In part 1 of this series, you learned about the basics of StumbleUpon, so you should be able to answer these questions:
- What is StumbleUpon?
- How do I add pages to StumbleUpon?
- How do I make my vote more influential?
In this portion, we will answer the following questions:
- What kind of pages do Stumblers like?
- How do I get even more visitors from SU?
- How can I convert a Stumbler into a regular visitor?
- What are five big mistakes people make with StumbleUpon?
- How does StumbleUpon make money?
Let’s start off with the last one, since it will help you understand the average Stumbler better.
How Does StumbleUpon Make Money?
SU makes money by delivering advertisers’ web pages directly to the user. Every few times that you click ‘Stumble’, you are actually visiting a website that paid five cents to get you there. A big tipoff of these if you’re taken to the home page of a commercial site, since they don’t do their homework and just assume all pages will have an equivalent return.
Most stumblers know this, and so they’re very wary of paid-stumbles. They’ll often go out of their way to give a thumbs down, preventing any free visitors from coming in. As a result, anything that has a whiff of commercialism is going to do poorly, and you’ll lose that visitor and more in under five seconds.
What kind of pages do Stumblers like?
The last paragraph gave you an idea of what the average Stumbler doesn’t like. Home page, commercial products, anything that seems spammy. Keep away from that.
What do they like? Eye-catching content. If your site looks boring and doesn’t have an article with a catchy, off-beat title, they’ll hit the button and move on. Seriously - their mouse is already over it, and it’s so much easier to go to the next page than figure out what they should be looking at.
Definitely put the best content above the fold. But what kind of content works best? Stumblers are perusing the web without a purpose - they’re channel-surfing the web, so you have to catch their attention immediately. A funny photo, or a video with a good title. A ridiculous or original headline, or something truly unique - like dontclick.it, a website designed entirely without the need to click. Concept websites like dontclick.it are perfect for SU.
Whatever it is, it’s crucial that the Stumbler can tell what the site is about and be interested by it without having to work too hard at it, and without scrolling down.
How do I get even more visitors from SU?
You already know that stumbling, rating, getting more friends, and adding new pages that other people like will increase your Karma and make your vote more effective, so it makes sense to vote for your own pages. There’s no taboo against adding your own pages, and there’s definitely no taboo in voting for yourself.
But how do you get even more visitors?
Add additional tags - if your page is in the category of website development, add a tag for anything related - perhaps website design, websites, blogs, anything that may be related. SU will see these added tags and send people that are interested in blogs, but may not have listed website development as one of their interests.
Send it to your friends. They’re most likely to vote positively for your site, and more positive votes (especially in a short time period) will mean more visitors. 10 votes in 10 minutes are more valuable than the same votes in 10 hours.
Make sure that you only Stumble the best pages on your domain. SU takes into account the average quality of pages Stumbled, not to mention that visitors will also remember bad pages and hurt the branding of your site, preventing them from exploring further.
Finally, rate positively any sites or pages that link to your pages. The massive influx of traffic on their page will be good for them, but it will also mean that some of those visitors will click on your link and go to your site. This may seem like a unrewarding work, but it means the other site is filtering out the Stumblers that were going to leave anyway, and you only get the highest quality visitors.
How can I convert a Stumbler into a regular visitor?
One thing that you need to accept: most Stumblers will leave immediately after they first see the page. You’ll lose the majority, guaranteed.
However, SU sends so much traffic that if even a small percentage of these visitors are converted, you’ll add quite a few subscribers or repeat visitors.
Here’s how to do it:
- Have an RSS button and email subscription form clearly visible above the fold.
- Have an RSS button and email link clearly visible at the end of whatever content you’re presenting. Pretend the Stumbler is the laziest person you ever met and has a horrible case of ADD - make it as easy possible for them.
- Give them other places to go at the end of the content
- If you’re noticing StumbleUpon traffic, mention it if you can. Many Stumblers love their service, and if you acknowledge it and welcome them, you’ll be seen as part of the in-group of Stumblers.
Easy tactics, and the first three are tactics that you should already be doing, but it’s even more critical for SU visitors (as well Digg, Reddit, and all the other social sites). The fourth will significantly increase your conversion rate because it will make the site more personal and human.
Finally, the big one:
What are five big mistakes people make with StumbleUpon-bait?
- Stumbling the home-page. Big mistake - if I have to look for interesting content, I’m already gone and assuming it was a paid advertisement
- Lots of intrusive advertisements, especially above the fold. If it looks like AdSense is your primary content, I’ve already gone on to the next site. I will not scroll down to look for the good stuff.
- Tons of unbroken text. Boooring. Unless you have something really hilarious or important, I don’t care. At best, if it’s extremely educational, I’ll bookmark it and go back to it later.
- Mis-tagging or mis-categorizing. That’s a thumbs down, and no, I won’t recategorize it for you.
- Pitching a product. I’m not in the mood to buy something. If it’s really, really cool and fun, show me a video of what it does. Tell me a story. I’m not in a purchasing mood when I’m stumbling, but if it’s something unique and you entertain me, I may come back to it later.
This should get you well on your way to getting more visitors and more conversions with StumbleUpon. Look for another article coming up in a couple of days - this one will look at some of the other features of SU that are newer, such as StumbleVideo and StumbleBuzz.
April 4th, 2007
posted in StumbleUpon, Social Search, Top, Articles |
no comments
Most of the time, it’s not enough to be the best. To be a market leader, you have to be first.
Look at Netflix and Blockbuster. Blockbuster offers a cheaper, comparable service and allows you to take movies home from their physical locations, in addition to millions spent on advertising, yet it still has less than a third of the market share. Wal-Mart tried to enter the arena, and crashed and burned - never making it above 2.6% market share.
Basic econ claims people would switch, but the risk of switching to another service that they think they’d have to learn how to use isn’t worth the $2 per month they’d be paying. If it even costs them one hour to cancel Netflix, set up a Blockbuster account, and learn the new system, that costs the average person $20 - it would take almost a year to recoup those benefits.
So how do you break people out of the mindset that “even though my service isn’t the best, it’s good enough that I won’t waste time switching”? Make your service the first - by creating a new category that didn’t exist before.
If you’re in your own category, you’ll have no competition, but how exactly do you break out and make a brand new sector? Take something that’s unique about your site, and tout it everywhere - exaggerate its significance on the site. Don’t label yourself as part of the crowd you’re like, but do label the new category.
Look at Digg. At its most basic level, it’s people voting for content. This idea isn’t new. Digg’s new features were:
1) Socialization. It got implemented at the right time, and it caught on.
2) The time-based algorithm. Votes were not counted equally, but rather based on how frequently they were coming in, hence allowing for an automated and real-time system.
Then look at Coca-Cola and Pepsi - who’s to say one product is better than another? Both have their fans, but Coca-Cola came first, and so people still trust and like it more.
Here’s another: Google. It wasn’t the first search engine. It was the first search engine to use backlinks as a criterion. Yahoo! was already a search engine, but not in Google’s “new” category, and as a result, it’s still struggling to catch up (although it never will until it breaks into completely new territory - fact).
So to sum it up: Take your most unique asset or assets (focus on one or two), and advertise it/them as much as possible. Base a new “category” around it. Reap the rewards of no competition.
If you don’t have a unique asset, then you’ll never break out. Sorry.
Sidenote: “AJAX” is NOT a unique asset.
February 26th, 2007
posted in Digg, Top, Articles, Marketing |
no comments
Since Stumble has been sending many of us a huge amount of traffic, I thought it would be useful to find some resources on how to best make use of this traffic. This list will be kept updated with the best articles found - if you have one, please let me know by emailing me or commenting. There’s still a dire need for some good, informative articles.
Also, if you want to check me out on SU, my Stumble username is thebogo. Italicized entries have been recently added (Saturday, May 12th).
If you have a quality article, or know of one, comment or email me and I’ll add it to the resource. Read more for extra articles that didn’t quite make it to the top of the list.
Continue reading “Ultimate StumbleUpon Resource”
February 22nd, 2007
posted in Blog Tools, StumbleUpon, Social Search, Top, Articles, Marketing |
20 comments
I’ve been considering the importance of facial recognition in building brands based around expertise-based businesses, such as, for instance, blogging.
Most bloggers are individuals that are working by spreading their knowledge, and are in essence, a business. As most businesses have logos, the bloggers’ have their faces. Why is it important to spread your face as much as possible (and part of the reason why MyBlogLog has caught on)? There are two reasons as to why plastering your face on your blog is important: one scientific, one realistic.
The scientific
A lot of facial recognition is done in one of the most basic, emotional centers of the brain: the amygdala. This center also has some of the highest concentration of neurons and interneural connections, meaning a HUGE amount of processing goes on here. If you use a face, you touch someone on a very basic, very emotional level, and they’ll remember you (and like you) a whole lot better.
The Realistic
When was the last time you forgot someone’s face? And when was the last time you forgot someone’s name?
February 13th, 2007
posted in MyBlogLog, Blog Tools, Top, Articles, Marketing |
no comments
As a psychology major, one of the first lab experiments I did was teach a lab rat some little tricks, like pulling a lever or standing on its hind legs.
That’s kind of cool, but how does it apply to you? Hey, wouldn’t you love to be able to control your visitors like that?
Maybe you don’t want them to pull a lever, and making them stand up is the last thing you want them to do, but what if you can get them to comment, click a link, or do anything else more often?
When the rat pulled the lever, or stood on its hind legs, I gave it a small pellet of food. The rat ate the morsel and then went back to work, pulling my lever for me.
As an offhand note – the rat’s name was Cain. For some reason, my girlfriend thought this was uncute and decided to rename it “Sparklefairy.†In retrospect, she realizes this is an absolutely ridiculous name.
Fortunately, when it comes to training, human beings haven’t evolved much beyond rats. We see examples of this constantly, and we can use it when creating a site design.
There are five “schedules†of reinforcement. All of them are good, but one, the fifth one, keeps people coming back for more, and more, and MORE…
It’s the kind of thing that causes people to get addicted, and who doesn’t want addicted visitors?
Give it to ‘em every time! (Constant Reinforcement)This is the simplest kind of reinforcement. Every time Cain did something that I liked, I gave him a treat. Easy and effective, and he learned his tasks quickly.
Unfortunately, this schedule is much more costly than any of the other methods and you run the risk of satiating your subjects (meaning they’ll be full and won’t pull your lever anymore, because they’re not hungry).
Examples of constant reinforcement are purely information-based websites such as Merriam-Webster or Wikipedia. When you search for information on these sites, you get a result that fills your need, and therefore no longer need to look.
Make ‘em wait! (Fixed Interval)
Sometimes I’d set it up so that Cain would have to wait one minute after he was rewarded before he could get more. No matter how many times he pressed the lever, nothing would happen. Once the minute passed, the first lever pull rewarded Cain, and then he’d have to wait again. Quickly, he learned that pulling the lever right after a reward wouldn’t give him more food, and so Cain stopped working for me for free. Boo, Cain, boo.
This strategy by itself isn’t very useful. Forcing your visitors to not act is counter-productive. However, in conjunction with other strategies, it can have a very positive effect. For example, Yahoo! Answers rewards you for visiting the site once a day, giving you a small incentive to check in and see what’s going on in the site, and maybe answering (or asking?) a few questions. Blingo.com allows you to search ten times a day with a chance of winning a prize each time.
Try and Try Again (Fixed Ratio)
With a fixed ratio setup, I made Cain pull the lever a certain number of times before he received food. Once he learned the setup, Cain would pull the lever slowly after each reward, and then more quickly as it came closer to the last pull – knowing you’re closer to your goal makes you work harder for it. On the other hand, knowing you’re far from your goal may make you put off working for it.
Many pyramid scheme sites employ a fixed ratio reward system – “Get five of your friends to sign up, and get a free iPod!†Many of these types of sites also use points as a midterm reward - a constant reinforcement - to achieve the periodic reinforcement of the end result (an iPod, XBox 360, etc.)
Is it ready yet? (Random Interval)
With this schedule, Cain didn’t get reinforced until a random amount of time had passed since his last morsel of food. This resulted in similar learning to fixed interval, although slightly faster.
Generally, I’d stay away from this kind of reinforcement, as either fixed interval or random ratio is more appropriate and effective for almost any occasion.
Gambling Addiction! (Random Ratio)
Here’s the one I mentioned before – the schedule that gets people addicted. And frankly, what’s better than addicted users? Casinos make money hand over fist. Cigarette companies are still posting a hefty profit even with massive taxes and legal costs. Alcohol is a booming industry in good times and bad. And there’s almost no chance your site will kill people (Digg hasn’t – yet…).
Getting a royal flush in poker doesn’t mean you won’t get a full house on the next hand, so you’ll still try just as hard to win the next, and the bite of the gambling bug is something we’ve all felt at one point or another. At the same time, getting twenty bad hands doesn’t mean you’ll get another bad hand either.
Random ratio is simple in that every lever pull or comment or click will have an equal chance of winning, and often times the system allows you to win far more than you lose. Cain learned the system, and he realized the more and the faster that he pulled the lever, the more food he got. And he started working hard.
Now if you can implement a reward system in which essentially every action has a chance of achieving a (big?) reward, your visitors will be much more likely to do that action in a frenzy. Mix that in with the fact that people overestimate small odds and overrate their chances of winning large prizes, you’ll be able to create a site that people won’t be able to tear themselves away from.
And that means more money for you.
February 6th, 2007
posted in Psychology, Top, Articles, Monetizing, Marketing |
one comment
When I entered the SEO world and began reading articles, I was confused by all the terms flung around, and it took me a good bit of time to learn the meanings of everything. Here’s a glossary to make things easier for the newcomers to the business.
Continue reading “SEO Glossary”
January 30th, 2007
posted in Top, Articles |
no comments
Every veteran SEOer already knows the information in this article, but for those of us just starting up, I felt the first post would be a good time to do a review of the basics.
Fact #1: Google is God
Fact #2: Links, Links, Links!
Fact #3: There’s No Substitute for Good Content
Fact #4: Build for the User, not the Search Engine
Fact #5: Making Money Online is HARD
Continue reading “5 SEO Basics Everyone Should Know”
January 29th, 2007
posted in Top, Articles, Marketing |
7 comments
