This strategy works only on sites that have good content, something that people will love (usually people love free stuff). It will also work on specific pages of your blog or site, that specific page, of course, should be something spectacular. Maybe you have a highly popular blog post, if that is the case, you can promote that page. I hope, I have stressed enough that good content is the key here. If your site has bad content, then you can forget this strategy. You will just waste your money. (Because every one will “thumbs down” your site).
Multiplier Effect on StumbleUpon
Why this is an effective way of advertising? Because StumbleUpon has the multiplier effect that other advertising media do not. 
It works this way, when your site is shown to the StumbleUpon user, he or she can give “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down”. When your site gets “Thumbs Up”, it will be automatically recommended to other users. So the more “Thumbs Up” it gets, the more popular it will get. And a lot more people will see your site (for free).
The Cost and Return On Investment
The cost of displaying your site to one StumbleUpon user is 0.05 cents, so if the user likes it, he or she will give you “Thumbs Up”. That means you don’t have to pay for the second display. Because the second time, it’s being shown, because StumbleUpon user has recommended it. So, do you get the idea? The more people “Thumbs Up” your site, the more free advertising you will get. That means, if your site is really interesting, you might only have to advertise, for the first few days only. And the rest of the advertising will be done by StumbleUpon users. (Please note that, one “Thumbs Up” is not equal to one “free display”. This (1:1 ratio) was used for example purposes only. I am not sure of the exact ratio for it.)
Campaign Creation
You can create the campaign in almost any category. Payment is done through PayPal or Credit Card. All campaigns should be approved by the StumbleUpon staff first, before they go live.
You can set daily budget to your campaigns, you can also pause/resume your campaign anytime you want. As I said, this works best for interesting, useful, cool, great…etc sites. Bad sites will just get “Thumbs Down”ed and eventually disapproved by the StumbleUpon staff.
Demo: How StumbeUpon works – screencast here.
Advertiser Section: http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads/
Not bad, ive never really thought of stumble upon as a effective marketing/advertising tool. Thanks for the heads up :)
I’ve tried to advertise with stumbleupon once, with little success. I just advertised the frontpage of my blog, wich of course, wasn’t a good idea since ity changes several times every day. Maybe I’ll look into it again.
Yeah, agree with ades, I have tried this kind of strategy for 1 whole week and the response is good. From an average of 50 – 100 visitor both unique and return, this last two days till now the average customers now reached to 550 and the number is increasing hour by hour.
but ades, i’m using the normal stumble toolbar and didn’t know about the payment, i think it is free. I focused on certain pages which I think the content might be good and useful.
btw, Ades, thanx for teaching me how to blog indirectly, admire your writing..
Happy Blogging..
Regards,
xBrain at http://xbrain.biz
Tks for the tip. Just gave it a shot. Let’s see how it goes :)
well, i gave it a shot and I must say that stumble delivered as promised. I paid for a fixed number of views of a certain article and using my tracking tools, true to their word, i did receive the number of visits as promised. Mind you, I deliberately put up an old article, which would not receive so many stumbles normally. However, no one left any comments on an article that gave me more comments when first launched. So i’m not sure how targeted were the visitors (even though you get to indicate what category of visitors) and whether the clicks were genuinely from readers or something else.
can this work for non blogs e.g. business web sites?
yes it will work for non-blogs too.
Hi LifesPerspective, it’s good to hear that it worked! Thanks for sharing with us your results.
I recently ran a StumbleUpon campaign on one of my sites to see how well the traffic converted. It didn’t do much in the way of actual involvement, but it seemed like it has worked to my benefit for my SU profile. I have more people watching my likes, so I can seed my own stuff at times now.
I don’t understand how the likes/dislikes thing works in the Advertiser panel. When I go to the page I am trying to promote’s actual “Liked” page on SU, I don’t see any of the thumbs up or down from the Advertiser panel. Are these separate stats?
DevDad
This is sound very interesting.
great post, very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
great post. thanks for the tip
I just joined Stumbleupon a week ago. I still don’t know how to use it lol
I noticed that stumbleupon is a social network. I usually produce excellent content so I should be good for stumbleupon.
Thanks for sharing this tip!
Thanks for this info, I will give it a try
Sounds worth doing. Do you get to choose your own tags and keywords for the campaign?
PS3, it’s not keyword based, rather, category based advertising. (internet, technology, programming…etc)
StumbleUpon is definitely worth loads of traffic to your site, the point being that you need compelling content, otherwise the momentum will peter out due to “thumbs downing” of your page by others. The StumbleUpon users are generally more open minded than the users of other sites like digg & co, so you have a reasonable chance of success. Once again though, the term “viral” is synonymous with social media success.
StumbleUpon can and will return decent traffic, provided you’ve got decent content up. If your content is boring your efforts will soon be undone by thumbs downs and your marketing drive will peter out.
StumbleUpon Rocks! Have been tracking traffic sources and must say that SU drives loads. It does come in a bit of a rush, but there is definite merit in SU.
One of my blog get good traffic from stumble upon but none of the traffic stays at my blog and conversion is almost zero from stumble upon traffic. I dont know what’s wrong with stumble users as i get good conversion from digg to but dont get much traffic from digg.
I dont know what’s wrong with stumble users as i get good conversion from digg but dont get from stumble.One of my blog get good traffic from stumble upon but none of the traffic stays at my blog and conversion is almost zero from stumble upon traffic.
I gave Stumbleupon a second chance after stumbling across your post. Traffic is up by about 10%, although conversions are fairly static.
I’ve found that social bookmarking sites can bring a lot of traffic but not always very targeted.
Often people just go to check out a site because other people have – not necessarily because they want to act on something that maybe on that site.
It can be a great way to funnel traffic to a blog or something else though to try and increase readership and then build relationships with new readers that way.
i’ve tried stumbleUpon but not the ad section
Using StumbleUpon is another way of an effective advertising strategy. With its multiplier effect you can get more people to see your site just by getting a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” sign. I would personally try this to bring more traffic to my site. Your investment will only be 0.05 cents per StumbleUpon user. Not bad!
Excellent guide to StumbleUpon advertising? I love how much you can customize the StumbleUpon campaigns.I think StumbleUpon probably sends some of the most targeted visitors of any of the social media sites.
interesting. i didn’t know you could buy these. still, maybe i’ll just keep that in mind for some future campaign.
Ade,
Given your experience on the subject, has the benefit outweighed the cost?
I have seen big jumps from SU in the past that fade with time so sustainabilty seems to be the real downfall to relying on SU for traffic.
Sustaining the traffic from SU is a real challenge. It shouldn’t be used to bring in continuous traffic, rather it should be used to kick-start the traffic to your (newly launched) site, which hopefully will bring a lot of organic traffic later on.
The idea is, once you advertise on SU, hopefully those people will stumble your site and help you spread the word faster.
not really familiar with stumbleupon. I still prefer and use digg only.
i already signup at ilike and stumbleupon yesterday. Hope i can use it to earn some traffic. Hope it works.
Wow, I did not know this even existed. That is really cool. I’m going to try it out, thanks!
This is awesome, I am going to give it a shot right now and see if any of the traffic converts.
I’ve never been very good at using the web 2.0 sites effectively. Thanks for the creative idea. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it work.
It’s really good idea thanks
My advert was refused by Stumbleupon!
Is stumble upon still a good resource to advertise on in today’s market?
How relevant is this post at present, Ades? It would be great to have some fresh insight into SU’s workings. It seems that FB & Twitter has taken a lot of gloss off SU, and I would like to somehow see some user numbers and growth. That would make interesting reading.
Cool. People say that stumble traffic is not that targeted, but if the right people give it a thumbs up, their friends (hopefully also the right people) will see it too.
Thanks for the idea, I’m definitely going to use this.
Fascinating. I didn’t realize StumbleUpon had campaigns.
is advertising on Stumble worth of money ? cause most of stumblers dont stay on your page more than 10 sec. this happened to me once. and in another interesting article ( how to watch HQ videos on youtube that i wrote first day youtube launch HQ option ) i got 14K traffic :)
i am newbie in blogging, and i will implement this stumbleupon tactics once i have my own capital
You have to use StumleUpon to increase your visitors. It is very useful. You can advertise on it with paypal.
great info
This is sound very interesting.
the important thing that following the campaignes
Some days ago i start using stumble and it works very well. Nice site how to get more traffic :)
Really interesting trick and worth to try :)
It’s really good idea thanks
Yes, I agree. The social media platforms are one of the best ways to promote your site. Great stuff. Many thanks for sharing this informative resource.
Sounds good it increases visitor..!!
I i also prefer to user other such as digg,propeller
StumbleUpon is really the best social media of that kind, the others like digg, reddit etc are rarelly send any traffic, on the other hand stumbleupon always send a few visitors…