3 StumbleUpon Mistakes To Avoid

February 16, 2008

Do you use social networking in your business? Recently I began using StumbleUpon – a great social networking site, which allows users to network and share great content they’ve discovered. And I’ve benefited from a huge increase in website traffic from StumbleUpon. But, I’ve also made some newbie mistakes, and here’s three you should try to avoid:

Stumbling Too Much: StumbleUpon is addictive and in my first few days, I stumbled way too many posts. The trouble is, when you stumble too fast, you bury all the posts you’ve just stumbled. And the post authors miss out on the benefits of being stumbled, as nobody gets to see their posts.

Accidentally Deleting Votes: You can vote the profiles of other stumblers. But, it’s hard to keep track of which friends you’ve voted as the pics keep moving. And if you click to vote someone you’ve already voted, it removes your original vote. So, if I voted you, and the vote has gone, I’m sorry.

Stumbling The Same Site Frequently Can Get You Banned: One of my readers also joined StumbleUpon. The trouble was, he tried to cheat and paid someone to stumble his blog pages. He also decided to stumble a heap of my pages in a row. And this was bad news for me, as someone marked one of the pages he’d voted as spam.

Now, StumbleUpon can actually ban the voter and the recipient if you vote the pages of a website too many times. So, I was pissed off, as I don’t want to be banned because someone else has decided to abuse the system. And I’ve emailed StumbleUpon to explain those stumbles had nothing to do with me, so I’ll just have to hope I don’t get banned.

Check Out These Great Stumble Upon Resources To Avoid Making Your Own StumbleUpon Mistakes

Skellie Explains how StumbleUpon Works in This Great Article.
Maki at Dosh Dosh Explains Five Ways To Grow Your StumbleUpon network.
Caroline Middlebrook Shows How the StumbleUpon Voting System Works.
Copyblogger Explains How to Write High Impact Content For StumbleUpon.
RobDogg Shows What Happens When Penguins Spam StumbleUpon
Terence Chang has some great info on StumbleUpon and how to avoid getting banned.

Do you use StumbleUpon? What StumbleUpon Mistakes have you made? And have you got any great StumbleUpon tips or advice to share?

Posted by cathlawson | Filed Under Mistakes

Comments

29 Responses to “3 StumbleUpon Mistakes To Avoid”

Ian Denny on February 16th, 2008 7:10 pm

I’ve made that mistake. Not knowingly!

I was getting into StumbleUpon and before I really realised what the favourites were decided to start using it as a bookmarking system for pages I liked.

So maybe it was me that was at fault. I don’t remember marking any pages as spam though – if it was me, it was a mistake and I apologise.

Tail between my legs, I’ll go and check out those pages and learn a bit more.

Ian Denny’s last blog post..EMail Marketing Is NOT Spamming
Mrs. Micah on February 16th, 2008 7:39 pm

SU is a tricky animal. I try not to stumble my own pieces more than once or twice a week. And to stumble lots of other posts in the middle.

Somedays I’m more into thumbing than others.
cathlawson on February 16th, 2008 7:57 pm

Ian – you probably didn’t mark the page as spam, it could have been another user, or it may even be automated.

I told StumbleUpon that you were using your account as a bookmarking system, so hopefully they will be fine about it and not ban us.

Mrs M – it’s tough to get used to isn’t it? I still can’t work out how you just thumb pages instead of writing a review.
Walt Goshert on February 16th, 2008 10:29 pm

Thanks Catherine,

Yep, I’m making some newbie Stumble mistakes.

So, I’m giving you a Digg on this post and a linkback directly from a blog post.

Nothing good and worthwhile is ever cheap and easy…

Walt

107 Free Or Low Cost Small Business Marketing Ideas
cathlawson on February 16th, 2008 11:02 pm

Hi Walt – Thanks for the link and the digg.
Terence Chang - The Internet Entrepreneur Diary on February 17th, 2008 5:15 am

Those are great articles about using StumbleUpOn.

I also have few posts about StumbleUpOn, which cause some buzz a while back.

How you enjoy.

http://www.terencechang.com/category/blog/stumbleupon/

Remember to visit my StumbleUpOn profile too.
http://terencechang.stumbleupon.com

Terence Chang – The Internet Entrepreneur Diary’s last blog post..Does your success bring you any happiness?
cathlawson on February 17th, 2008 5:59 am

Hi Terence – I wish I’d known you had that on your site earlier – I would have linked it in the post.

And that is weird – I was just wondering if you’d joined StumbleUpon yet and your comment came in – thanks for the link.
Barbara on February 17th, 2008 8:50 am

Hi Catherine,

As you know, I Stumble, but find it takes a lot of time and becomes addictive. If I give someone a thumbs up, I make sure it’s a great post, and one others will benefit from.

Stumble traffic can create huge spikes in your traffic, but I don’t know how much of it sticks around. It helps to increase your averages, and is a great for motivation, however, when your traffic goes back to normal, you realize content is still “queen”.

As with any social bookmarking site, it’s important to know the rules before letting things get out of hand.

I would be curious to know, if someone has a site heavily monetized, if Stumble visitors are ad clickers.

Barbara’s last blog post..RSS Feed Reader Numbers – A Farce
sterling | bizlift on February 17th, 2008 9:52 am

Hi Catherine. I wish I this article was available several weeks ago. I made several of those rookie mistakes.

Fortunately others stumbled my articles before I did, generating nice bursts of traffic.

One tip that was big for me was realizing that stumbles on particular pages and articles are usually more effective than stumbling the homepage of a site.

Thanks for the info!

sterling | bizlift’s last blog post..Go Big: Free Enterprise Tools For Small Biz
cathlawson on February 17th, 2008 12:30 pm

Hi Barbara – I totally agree. Thre is no point voting something unless it is good. I have stuff on this blog that I’d hate to have voted.

As far as traffic goes – I had one huge spike, then it dropped and began to level off, and I’m still getting double what I was getting before on most days.

Whether it is sustainable remains to be seen. But as you say – keeping on writing good content is vital. I haven’t done anything much to market this blog up until now, because I wanted to have plenty of decent posts here first.

Your monetisation point is interesting. I read somewhere that if you pay someone to stumble you and you have adsense on your account google can ban you from adsense. Also – they can even ban you if you have a sudden surge of traffic.

Hi Sterling – You are welcome. I think StumbleUpon make that issue confusing by calling the page you’re voting on a website don’t they.

cathlawson’s last blog post..3 StumbleUpon Mistakes To Avoid
Dwayne on February 17th, 2008 5:46 pm

Catherine,

I can totally agree that Stumbling can be pretty nice but very self poisoning if used wrong! To comment about what you said when it came to thee guy paying someone to Stumble his page…..that can be very well connected to the same methods that Google uses for it’s Adsense campaigns. Anything that’s abused will definitely be a loss for any blogger.
Ethan Womack on February 17th, 2008 5:59 pm

Catherine. What would you do if you could claim SlamBlogger as your own? Would that be something that you would want to do? I’m not looking for anything other than a good owner. As I want to get rid of it….
Daily Common Sense on February 17th, 2008 7:39 pm

Thanks for the tips, Stumble upon it quite hard to control!

Daily Common Sense’s last blog post..Can you make money with online survey jobs?
Nicole on February 18th, 2008 3:09 am

I guess, I’m doing it right then
cathlawson on February 18th, 2008 4:41 am

Hi Dwayne – you know – I’ve read about so many people being banned from Adsense because of huge surges in traffic. People really need to safeguard themselves by using other forms of monetization.

Hi Ethan – so you’ve definitely decided that SlamBlogger is not for your then? I did wonder if it was what you wanted to be doing.

Thanks for the offer, but I wouldn’t have time to do anything with it – I barely have enough time as it is. Did you try advertising it anywhere? Can’t you run it a bit longer to make it more saleable?

Hi Daily Common Sense – you’re welcome.

Hi Nicole – That is good. Unlike me, I bet you read the rules first.

cathlawson’s last blog post..21 Amazing Business Writing Resources
Coryan | UTurnAhead on February 18th, 2008 6:15 pm

Regarding Barbara’s question about Stumblers being ad clickers…my experience is no. I’ve closely tracked my earnings and made comparisons with times that I’ve had huge Stumble spikes. Even with 2-3 times the traffic due to lots of Stumbles, I’ve seen no increase in revenue. So I don’t believe Stumblers are the folks that will be clicking your banners or ads.

Coryan | UTurnAhead’s last blog post..How to Deal with Annoying Coworker Behaviors
Ethan Womack on February 18th, 2008 7:37 pm

@Catherine, get threaded comments first of all…..

And I’m not looking to sell it. I’ve found God, and instead of just saying that “I’m saved” this time, I mean it. It’s not the first time that I’ve had this “change”, but it is the first time that I’ve ever really knew where I was going after my life here on Earth. As for Slam Blogger, it’s something I’ve created, much like my poetry and lyrics (Which someone wants to buy for a substantial amount of money), that I cannot bring myself to sell. I fear that if I were to get money by selling a past sin of mine that it would, in itself, be a sin against God. I’m tired of living in Sin. On second thought, Just as with the poems, I’ve changed my mind. I’m not giving the site away either. I’m going to delete it all together. The domain will remain, and I guess I could sell that or whatever, but not the site. Sorry I bothered you about it…. Last night I came to this realization that selling my past sins, or giving them away, is no better than keeping them for myself, and in fact, it’s worse, because I would be passing it along to another one of God’s children, thus placing my sins in their hands, acting on what Satan would have me to do. I wish you luck Catherine, in all of your blogging ventures, but the line ends here for me, at least until God tells me, “Hey, start a blog!” It’s been fun. Take care.

Oh, Catherine, do you know the Lord?
midomssh on February 18th, 2008 8:49 pm

great post thanks for sharing but i want ask
how do you know if your site got banned?
is it by having low traffic or what exactlly?

midomssh’s last blog post..Tools for a Successful Adword Campaign
cathlawson on February 18th, 2008 11:20 pm

Hi Coryan – that is reassuring for those who have Adsense. I know people want to make extra from it, but not at the risk of getting banned.

Hi Midomssh – I guess you would know if your site got banned just by checking in your stats. In the section where it says where your traffic says StumbleUpon – you would check to if you were still getting traffic from there. Also, I’m guessing you probably wouldn’t be able to login to your account.

Hi Ethan – at least you have decided what you want to do, and that is what is important.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with Slam Blogger, but if it doesn’t feel right for you and it isn’t taking you where you feel you should be going, you should ditch it. Your poetry site is excellent though – I couldn’t really understand you getting rid of that.

To answer your question – I do like to believe there is a God, or at least something after we die. Then other times, I think maybe there isn’t, and how can we as a race believe that we’re that important.

But, I do believe sometimes that something happened to me to stop me getting into a heap of trouble.

Something bad happened. And, at the time, I was going a little of the rails and I think what happened was like a warning to stop me going down the wrong path.

Take care Ethan and I hope you still drop by sometimes.
My Daily Thoughts on February 19th, 2008 5:04 pm

hmm good information.. I am actually new to stumbleUpon and dont really know how it will benefit my blogs.. .thanks for the infro..
I will try to familiarized myself into this..

My Daily Thoughts’s last blog post..How To Focus On More Important Things
Huge Mistakes on February 19th, 2008 6:30 pm

Hi guys,

I just recently started a blog and in order to get traffic I thought it would be wise to stumble kickstart my own pages. But after reading alot about SU it seems that it not a wise thing to do. Thanks for the all the tips.

Huge Mistakes’s last blog post..Smoker assaulted with fire extinguisher
cathlawson on February 19th, 2008 8:57 pm

Hi – you are both welcome. Here’s another tip and I hope you’re not offended. It’s best on blogs to use your real name. It’s hard to communicate with people in the comments section when you don’t.
unTECHy on February 25th, 2008 10:50 pm

Great Post.

I’m working on a future post for my website about SU. I’m sure there will be a linkback to this post if you dont mind. There is some great info here and alot of great links from you and commentors.

Thanks alot.

Stumbled!

unTECHy’s last blog post..How I’ve reduced my spam
Daniel on February 26th, 2008 3:49 am

I love stumbleupon, adn hate it at the same time. I’m not going to repeat why here; I wrote a blog post a while ago about it.

For my view:

http://daniel1992.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/downsides-to-stumbleupon-digg-etc/

Nice tips for getting stumbles without spamming though.

Daniel

Daniel’s last blog post..Update to compatibilizer
cathlawson on February 26th, 2008 3:56 am

Hi Daniel. It was interesting to read your views on StumbleUpon.

I feel honoured that you hung round here long enough to comment since you mentioned that you only stay on a page for an average of 2 seconds. Thanks for stumbling by.
Gerri on March 4th, 2008 10:05 pm

Very good post on SU. I signed up a while ago but have not been very active on it. I am looking around to see just how to get maximum usage out of it to benefit myself and others and the info you have listed will help a lot. Thanks!

Gerri’s last blog post..Sell Online with the PayPal Storefront Widget
cathlawson on March 5th, 2008 8:08 am

Hi Gerri – thanks. I’m glad it helps. I didn’t use StumbleUpon when I first joined as it just seemed too complicated. It’s definitely worth taking the time to get the hang of it.
Brisbane web designer on June 19th, 2008 4:03 am

Addictive is the word. I spend 2 days at work just stumbling. It’s such an interesting waste of time. Sort of like browsing through the world’s biggest, most interesting, book store.
Social Media Leprosy and Other Problems | Catherine Lawson on September 18th, 2008 2:09 am

[...] Blog Marketing – Do You Make These Commenting Cock Ups? My Blogging Mistakes – Were Yours This Bad? 3 StumbleUpon Mistakes To Avoid [...]