Maybe dumb question - But how does Stumble generate traffic?

Hey everyone,

It seems like every thime I read through the forum I see more about stumble upon. I was a little late in getting involved with stumble myself as I really dont like downloading toolbars and really had no belief that it would generate traffic.

Now, I stumbled a particular website (and wrote a review for it) and know that several other people have also stumbled it.

Now, I go to stumbleupons site and do a search and I cannot find the site in question anywhere. In fact all I see are "Featured Sites", which I assume have been paid for.

Would anyone care to enlighten me on this? How can this generate any human traffic for a website?

 

Because the traffic isn't driven via their website. It's driven via the stumble toolbar. Thousands of super-bored nerds are stumbling at any given moment, and if you have a stumble-worthy page, more and more of them will stumble upon your stuff. Hence the name.

 

I get a ton of stumble traffic, up to 35% of total traffic on some domains. Stumble traffic in my opinion doesn't have a very high CTR .....but hey traffic is traffic

You may want to check out http://www.stumblexchange.com/

 

I was also wondering if it was really worth it installing another toolbar just to use this one site.

Isn't there any way that you can use Stumble without installing the toolbar?
I mean all these bookmark sites also want you to install their own toolbars but you can use all of them without it.
Any ideas?

Stefan

 

The only way I know is to have others stumble your site but the tool bar is much better. I do not know of any other way to use it. I get a good flow of traffic from it so I find it worth it but it is you will have to choose if you want to install it.

 

So this traffic is as a result of stumbling just a single page of your site or each blog post (supposing your site is a blog)?

 

OK, I have had several of my sites 'stumbled' quite a few times now and have watched my stats. In my opinion the stumble traffic isnt worth anything.

I am not really interested in just having my stats counters go up. All I want to see is real visitors spending time on my sites. I already have that now, but would always like more.

Things like stumble are too easily manipulated anyway. Think about it, all these people trading stumbles without any regard whatsoever to the actual quality of the website. Im not saying that everyone who 'stumbles' does that, but it is the majority I'm sure.

 

Thats true. One of my site got stumbled last week, but the users were not returning visitors, nor stayed around the site to browse around. I think sames the case with Digg traffic. Many people consider it a waste of bandwidth, as the traffic is not returning, and in many cases won't help you in your earnings either. The only thing good about this is the site will get backlinks which will help over time.

 

I not sure what happen but I never get any traffic from stumble before, donno why.

 

I think it is obvious why Stumble visitors won't say long on a site.
It is just untargeted surfing when you have a minute or two.

People who click on diggs or Stumbles are not actively searching for something
they are just clicking out of curiosity.

Maybe 1 in 10000 is actually interested in the topic...
Am I being too sceptic??

 

I may have to change my opinion about this subject. I got over 1000 visitors from stumble yesterday (24th) for one of my sites and my overall stats for all visitors yesterday was about 3 page views per person on average. Evidently much of the stumble traffic did hang around for awhile.

Up until yesterday I never had more than 30 stumble visits total. I am sort of amazed at this.

 

I've been "stumbled" several times, and the people who land on my site tend to stick around and look at other pages. Which is exactly what I want. My site is there to raise my profile, and has been working out very well in that regard. So in my case it's been quality traffic.

How did you come to this sureness that "the majority" of people who use Stumble manipulate the system? Maybe that's why I'm in the minority here, getting worthwhile traffic from Stumble ... because I got the votes on merit instead of by buying them? People who channel surf tend to stop when they find something they like.

 

It was just a guess on my part and maybe I spoke "out of turn". What gave me the idea was that there seems to be so many threads here and in other forums where people are trading stumbles/diggs etc. or are outright buying them.

I admit that I have posted a few times in threads where people were offering to give stumbles. I cant recall exactly but I dont think it was any more than 3 or 4 times. I usually state for members to stumble or digg ONLY if they like the site.

I never really thought that this would result in any real traffic, but I have been proven quite wrong.

 

There are a lot of services to game Digg, Stumble, and all of that, and there are a lot of threads about them in webmaster forums. But probably 90 % of the people who use Stumble have never owned or run a web site. That's just a wild guess driven by gut feeling and not a whole lot else. But if you look at what's popular on Digg, the stories tend to be pretty technical in nature. Stuff that gets Stumbled is more about politics, activism, graphics ( more from an enjoying them than designing them standpoint ), and a whole list.

The thing about Stumble is when you sign up ( and people should if they want to learn about how it works ) they ask you to check off your interests from a list. Then they show you the types of sites that fall under your interests, and as you vote, they refine what they know about you, as a user. So while it's random traffic, it's not untargetted.

I'm not recommending people to spam social media sites, but each of them tends to have its own personality in terms of what becomes popular there. If you cater to that, and give the surfers what they want, it can work out very well for you.

On that note, I don't think my site has a single Digg, or more than a dozen people who've bookmarked it in Delicious, but Stumble has sent thousands of visitors many times. Stumble might not be ideal for some of the people reading this thread, but other "social media" sites might be...

 

If you use feed burner, you can add a stumble link to the bottom of your posts, so readers can stumble. You don't need a tool bar for that.

 

A properly tagged site will bring in relevant traffic, regardless of the quality of the stumbler...

While stumble exchanges are likely bad on some karmic level, they certainly help those stumbling within a given set of keywords.

Personally I stumble by two methods, under the FUN/FUNNY tags or under one of the various tags in my Niche. I'll rarely stumble by just clicking the button to land on some random site... and even if I did, it only takes a moment to decide if I'm going to stick around long enough to read where I've landed or to hit that button again.

I've stumbled upon a few MFA sites and a few sites not even worthy of being called MFA, I'm pretty sure I've traded stumbles with the same types of sites, but I have faith that those people that stumble back are doing me, and my community a service by give a thumbs up to 'my quality site'.

 

stumble upon will bring a lot of traffic. the more you participate in Stumble Upon, the more traffic you'll get. Stumble, join groups, add friends, etc etc.

I thought the stumble upon toolbar wasn't worth it either but its actually kinda nice to have around when you're bored...just one click and you'll get something new that you'll be interested in

 

I dont know the reason why I never get any traffic from stumble before.
hema

 

i stumble, therefore i am.
though sometimes i digg too


traffic is traffic yeah, but i think we should offer viewers really good content so they'll keep coming back for more, and not just rely on having them stumbling upon our site.

 

stumbling a site bookmarks it in your list then it shows as recently bookmarked or added humdred of people click it then it happens again and again