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StumbleUpon 101

• StumbleUpon Official FAQ The O.G. version.
• How To Stumble – Pretty straight forward, they will tech you how to stumble.
• Unoffical StumbleUpon FAQ – Again… Pretty self-explanatory
• Beginners Guide to StumbleUpon
• StumbleUpon Help Forum – StumbleUpon’s official help forums.

Become A StumbleUpon Celebrity

• StumbleRank – Ranks the top StumbleUpon users.
• How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother)
• StumbleUpon – How to make yourself a good stumbler
• stumbleGods – Learn StumbleUpon from those with the most powerful thumbs on the service.
• How to Use StumbleUpon Like a Pro
• How do you become a StumbleUpon power user? Ask a 16 year old.
• Making a Power Account on StumbleUpon

The StumbleUpon Network

• Whiteboard Friday – “How to Win Friends & Influence People” – SEOMOZ video on establishing yourself on these networks.
• Building Your Blog with StumbleUpon
• Share Your Stuff: Effectively and Ethically Submitting Pages to StumbleUpon & Stumblers
• stumbleXchange – Use at your own risk!
• Are you banned by StumbleUpon? What is the consequence?
• Organic Stumbling Tip

Use StumbleUpon For Traffic

• A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon: How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website – A great article at Dosh Dosh on how to create a powerful StumbleUpon account.
• How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog – A nice ProBlogger.net post on retaining your StumbleUpon traffic.
• How to Use StumbleUpon to Promote – Information on using StumbleUpon as a promotional tool.
• StumbleUpon Optimization: Leveraging Photo Stumbles for More Web Traffic – Learn how pictures in your content can induce traffic from StumbleUpon.
• The Why, How and Who of Marketing in StumbleUpon – Combining StumbleUpon with marketing.
• 5 Tactics for Driving Traffic From StumbleUpon – Five more ways to drive traffic with StumbleUpon.
• The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging StumbleUpon – An article on leveraging StumbleUpon with stats included.
• How Important is StumbleUpon? – A thorough look at StumbleUpon.

Business Use of StumbleUpon

• Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign For Your Blog – Use StumbleUpon’s advertising to drive traffic to your blog.
• Stumbleupon can get your AdSense Account Banned for Invalid Impressions Fraud – An important read for anyone who makes most of their money from AdSense.
• How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide – A break down of StumbleUpon for Business users.

Advanced Topics

• Advanced Stumbling – A wiki page with some advanced Stumbling tactics discussed.
• Using StumbleUpon PhotoBlog It!
• Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers – Learn how StumbleUpon decides where to send its users.

Third Party StumbleUpon Tools

• StumbleCrumble WordPress Plugin – Show your latest Stumbles.
• StumbleUpon Facebook Application – Same as the above, but for Facebook.
• Del.icio.us Stumble – Convert your del.icio.us bookmarks into stumbles.
• StumbleUpon WYSIWYG Editor

And there you have it. Using these great articles and tools you should be able to take over the web (or maby just your niche ) in no time. The great advantage to building strong accounts on sites like these is that later on when you are starting a new project for example you have some leverage. Once it’s built, you have a powerful user base at your fingertips.

1. Push affiliate links. If you have a lot of affiliate options availbile, why not plug them were relevant. This is one of the best ways to make money on social media traffic as it should fit perfectly in to your content. Just make sure you somehow cloak your URLs so you don’t scare anyone away.

2. Convert them into RSS subscribers. If you can get them to come back, chances are you will make money sooner or later. Another bonus of getting them to subsribe is the ability to put ads in your RSS feed. This method allows you to retain the user, and possibly make some money.

3. CPM Method. This one is more or less like fishing with dynamite. Where all other strategies fail, this one almost never looses. Just make sure you have enough traffic and a good CPM rate or your just wasting your ad space. If you have accounts with various advertisers (you should…) make sure to shop around for the best rates.

4. Private ad sales. If you manage to build up enough exposure, you shouldn’t have a problem getting someone to buy ad space. Have your traffic and or demographics availbile and make it known that you have ad space up for grabs. However, you may want to use some judgement with the ads you get back becuase you also want to keep them relevant or you might end up allienting users due to over saturation of ads.

Four more ways to make money on SU. Quite simple really, you can either go very broad with the CPM or very targeted with private ad sales and affiliate links. Make sure you have stumble worthy content however before you worry about making money off it. Theres nothing worse than a brand new site with Adsense blocks the size of your head plastered everywhere.

Green Thumbs

These examples will give you an idea of content that will perform well with StumbleUpon’s user base.

1. Lists and effort. People on StumbleUpon love lists, it’s no secret. If the SU users notice that you took the time to create content worthy of reading, most of them will give you the thumbs up.

2. Use the strange and bizarre to your benefit. Found someone selling something crazy on eBay? Why not write up a post relating it to social media and submit it to StumbleUpon. You will be surprised at how many SU users like to read this type of content.

3. Something new and informative. The best way to possibly captivate SU users is by giving them something they have not seen yet. A good “How-To” on something that hasn’t been covered a thousand times is most likely going to perform well. Give useful advice and users will reward your effort to share.

4. Above the fold link bait. Throw in a catchy title with a flashy image and most of SU will take a gander. If the content is worthy, you’ll be seeing green thumbs in no time! BONUS: Hot chicks work awesome on sites like StumbleUpon.

We’re Not Worthy!

While these types of content may not totally suck, its best to stray away from them and use these types in a hail marry situation were you are low on ideas.

1. Irrelevant or overly personal posts. Most people on StumbleUpon are not going to care what you had for dinner last night. Sometimes its best to only submit content to StumbleUpon that works well with your niche and try not to alienate your possible new users.

2. Link dumps. Throwing together a list of links with a couple sentences explaining them will not do much for SU traffic. Think logically here, you may be low on ideas but these are people already sorting through random content. When they stumble to your page and find a bunch of links to other content sources chances are they won’t give your page the time of day unless its crafted extremely well and includes plenty of information.

3. No substance included. Your eight sentence post on why tying shoes is fun will be skipped over faster than the fat kid in dodge ball. Your content must include not only a topic, but tips and advice. An easy way to make sure you include this in every post is to develop your own template for creating content or make a theme prevalent in the post.

There you have it folks. Like most social media the key idea to success is creating real content. Many “SEOs” have a problem with this because they are used to creating automated traffic through the use of SERPS. Practice writing content in different ways using these tips to see what works best for you.

Is Your Site Aesthetically Pleasing?
Our first step boils down to design. The first thing your users are going to see is the sites design and layout. The web is becoming ever more “pretty” and users are known to skip right past anything that is not appealing to them. Keep in mind accessibility, readability, and visual pleasure. Balance these three pillars and you can’t go wrong.

Tales Of Title Woes.
Your headlines and titles are also going to be one of the first things that pop out to a user (or at least they should be.) Your headline does not always have to be linkbait. Think it over and make sure it really represents your content before publishing.

Above The Fold.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if a user does not see any content, they are not going to stick around. They’re pointer is right on that Stumble! button to continue on. Keep the content in view above the fold, don’t make people look to find it. They are going to quickly decide weather or not they want to invest time on your site. If you can clearly decipher content without having to scroll down your in good shape

Fish With Dynamite!
If you want a sure fire thumbs up, give the user something stimulating before the body content. Ask something thought provoking or make a statement that is sure to spark something in their minds. Master making this opening content and I can guarantee you that you will increase Stumbleupon traffic 10 fold.

It’s always been said that “Content is king,” if your page sucks and the articles are garbage you cant expect people to give it a good reaction. Take your time and make something people will want to invest their time in and you will see things change for the better.