for.
True enough, because the StumbleUpon system is supposed to be like flipping through channels on your TV, its not likely that many visitors will stay on your site more than a few seconds — minute.
Our graphs of avg. page views and avg. time on site did show a negative slope in Analytics, but I believe you can make up for this by acquiring the small percent of visitors that do stay and read your article to join your rss, or become repeat visitors.
I think you are true. All that you should care about is conversion. If you can convert one visitor spending $1 then it is a good return. You better no your goal, i just don’t know the price but i bet you will spend more with adwords for getting the same result. Good try…
I’ve never used the SU advertising. I’ve used FaceBook a little. I’ll definitely check out SU, it’s better than begging for a few votes.
Very good info
I didn’t know that SU can do this. I was just wondering how effective the traffic are to your campaign.
Thanks for the info.
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@ Ngarag:
The traffic is relatively effective at bringing new RSS subscribers, but according to analytical data, most “stumblers” only end up staying on the site for between 10-30 seconds.
The power of using them for advertising is for the sheer volume you can bring if you write a compelling and short article.
Yep, for me too. Many but not targeted so not much conversion. Actually not at all.
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I find the same thing when looking at my analytics, it peaks during the period yet I dont get the conversions. This is most I think because our target audience is B2B in South Africa.
However I do Stumble sites often, especially sites that have blogs as they are selling numbers to their clients, CPM.
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This is really cool to see your success! Stumble can really drive some high amount of traffic but it doesn’t always convert.
EngineWorkss last blog post..1
I’ve tried an SU ads campaign once. I had low expectations but wanted to try anyone. I was surprised with the results but not in the way you’d think.
I was supposed to $25 worth of visitors = 500. Although the SU stats did say I received as much, my other stat counters like Google Analytics didn’t agree, claiming that I received between 300-400.
Also, compared to natural Stumblers, the number of thumbs up was really low, even suspiciously low in this case. But, it’s very important to choose the right category to aim for.
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I never tried Stumbleupon but I heard it is really a good source of good traffic. Thanks for this post. I will consider it ;0
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Its also an easy to achieve quality link, even if it does not always bring business.
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[...] How I Got 18,000 Visitors for $100 | Work at Home Blog. [...]
Never use SU before, but will try in the future. thanks..
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I did not know you could pay StumbleUpon to have you site appear in the stumbles…you learn something new ever day. Based on the cost you mentioned, it makes sense to use them.
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[...] Purchase ads on social networking sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc. [...]
I haven’t tried to advertise with SU, but as an user of SU, I can say that when people “stumble” pages, they are not looking to buy stuff.
I think if you have a good article and a FREE offer that you get paid to refer, you will get a good ROI.
Thanks for the tip. I’ve considered SU, but I don’t invest unless I hear real number or guaranteed returns.
I’ll try it. Peace.
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I’m not sure how much quality is in stumble-upon traffic. I was once stumbled and had a ton of traffic from it. However, I didn’t get a single sale or inquiry that I can directly assign to the traffic. It might be better for sites with ad-words or something though.
Cigarss last blog post..1
I’ve had a couple of articles stumbled in the past, and my experience has been similar to your other commenters – not much in the way of ad clicks or anything. I have noticed a small boost in my subscribers afterwards though. And heck, at the very least, those visitors help to boost your Alexa, which indirectly enables you to charge more for your ad space.
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Hey Great article…The quality of stumble-upon traffic can only help your Alexa ranking!
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For reasons I do not understand after getting a virus removed from my computer and having to have a clean install when I tried to download stumbleupon tool bar I was told I am banned and cannot log in because of this.
I have not been able to figure our why I was banned. I have sued this account for a year or so with no problems
I did not even use Stumbleupon much
I have another computer I could use in an effort to start from scratch but would rather use this one.
Any help would be appreciated.
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I’ve been searching for ways to try and increase my feed subscriptions I will have to give SU a try. Thanks for the tip!
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nice tips, but im usually using an old method, such like updating blog daily and im submitting new post into blog/web dir and also do not forget to have blogging patrol behaviour and put some comment into high pr blogs… dont spamm because i hate spamm and the rest of true blogger hate spamm activity too…
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This is some great info, StumbleUpon worked well for me too. I also learned some stuff from here… thanks.
Phil
http://MakeCashTomorrow.com
Interesting read! I’m a little uncomfortable trusting the quality of traffic generated by Stumble, but it’s worth a try. Thanks.
http://livesensible.com
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Wow – maybe I just a noob, but I never know SU could be that effective! Thanks for sharing
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I’d like to know what are your results in sales, subscribers, etc… ?
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Social network traffic / Book marking traffic isn’t really worth very much. I prefer to get visitors from the likes of yahoo answers.. they trickle in but they are highly targetted.
Agreed – yahoo answers delivers great quality traffic
Great tip, thanks!
Still i’m not really sure with StumbleUpon Ads, but gonna try it for a while and i will see it benefit me or not. Thanks for sharing your information.
Very helpful & cool tip to get more visitor, hopefully it works out for you!
Custom street carss last blog post..1
The quality of traffics do matter. Stumbleupon traffic not really good.
entrepreneurnovices last blog post..1
how often did you stumble a site? do we need a frequent visit to stumbleupon site to get more traffic?
i have try to use this method and just got 50-60 visits.
I paid for stumbles. That’s how stumbleupon makes $$
Hello mate,
I am new to blogging (yes definitely wet myself, ha ha, procrastinating many a doll drum pass by) until it hurt a bit! However, sans complain, have fared quite ok in with SEO, Google & Aff Mktg- in that hierarchy of absorption, by the my then battered noggin following a ‘dee-worse’ (divorce). And, to those unbeknown with the aforementioned adjective (may u proclaim so thru life)- NOT pleasant at all. Even so our de-conjugation was amicable.
Back to the future… and onto why I scribe ‘aqui’- GREAT (why do) WORK MATE. Very captivating content, Engrossing Conversation, Equally Calculative, Eerily Eorrect, enthralling & Cohesive, Enabled CommentLuv AND (truthfully with abstinence from utter of excess, as further mention may not garner justified praise) Enjoyed Completely.
Peace, luck n Why Do Work.
Rog
I-Can-See-Clearly-Nows last blog post..1
OOPS ABOVE = Eerily Eorrect (sounds phallus coincidentally… ha ha, sorry absolutely unintended)-
READ AS Eerily Correct (wow, scored a pun too. Huh, maybe I should hearken myself to blogging)
I-Can-See-Clearly-Nows last blog post..1
I am not even registered with SU, but will and I suppose it can’t hurt to pay for ads and see how it converts for me. Sometimes all this SEO, etc.. is so confusing to me.
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let us know in the forums if you have questions. We answer them all day!
18,000 for $100?
I’m all for this if it works..however, the math isn’t adding up:
=============================
The graph shows you got 1,397 clicks in 9 days.
At 5 cents per click, the total = $69.85
But..
You said “3 months” and “$10/day budget”..
3months ~ 90 days x $10/day = $900
18,000 clicks x 5 cents = $900
=============================
So what’s the real deal? 18,000 visitors for $100 or $900?
Thanks!
Grant
Hey Grant, that graph was just a snap shot. The articles were LESS than three months old (I didn’t pay for advertising for 3 months). 100 bucks is all it took!
This is crazy! 18,000 for a $100. I like this idea, but I have to figure out what to do with that kind of traffic, and that kind of quality. It’s a little challenging to monetize a 30-second attention span. Thanks for the idea, though.
Glenn
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Very interesting. But I’ve to agree with Glenn.
18,000 is a lot of traffic. But I wonder if Adsense will allow this fluctuation of traffic with no penalty
I think it’s something similar to Google Adwords right? It’s a paid advertising that helps to get targeted traffic to our site. I’ve never heard about StumbleUpon Ads. Anyway, in this stage, I’m going to do all the marketing manually without invest anything first. I will take a look if I’m getting exhaust of marketing. Thanks for sharing this ideas.
-Davis-
This is a trip into the archives for me…..following the top posts / most popular posts, can often prove to be quite a trip down memory lane!
I have found StumbleUpon traffic very “spikey” over the years, with relatively poor conversion rates.
I’d be interested to know how much you made from StumbleUpon traffic? I can never get it to convert so it just ends up being a bandwidth hogger.
Glad I bumped into this post again, I forgot about it.
I like the idea, and plan to give it a go.
Just need to figure out which site to test it on and then which page to focus on.
Hmmm, maybe I’ll try and see if I can get some signups to my free membership site. That will be easy to track.
I’ll give it a go and report my results.
I’ve used the free SU service a few times over the years, but just didn’t spend the time to really utilize it fully.
Thanks for sharing the paid ad. tactics.
Cheers,
Zac
I am also interested in stumbleupon ad technique but only one simple problem is keeps me away from there thats nothing but money..
Hey,
StumbleUpon is great mean to get your website noticed. However like you have also stated in the post that not many people have any idea about what StumbleUpon is and if they are familiar with the SU then they are not aware of the advertising campaign.
Anyways you have given the key points for the novices. Thanks for this informative post.
interesting and the idea is quite good specially for new bloggers and websites who are looking for some quick traffic.
I didn’t know about “StumbleUpon”, but i will give it a try.
Nice techniques, but 18000 visitors is to much for me;)