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.