| StumbleUpon may be another one of those social networking sites that are all the rage these days, such as Digg and Reddit, however, it has its own unique characteristics that can drive good traffic to your website. This article is not a guarantee that every webpage you submit to StumbleUpon will strike gold -- that is just too much effort for the average webmaster. Here's how it works, no voting required: StumbleUpon picks the websites to visit for you by taking into account your specific interests. Users can also keep track of the websites they liked and share it with others. So if you want to use this nifty, even addictive, tool to drive up traffic to your website, read on. You can also establish a readerbase for your website. First Things First Make sure your article doesn't actually suck. If it's hard to read through, it's as easy as a click of the mouse to move on and say, "next!" Your website has to be visually pleasing to the eye. Your readers will be reading from a monitor, you know. And if you're earning through ads, make sure they don't stand out and make your website look amateurish. Let your webpage headline be concise, attention-grabbing, yet provide a glimpse of what the article is about. Get An Account At StumbleUpon And submit your website so other people can stumble upon it. Don't overdo it; this means if you have a blog, don't submit and rate every blog post you have because you will eventually get banned. Fill out your profile and include your website there. Bloggers should usually Stumble many of their own posts. That way, the posts get traffic almost immediately. The thing about StumbleUpon is that with it, you look like you're "channel-surfing" through the internet so you never really know what you're going to get within the interests you provided as parameters. StumbleUpon allows you to categorize your website according to specific "tags", so tag broadly to reach as many users as you can without going overboard -- keep tags broad, but relevant. Get Involved StumbleUpon is a social-networking website, and it takes people to drive up the traffic, so make friends. Improve your presence on StumbleUpon and join groups -- you are allowed to join up to 63 groups. Rate other webpages as well -- they help StumbleUpon users find your website. In fact, submit other pages that link to your website for even more chances of getting good traffic. Get involved but get involved strategically -- don't add random people for friends as you've only got 200 slots available on your friends list -- choose people who are likely to have the same interests you have and would be potential readers of your website. The more times you rate a website, the more chances other people will be generous as well and return the favor. Getting your page Stumbled Upon could easily amount to over a hundred readers in a single day. Some people have truly hit the jackpot and their website has gotten over three thousand unique hits in just for hours. The principle to remember is to not abuse the system. People do get banned for doing this; as much as possible, be altruistic with your stumbling -- you scratch their back, and they scratch yours. |