StumbleUpon Traffic: Why You’re Not Receiving the Traffic You Deserve from StumbleUpon

We’ve spent time building out our Facebook profiles, LinkedIn profiles, and we’ve listed ourselves in DMOZ and other popular web directories. But at the end of the day, 99.9% of us sit back and look at our traffic statistics from Google analytics with a sense of wanting more.

We’ve been told that, “getting to the top of the search engines is easy,” and that, “anyone can create a viral marketing campaign.” But do any of us actually know of our friends’ websites that have actually gone “viral?”

A Second Look at Internet Marketing with StumbleUpon

In November 2001, StumbleUpon was launched and within 2 years had received over a million users. As of 2010, StumbleUpon had over 10 million users. That’s a ton of users! Anyone can easily see the power of StumbleUpon.

Just as a refresher, here’s how StumbleUpon works:

1. Someone submits a web page to StumbleUpon
2. StumbleUpon automatically inserts that page into rotation
3. If the page gets reviews and thumbs up, it’s shown to more people
4. If the page gets little traction, reviews, or thumbs down, it’s taken out of the rotation

It seems so easy, right? All we need to do is just submit our website into the StumbleUpon marketing machine, sit back, sip on our coffee, and watch our web traffic roll in, right? Could internet marketing really be that easy? No it is not, and here is what you need to do…

Is Your Website Content Ready for StumbleUpon Traffic?

Unfortunately, we’re all finding out that StumbleUpon, and internet marketing in general, really isn’t as easy as we once thought it was. Only the best, highest quality, and most unique web content is actually making it into the StumbleUpon ranks.

Here are a few attributes of websites that are performing well via StumbleUpon:

• High quality content
• Content that is super interesting
• Content that is sharable

For the sake of argument, let’s say that your content has all of these attributes but still isn’t receiving the StumbleUpon traffic it deserves. But why not?

StumbleUpon Traffic is the Ultimate Catch 22

Do you remember trying to get your first credit card or loan? Most of the banks would say, “Sorry, but we can’t give you a credit card or loan because you don’t have a credit history.” Or what about the catch 22, “It takes money to make money.” Isn’t that one annoying as well?

StumbleUpon traffic is the same way. Your website won’t go viral unless you get reviews, likes, and other interaction that shows the StumbleUpon algorithm that your content is worthy to receive more and more StumbleUpon traffic.

So, in order to receive traffic from StumbleUpon, all you need is a ton of people to “thumbs up” your website on StumbleUpon. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

How many people have messaged you on Facebook and said, “Please ‘like’ my page,” or how many people on Twitter have begged for you to retweet their Twitter messages that weren’t all that interesting in the first place?

In the same way, people beg their friends and family for interaction with StumbleUpon – which ends up just not being enough to really gain the StumbleUpon visibility and traffic you were hoping for. All seems lost.

Introducing the Ultimate Solution to Get More StumbleUpon Traffic

There’s hope! There really is a way to get your StumbleUpon content in front of a large number of users quickly, reliably, and most importantly – affordably. Introducing Paid Discovery.

Wait, don’t leave yet – hear us out! StumbleUpon Paid Discovery is the greatest internet marketing technique since… well… the internet began. Here’s why:

• StumbleUpon Paid Discovery allows you to put your web content in front of a huge amount of users quickly and cheaply
• StumbleUpon Paid Discovery allows you to discover how to create and test content for the best chances of receiving the most traffic from StumbleUpon
• StumbleUpon paid Discovery allows great content to be Stumbled for free (if it’s really great content!)

(Great Content + StumbleUpon Traffic via Paid Discovery) = Snowball Effect

Just like a snowball rolling down hill, StumbleUpon traffic can quickly and easily discover your great content for super cheap rates – and if your content is really great, you’ll be able to cause a snowball effect.  If your content is well received, it will quickly be added into the organic StumbleUpon traffic queue.

Starting at just $0.05 a stumble, testing the virality and user engagement of your traffic should be a no-brainer. If you’re not testing your content with StumbleUpon paid advertising yet, you should be.

But Wait, There’s More! The True Benefits of StumbleUpon Traffic Via Paid Discovery

As if it’s not enough that you can get 1000 super targeted users to your website for just a measly $50 bucks, there are a ton of side benefits from the StumbleUpon traffic you receive via Paid Discovery.

1. StumbleUpon Paid Discovery can be the most effective link building tool in your arsenal.

This is absolutely revolutionary – you no longer need to beg, and plead for incoming links from other websites. If you have great content and get StumbleUpon traffic via Paid Discovery, the potential for incoming links is huge.

• Great content will be shared on Facebook
• Great content will be linked to on blogs
• Great content will be re-Tweeted on Twitter

All of these types of user engagements are the types of indicators that give the search engines an idea of high quality content. Don’t beg your friends and family on Facebook to “like” your page – make your content so great that StumbleUpon traffic can’t help but share your content. It’s the ultimate form of link bait!

2. StumbleUpon Paid Discovery brings you incremental traffic. You get more than you pay for.

This is a quick screenshot of a test website we used for our StumbleUpon traffic test. The dip at the end was due to billing issues (we thought our card would be charged automatically when our StumbleUpon funds got low, but we were wrong), but here’s the important thing to keep in mind: We drove this traffic with only $5 a day.

After just 7 days of testing StumbleUpon traffic via Paid Discovery, StumbleUpon realized that users were interacting with our test website and that we had great content – so it began to give us more and more visibility. It’s important to note that we did not increase our daily spend, and we did not drive traffic via any other method during this time, but our traffic had an incremental lift due to the “viral-ness” of our content.

3. StumbleUpon Paid Discovery will boost your SEO visibility like there’s no tomorrow.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re making a bold statement here: the more StumbleUpon traffic and interaction that you receive, the more visibility your website will have in the search engines. Paid Discovery is the greatest thing for SEO since canonical URLs.

Why did we receive a boost in the search engines because of our StumbleUpon traffic?

• Users shared our great content on Facebook
• Users retweeted our great content on Twitter
• Users linked to our great content on their blogs

Conclusion: StumbleUpon Traffic via Paid Discovery Could Change Your Life

OK, so maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but the point remains the same: for literally pennies, you could do more for you website’s SEO, link building, and visibility in just 10 days than you could in 6 months of free marketing methods. Now that’s a revolutionary statement.

But the battle hasn’t been won yet – don’t underestimate the need for super great content. Before we sign off, here are a few tips for creating great content that will perform well with Paid Discovery:

• Content that is above the fold
• Content that makes the user smile, strikes emotion, or insights another emotional response
• Content that the user has not seen before
• Content that contains quick images, headlines, or other attention grabbers

The beauty of StumbleUpon paid traffic is that if your content does not start getting shared or the user engagement you’re looking for, you can easily test your content and optimize it for change. Move your content around, change headlines, or re-write your article to find the best ways to make your content sharable.  Now get out there and start driving real traffic with StumbleUpon!