4 Comments

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  “It’s very hit-and-miss, but is still a good contributor to this site.”

  You’re not kidding about it being hit or miss. I’ve been using SU for a few years and still can’t see any rhyme or reason as to success or failure of content posted there.

  In the past I’ve posted half dozen articles in a row that got no visits, then posted one that got 30,000 then back to no visits for the next few.

  I’ve had a few patches where I thought I was on an upward trend which didn’t last either. I’d consistently have submissions get a few hundred views, then the next few get a few thousand, then the next get into the 10′s of thousands. Then suddenly back to no views.

  Content shared at all times of the day and all days of the week with results all over the place too.

  I can understand it delivering content a few hundred times and if it receives no thumbs up it stops delivering it, but I’ve no idea why some times it doesn’t share content at all.

  Of my last 50 or so submissions, I have a even(ish) distribution of posts that got 0 views, 500-1000, 10k – 30k, and a few around the 100k mark and up to 350k.

  Like it said before, no rhyme or reason that I can discern why one posts gets 0 views and another gets hundreds of thousands.

  10 Nov 2011 12:11 am Andrew Keir

  
  

  (Twitter: @andrewkeir)

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  I used to team up with people who’d vote for each other’s pages on SU and then if you’d got a few votes the page would take off. However, recently, I’ve been getting very little from SU.

  Also, the traffic, when it does come, is very unsticky. It doesn’t tend to look at other pages or comment or anything.

  10 Nov 2011 11:11 am Rob Cubbon

  
  

  (Twitter: @RobCubbon)

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  I go in phases with StumbledUpon. I had been “discovering” all my blog posts on there for a while, but then stopped because I didn’t feel like it was doing anything. A month back when I finally started using SU again, I saw that the posts I had added to SU actually had a good number of hits. I know it might not drive “sticky” viewers/readers, but I do post everything on there now. Doesn’t take much time and if just one person reads my post and is impacted by it, it was worth it.

  10 Nov 2011 01:11 pm Jason Vana

  
  

  (Twitter: @jasonvana)

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  Andrew → I think what makes the difference is not stumbling your own posts. I used to stumble all my posts as soon as I published them. Eventually, the posts won’t “take off” because the links are from the same site.

  My strategy now is to wait until someone else stumbles the post, then share it with Stumble friends who accept shares to their toolbar. Even this doesn’t always work, but you stand a better chance.

  Oh course, even this is hit-and-miss. Even stumbling your own posts can work sometimes. StumbleUpon is just so unpredictable, as to its nature.

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  Rob → One thing I’ve learned is that votes don’t actually mean that much. It’s much better to receive StumbleUpon reviews by other stumblers. This, I believe, is what can make the difference. I’ve seen plenty of posts with 100 “likes” or “votes” with zero reviews go nowhere, but posts with just 3 votes and 3 reviews get multiple 1000′s of hits.

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  Jason → Yeah, I see what you mean. My theory is that sometimes, when StumbleUpon has way too many page submissions for a particular category (such as Graphic Design), it “stacks” pages ready for a future date.

  When I check my Google Analytics stats daily, I’ll often note a surge in traffic for a post I wrote weeks or even months ago.

  I’ve had posts before that got no hits when submitted, but took off weeks later. I think it makes the difference is some random visitor visits your site and then stumbles a post which has already been submitted. If that stumbler has good influence, plenty of stumble-fiends and more importantly, reviews your post, it can really take off big-time.

  As for you comment on “if just one person reads my post and is impacted by it, it was worth it”, I totally agree. I haven’t had much success when submitting posts from my Christian Design Blog though, and I sometimes stumble these myself because otherwise, they wouldn’t get stumbled most of the time. I think in general, StumbleUpon isn’t too good on the “Christian category”. I often have a stumble-session on this category and it “runs out of Stumbles”. Curious as my stuff never gets shown?

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  Thanks all for contributing to this post.

  Oh, for anyone else, you can find me on StumbleUpon here.

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  Oh, one last thing. Whilst just visiting StumbleUpon for my profile link, I just noticed that 2 pages have received 400-ish hits which I submitted last night. BUT, they were from my new niche site Paper Art Love. To conclude, I think StumbleUpon likes it best when new URL’s are submitted to it’s index. Theory? Yes…

  10 Nov 2011 03:11 pm Andrew Kelsall

  
  

  (Twitter: @AndrewKelsall)

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