A beginner's guide to StumbleUpon

I .spend the best part of my life stumbling! I'm quite addicted to it.
If someone had explained it like this from the start I probably would get more out of it. Having said that I don't worry too much about the traffic. Yes, i check my stats regularly, but don't aspire to being high in search engines or any of those things. I'm not too concerned about page rank either.
Having said that, the processes people go through to make it happen because that's what they want fascinate me. I see nothing wrong with it, but it's not the be all and end all you know?
I love the way you explain things! I know I don't comment a lot, but I do read.
Cheers

Hi anonymum, thanks for commenting. :) I don't really stumble on new sites very often but I do submit posts if I like them. Nice to hear from you - don't be a stranger. :D

Excellent instructions for those who don't understand or have a SU account.

Nice article Ben. I gave it a Stumble!

I've been trying to figure out more about StumbleUpon's algorithms. I'd like to know answers to questions like:
- How long is a page shown once its been Stumbled? Its seems I get good traffic for about a day after people Stumble it.
- How many people see a page per Thumbs Up?
- Do people stop seeing a page if there are enough Thumbs down?

Ben, the day you get writer's block the rest of us will have nothing to read. Where all your great ideas come from I do not know, but they seem to just keep coming. I will link to this tutorial once I have figured out the best place to do so.

Wow you've got a lot of direct traffic there, which is far better than a Stumbleupon traffic, in my opinion.

I want to know the algorithm too.. sometimes I got thousands of traffics from 24 stumbles on a post, and sometimes only 300-ish from 20 stumbles on a different post.

Very helpful, Ben! I just signed up for a Stumble account in the past week or so. I've seen people talking about it, but didn't really understand how it all worked. I have a much better idea now. Thanks!

Thanks Ben. Good read. I have been studying Stumbleupon to see if it's worth the bother.

Take care,
Thanks!

How do you personally utilize Stumbleupon, Ben? If you don't stumble your own content how does being a member help you get SU traffic?

(And yes, after reading this, I feel much more comfortable about making an account, thanks!)

blogzilla - thank you!

Jeff - thank you too! As for your questions, I think that for every good vote, a few hundred users get to see the page when they click the "Stumble" button on the toolbar. This is a rough estimate based on my traffic but I have noticed I get more as additional people rate a page. It also depends on the subject matter - for instance, some people may choose not to see certain content. Depending on how a page is tagged when it is first submitted, it will only be seen by certain users. Not sure about bad ratings - I have not seen many pages with a lot of bad ratings, so I'd guess that a few bad ratings may hide the content from further users. I don't know any of this for certain though, it's just what I've noticed based on my own experiences.

Arnold - thank you! Sometimes I do have days where I'm short on content but I always manage to come up with something. This is a particularly good week though. Watch out for my weekly round-up to see why. :)

Michael - thanks! Direct traffic is good, and as you can see I have quite a spread of different traffic sources. This is good because I'm not relying too heavily on one source - OK, I'm relying on two sources! See my reply to Jeff for thoughts about the algorithm. As far as I can tell, it's mostly to do with how a page is tagged. I think you might get more "weight" from users who haven't rated your pages before - otherwise, a site could ask its regulars to rate loads of pages and get loads of easy traffic. It may even help if a lot of people rate your site in a short space of time, but I really don't know if that makes a difference.

Kelly - glad you found it useful. :)

Chilly - ditto what I said to Kelly! Glad people are finding these guides helpful.

Erin - thanks! I like to keep an eye on what people are saying about my site, and it's easier to do that with the toolbar than by entering a URL manually. I've also found that by rating other people's sites (which I have only started to do recently) it shows the site owners that I am a StumbleUpon user, and sometimes we add each other as friends. By doing this people can keep track of content that their friends are stumbling, and this can create a snowball effect when one person rates a site. Sometimes people will look at my site by finding my profile on StumbleUpon - I don't think a lot of people do this, but it's another potential way to get new readers.

Thanks for all the comments, it's great to read all of your feedback. :)

Yah Ben!!!! Thanks so much. I WILL be linking to this. I don't get very many stumbles and those I do seem to vary a bit in how much traffic they bring me.

My SU traffic is good too but I don't really see it converting into new users very much, lots of hits but I'm not sure what value that is to the site tbh...

Lightening - that's great, I'm glad the guide helped you. Looking forward to the link. :) Let me know how you get on.

Ollie - the trick is finding how to convert those visitors into loyal readers. Some people are always going to move on.

Thanks for the comments. :)

I've had some great surges in traffic from StumbleUpon, one particular post earned me an additional 2000 hits in one day... And I'll bet this post will for you ;)

I've thumbs-up'ed it!

Amy - thank you! Who knows eh, it seems to be doing OK so far... :)

Ben, I have a question. I swear I have never asked for a stumble because I only stumble things that I find very good or interesting. I did something yesterday and I don't feel too good about it either. I was asked to stumble for a stumble. First time I have done so. I look today and I got not one stumble from the sites I stumbled. Point being some of the sites I stumbled sucked! BAD. I want to delete these. Is this ok do you think? I will not do this again. Truth of the matter is now I feel dirty. Like an old prostitute.I know your probably laughing but I do not feel good about this. What do you think?

Hi ettarose, just go to the sites you stumbled and the "I like it!" button on the StumbleUpon toolbar will be green. Click that button and it should unrate the site. If you're not sure which sites you rated, click on the Favorites button and you'll see all your stumbles. Hope this helps! :)

hi Ben,
thanks for the post -- helpful information.
I'm wondering -- do you know how I would go about deleting reviews that I've made? And what if these reviews are for sites that I "discovered" or whatever? Problem is, I reviewed a video, but the site that shows up is the main website, not the particular video, and when I attempt to delete the review, it won't really let me...

Anyhow, thanks again!

Hi toshe, welcome. Click on the "reviews of this page" button and you should be able to edit your comments for that page. You can blank it out - I'm not sure if other people will see it or not when you do that.