Harness the Raw Power of StumbleUpon - Three Simple Tips

If you have a keen eye you might have noticed that the post on Monday has a few more page views than most of the posts on this site, something like 8,000 more. I promise I'm not fiddling with the database to push up my numbers, rather, this is the result of 1 stumble by me on Monday at 8:40 am.

I've kind of been obsessed with StumbleUpon (SU), since having some success with it a few months ago. So much success in fact that I got banned from posting things from my own blog. I gave up with SU for a while and went on a search to find how I could get unbanned. No one at Digital Point really seemed to know, but I finally found a post on StumbleGods that answered my question.

If you get locked out from submitting to a particular site, don’t worry- it’s not permanent. Through trial and error I’ve discovered that 30-40 new stumbles will “clear your dock” and allow you to discover pages from your targeted site again.

Luckily all this time I'd been stumbling sites like mad (I'm addicted), and upped that effort to get over 2,000 likes. That is all I really did, was just thumb up a ton of pages. Then, when I reviewed my own site, I reaped the reward: 2000+ unique visitors in one day (this site gets about 40 normally), 8,000+ pageviews, 7 saves to delicious, 2 diggs. For some blogs, this would just be another day, but I was pretty excited!

Give me the tips already...

1. Stumble, Stumble, Stumble. Thumb up as many pages as you like. I'm not sure if thumbing up every single page will get you banned, so I don't do that, but it's about 50% I think. Take time to spend hours doing this. It's actually pretty interesting to see all of the sites that are out there.

2. Be First! It's so annoying to say 'First' in a blog comment, but you want to be the first to discover popular pages. Hook yourself up with an RSS reader that will updated you the minute a post is made and jump on the Thumb Up on that page. Lot's of people are doing this so it's kind of a fun game. You want to be first because you get rewarded for discovering a site that other people will thumb up (read some stumble math here).

3. Select a lot of topics/interests. Once you get into the thousands of stumbles, SU is going to ask you to add more, or confirm your interests. I don't know if the simply run out of pages to show, or what, but having a lot of categories right off the bat helps to stumble longer. Add as many social interests as possible for your taste. I think these help to draw fans and they make stumbling more fun!

I have more tips but these are the big three - the first being the most important. In case you are wondering, here is my SU Profile. If you add me as a friend I will totally add you as one of mine :) Happy stumbling...