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!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.!
Lizard Wisdom responded on 06 Dec 2007 at 11:21 am #
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.
WhyDoWork responded on 06 Dec 2007 at 12:15 pm #
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.
Jagdu responded on 03 Apr 2008 at 12:39 pm #
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.
maldives holidays responded on 04 May 2008 at 7:23 am #
Very good info
Ngarag Rumors responded on 07 May 2008 at 8:44 am #
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.
Ngarag Rumorss last blog post..Is Sony Really Ordered to Stop Selling Playstation Gaming Consoles in the US?
WhyDoWork responded on 07 May 2008 at 8:49 am #
@ 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.
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com responded on 29 May 2008 at 3:24 am #
Yep, for me too. Many but not targeted so not much conversion. Actually not at all.
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.coms last blog post..Warning: relic guitar paradox!
Goran Website responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 11:50 am #
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.
Goran Websites last blog post..1
EngineWorks responded on 10 Jun 2008 at 11:46 am #
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
Group Writing Projects responded on 29 Jun 2008 at 1:08 am #
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.
Group Writing Projectss last blog post..Results from the Sailing Learning Experiences Group Writing Project
Hye Munar responded on 05 Jul 2008 at 8:59 pm #
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
Hye Munars last blog post..UFC Fight July 5: Jackson vs Griffin PPV Live Stream
Goran Website responded on 12 Jul 2008 at 9:47 am #
Its also an easy to achieve quality link, even if it does not always bring business.
Goran Websites last blog post..1
How I Got 18,000 Visitors for $100 | Work at Home Blog - simpleblogging.net responded on 05 Aug 2008 at 5:08 pm #
[...] How I Got 18,000 Visitors for $100 | Work at Home Blog. [...]
Lowongan Terbaru responded on 08 Aug 2008 at 9:45 pm #
Never use SU before, but will try in the future. thanks..
Lowongan Terbarus last blog post..Lowongan Kerja Editor di Production House di Bali Bulan Agustus 2008
directory responded on 21 Aug 2008 at 4:04 am #
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.
directorys last blog post..1
30 Tips For Exploding Your Site Traffic | How-To's | Slyvisions dot Com responded on 23 Aug 2008 at 1:30 pm #
[...] Purchase ads on social networking sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc. [...]
ahc web responded on 25 Aug 2008 at 2:33 pm #
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.