Effective advertising strategy using StumbleUpon

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Posted in » Online Advertising, SEO & Promotion, Social Bookmarking - by Ades on July 2nd, 2007

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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/

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44 Responses to “Effective advertising strategy using StumbleUpon”

  1. By Abdalla on Jul 2, 2007

    Not bad, ive never really thought of stumble upon as a effective marketing/advertising tool. Thanks for the heads up :)

  2. By The Personal Development Blog on Jul 2, 2007

    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.

  3. By xBrain on Jul 2, 2007

    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

  4. By LifesPerspective on Jul 2, 2007

    Tks for the tip. Just gave it a shot. Let’s see how it goes :)

  5. By LifesPerspective on Jul 4, 2007

    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.

  6. By lawyer on Jul 7, 2007

    can this work for non blogs e.g. business web sites?

  7. By Ades on Jul 26, 2007

    yes it will work for non-blogs too.

  8. By Ades on Jul 26, 2007

    Hi LifesPerspective, it’s good to hear that it worked! Thanks for sharing with us your results.

  9. By Stay At Home Dad, Geek Style on Aug 4, 2007

    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

  10. By GettyCash on Sep 22, 2007

    This is sound very interesting.

  11. By Business Credit Card Site on Oct 24, 2007

    great post, very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

  12. By chloe on Nov 29, 2007

    great post. thanks for the tip

  13. By NIMONY on Dec 27, 2007

    I just joined Stumbleupon a week ago. I still don’t know how to use it lol

  14. By Car Purchase on Feb 15, 2008

    I noticed that stumbleupon is a social network. I usually produce excellent content so I should be good for stumbleupon.

  15. By Bad Credit Loans on Feb 16, 2008

    Thanks for sharing this tip!

  16. By Webmaster on Feb 29, 2008

    Thanks for this info, I will give it a try

  17. By PS3 on Mar 14, 2008

    Sounds worth doing. Do you get to choose your own tags and keywords for the campaign?

  18. By Ades on Mar 15, 2008

    PS3, it’s not keyword based, rather, category based advertising. (internet, technology, programming…etc)

  19. By Net Age Web Design on Mar 31, 2008

    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.

  20. By Net Agent on Mar 31, 2008

    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.

  21. By SEOrious Results on Apr 9, 2008

    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.

  22. By water 4 gas review on May 1, 2008

    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.

  23. By water 4 gas on May 1, 2008

    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.

  24. By PS3 on May 20, 2008

    I gave Stumbleupon a second chance after stumbling across your post. Traffic is up by about 10%, although conversions are fairly static.

  25. By Secret Affiliate Code on Jun 10, 2008

    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.

  26. By Mike on Jun 16, 2008

    i’ve tried stumbleUpon but not the ad section

  27. By Platform Beds on Jun 24, 2008

    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!

  28. By Internet TV on Jul 1, 2008

    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.

  29. By kouji on Sep 24, 2008

    interesting. i didn’t know you could buy these. still, maybe i’ll just keep that in mind for some future campaign.

  30. By Man Overboard on Oct 8, 2008

    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.

  31. By Ades on Oct 9, 2008

    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.

  32. By reddebt on Oct 28, 2008

    not really familiar with stumbleupon. I still prefer and use digg only.

  33. By reddebt on Nov 11, 2008

    i already signup at ilike and stumbleupon yesterday. Hope i can use it to earn some traffic. Hope it works.

  34. By CSS Gallery on Feb 22, 2009

    Wow, I did not know this even existed. That is really cool. I’m going to try it out, thanks!

  35. By Diet Blog on Feb 24, 2009

    This is awesome, I am going to give it a shot right now and see if any of the traffic converts.

  36. By Best Teeth Whitening on Mar 6, 2009

    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.

  37. By Redesigning Web on Jun 11, 2009

    It’s really good idea thanks

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