I just caved and tried AutoStumbler and I was wondering why I have approx. twice as many stumbles given as received and why I hadn't noticed any real surge in SU traffic. So I figured I'd send an email to the guy and get an answer, well...looks like I got the following message while trying to mail him through Gmail: What gives? Is this just a fly by night thing that I got fleeced on?
Looks like it auto-forwards to the same support email address and bounces. Would you possibly be able to do me a huge favor and try shooting an email to him and mention that I'm trying to get in touch and pass along my email address? Its the only other thing I can think of.
Hi guys, Sorry, I fuxed up the email forwarding. Did you make sure you discovered your site on SU before using the tool with it? You can see discussions (if you're registed) on squirt.robstool.com, wickedfire and syndk8 talking about the success people have had with autostumble. You obviously need some kind of viral/linkbait content to use the app with. It doesnt work on pixie dust and wont make your webcam feed of paint drying go viral.
Thanks for getting back to this thread however you still haven't answered the question I had regarding the ratio of stumbles I've made to those I've received. Now I've given almost triple what I've received and still nothing...
Did you read the readme file and make sure that your site was manually discovered in stumble before using AutoStumble with it?
Of course I read it. My site was also manually stumbled prior to me purchasing your software and received a bit of SU traffic which had since died down. Since using your software I have received no additional SU traffic. Also, you have STILL not addressed my question of the ridiculous ratio of stumbles received to stumbles given. Please answer that.
Here we go.... 1) "I have only received XX amount of Stumbles on a URL, why is this?" Okay, you're obviously only going to get stumbles while people are running the program - which is why I advise to leave it running in the background as long as possible. I've also made the program break up the stumbles you receive into batches - it would look a bit suspicious going from 0-100 stumbles within 10 minutes! Be patient - I'm simply emulating how I have tracked natural stumbles occur. 2) "I've got like a million Stumbles yet I get no traffic!" SU has got like 5 million users - do you know how many stumbles you actually need to get stuff to go popular? It's 1000s! This program gives you an awesome headstart if you got viral content. No, the program will not make your bog standard boring, e-commerce page or your Viagra Squidoo page go popular. Think about it. 3) "Why have a given out so many more Stumbles than I have received?" Your "credits" are credited against each URL. Because there is only 1 you and hundreds of other users, they (obviously) change URL more regularly than you. Therefore you give more Stumbles than you receive. if this wasn't the case and it was done on a "1 to 1" basis, the system would grind to a halt, once you have stumbled the amount of users in the system. You don't want that, do you? 4) "Why doesn't this program have proxy support?" Do you use proxies when you use StumbleUpon? No, you don;t. Don't be silly. SU is going to get very suspicious if 1 account is voting under multiple (probably known proxies), why the hell would you want proxies? You don't! 5) "Why can't I find a free cracked version of your program?" Well, I can't really complain here, because I pirate and crack programs like a bastard. But yea, don't be a bastard. Even if you cracked the program, it's not going to work because it all runs via a web service. C'mon, it took me a long time to get this thing researched and made - it's $40! One off, forever! Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez (edit) 6) "Why can't I enter more than 1 URL at once?" To be honest, I guess I could add this. It's really, really important to correctly set the speed of getting Stumbled right though. With multiple URLs, I'd have to add new algorithms to slow down the Stumble process, or make sure certain pages get enough stumbles... It's also harder to stop just straight "vote swap" footprints appearing.. Really, you can get a decent amount of Stumbles in 2-3 days running it for a few hours each day. Do you really produce loads more viral content than that?
Thank you for your answers. Now I'm hoping you can address this email I just received from SU stating that my ACCOUNT HAS BEEN FROZEN. Note: The only REMOTELY suspicious thing I have ever done with my SU account was run your software, and I increased the timespan between stumbles to be safer. My only other usage is send a couple fun sites to 2-3 of my friends. Email from SU: I've followed-up with them but have not had a reply yet. Again, the only thing that could possibly have caused this is your software because my normal SU activity is perfectly within the TOS.
Hi HaltingPoint, I'm sorry you had your SU account banned. Unfortunately, we had a little wave of this with our userbase. The reason was, StumbleUpon changed their voting encryption - and of course we didn't find this out until the program stopped working. Unfortunately for us, it was then easy for StumbleUpon to see what was going on as we were still sending vote requests with the old encryption algo - so it basically labelled our userbase. I stopped the queue until a fix was published, but it was too late for some people.. Hard knocks - but you have to accept this stuff happens sometimes when you're trying to do what we're doing. Fortunately, it's well easy to make new SU accounts.. I'd recommend using accounts just for AS.
That's a shame. Are they able to track accounts down to IPs at all? Is it as simple as creating a new account each time one is banned with a different email address? Or do they have a more sophisticated tracking method to permaban you? Also, is autostumble working with the new method? Or is it no longer a feasible tool?
Yes, AutoStumble is working absolutely amazing again! Check the site - I've added a live Stumbles swapped counter - we smashed through 180,000 votes exchanged today! The banning of a few members accounts was a one off blip, since the StumbleUpon changed their voting mechanism. During normal use, was have had NOBODY get an account banned! If it does happen, all you have to do is sign up to another StumbleUpon account - which takes about 2 minutes!