Advanced Stumbling: How to Make a Stumblable Page

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?

1. 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
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Mis-tagging or mis-categorizing. That’s a thumbs down, and no, I won’t recategorize it for you.
5. 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.

Tagged as: Advertisers, Content Works, Free Visitors, Funny Photo, Funny Video, Money, Paragraph, Photo Video, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Networking Sites, Stumbler, StumbleUpon, Tipoff, Web Pages, Whiff