Is StumbleUpon Just A Bunch Of Hollow Traffic?
Posted on November 3, 2008 by Eric Hamm |
There are many different ways to have your posts ’shared’ with the world. From Digg to Reddit to StumbleUpon, the options are numerous, yet completely different in their ‘angles’. They all include a ‘voting’ mechanism, but their results are as diverse as could possibly be.
StumbleUpon certainly produces results.
Anyone who has had their posts ‘pushed’ by multiple StumbleUpon users, has most likely seen a significant spike in their traffic. Often times in the hundreds, but sometimes hitting many thousands of unique hits, StumbleUpon is one of the best ways to increase your stats, at least for the day.
Hollow traffic?
But we all know that not all traffic is the same. StumbleUpon hits are usually hollow at best. Most of them are quick to bounce and rarely click on anything at all. It’s as if they’re in a museum, “Look, but don’t touch”. And rarely will you get any increase in subscriber numbers with a mass influx of this ADD audience.
So what is it good for, anyway?
So if this is true, why would you even bother hoping someone would stumble your work? Well, first of all, I am not saying that ALL the traffic is ‘hollow’, just that most of it is. And the StumbleUpon site itself, provides great ways to connect with bloggers as you help each other out. But the main reason I continue to use it is the traffic for traffic sake.
As you’re growing a new blog, pushing higher and higher numbers of traffic is key to bringing down stat numbers like your alexa rating. The lower that number is, the better your site looks to stat junkies, which many of us bloggers are. Here’s an example of this in action:
Recently I have been focusing on ‘pushing’ this blog as apposed to my ‘more mature’ motivational blog because I wanted to give my stats a boost. But since then, my other blog has seen a rise (bad for alexa) in numbers even though it’s ‘natural’ traffic has increased. Within a few weeks I realized that the extra StumbleUpon traffic was giving “Motivate Thyself” a nice boost.
What has been YOUR experience?
Let me first say that this is all information from my OWN experience. I am certainly not touting it as a ‘finite fact’. You guys may be seeing completely different results. So I’d love to hear what your findings have been and how YOU harness this unique way of sharing your content with the world.
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Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy
November 3rd, 2008 1:42 pmI find with a ultra-niche blog such as Y.F.N.C.G., I have much better results getting interested subscribers from commenting or engaging other tech forums, or from google searches. However, I think hollow stumble upon traffic is still great for bumping up your page views if you use any kind of pay-per-thousand-impressions ads on your website.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy´s last blog post..Flex Your Computer Troubleshooting Muscles With These Websites
Sid Savara
November 3rd, 2008 4:50 pmI convert a very small percentage of stumble visitors - based on my stats, I would put it at about 1-2%
That said, 1-2% of a few thousand is still 10-30 subscribers each time, and it certainly adds up for a new blog. Longer term, once a blog has sufficient size and momentum I think it becomes even less relevant
I subscribe to so many feeds that I find about 20-30% of my stumbles are sites I already know an subscribe too - perhaps that’s also what you’re seeing. If the same people keep stumbling your stuff, in the short term the other users who see it are gong to be the same few thousand.
Eric Hamm
November 3rd, 2008 8:17 pm@Matt: You’re definitely right about the fact that quality interaction with other bloggers/Internet surfers, is the way to go for getting new subscribers.
@Sid: Good point about the conversion rate/high numbers of hits. I think either way, it’s a win/win situation. Eric.
Lou
November 3rd, 2008 9:54 pmI have better luck With StumbleUpon with highly targeted keywords. While I do’t get thousands of hits, those I do get are pretty sticky and get a higher nuber of subscribers
Lou´s last blog post..VOTE!
Eric Hamm
November 4th, 2008 2:35 pm@Lou: I havn’t really tried using keywords with stumbled posts, but that makes sense. Thanks for sharing that with us. Eric.
Hugo
November 4th, 2008 5:33 pmI don’t really see subscribers coming from Stumbleupon traffic. How can you use highly targeted keywords with Sumbleupon like Lou writes?
I guess it’s fine even when one out of a hundred Stumblers finds my post interesting and sticks around!
Hugo´s last blog post..Software Review: VoodooPad
Lou
November 4th, 2008 7:48 pmHugo:
Take this with a grain of salt, as I’m Still Learning.
Say I Post Something I think Is Worth “Stumbling”, a nice post on a hunting adventure or something like that.
If I use a keyword like “Hunting”, I’ll get tons of crappy visits that don’t convert. Say, 400 the first day, then falling to almost nothing in the next couple.
If, However, I use “Ohio Squirrel Hunting”, I’ll get a LOT less hits, but those visitors are more interested- I’ll get maybe 100-150 visits the first day and 20 the next (Unless someone gives me a thumbs up)- But I’ll see a spike in Page per visit and time on site.
Another Blog I just started, I Stumbled a post just to gauge interest. I’ve had over 7,000 hits in the last two weeks and have been scrambling to get other content up because I wasn’t ready-( D’oh- Newbie mistake Number 534). It’s finally down to about 200 hits a day, but I’ve got almost no Subscribers and My Pages per Visit is 1.1. So Obviously it’ll be popular, But those Keywords didn’t attract the visitors I wanted ( Or the Dearth of good content killed me- I’ll Blame Them for now).
Lou´s last blog post..VOTE!
Jeremy Day
November 4th, 2008 8:59 pmHi Eric,
Id say the short answer is unless. The long answer is it depends. Like Lou said it has a lot to do with keywords and the tags you use. I just had a big stumble post that brought in over 350 uniques. Not bad for a single day. Or a single hour for that matter. Im no expert but I do want to learn a little more about stumbling.
Cheers,
Jeremy
p.s. being the editor I am I wanted to point out that you spelled the bolded word museum wrong…
Jeremy Day´s last blog post..11 Little Steps to Better Health
Stephen
November 9th, 2008 2:00 amIn the first full month of my blog being online (September) it had well over 17,000 unique visitors. By far the most significant amount of that came from StumbleUpon.
Now as the SU traffic I’m currently getting has dropping way off but my traffic levels have only dipped a little below what they were. So I think SU is a great way to launch something and to connect with fellow bloggers and like-minded people.
I should say that I think there are ways to catch and retain more visitors that initially find a website through SU. I like to send a thank you message to everyone who gives a post on my blog a thumbs up and tell them to feel free to add me as a friend on SU.
Just some thoughts.
Stephen
Stephen´s last blog post..Boost Your Metabolism with Interval Training
Tumblemoose
November 9th, 2008 10:57 pmI love stumble traffic.
Sure, it may seem hollow at first, but what if something they see jogs them to come back at a future point. A full 85%+ is from stumble. I’ve also found that as my stumble increases, my direct increases. Just what the correlation is, it’s hard to say.
I submit everything I post. I send to a group of stumble friends and ask them to have a look. It has worked very well.
Any-hoo. That’s my 2 cents.
Cheers
George
Eric Hamm
November 10th, 2008 5:56 pm@Lou: Thanks for helping hugo out and sharing your insight with all of us.
@Jeremy: Thanks mr. editor.
I just changed it.
@Stephen: It sounds like you’ve got a great way to help your traffic be a little ’stickier’. Great tips!
@Tumblemoose: Thanks for sharing. It always helps to hear other bloggers experience. Eric.
Jim Gaudet
November 26th, 2008 3:54 pmI have to agree with you. You need to numbers for your Alexa rating, but it is hard to get anyone to stay on the page..
Jim Gaudet´s last blog post..What is uSocial.net? Spammers?