StumbleUpon is a fickle beast – it can either lead to salvation (thousands of visitors) or the banhammer (ouch). You see, apparently you CAN’T thumbs up every single post you make: shocker, I know. Blog Badly learned this the hard way; on a scale of one to ten, my level of traffic from SU for the past month was about a none. I can only assume this is because I, uh, *ahem* perhaps reviewed one my own posts? I didn’t even get any traffic from about three other posts with no reviews whatsoever by me! One of them had 15+ thumbs up yet only received about 20 visitors.
But now, it seems that my bad karma has been lifted. After being a diligent user and stumbling/reviewing other sites, Blog Badly started getting hits from StumbleUpon again. I can only assume this was because I stopped stumbling Blog Badly and just decided to let it stew for a bit. Yesterday, I got 300+ visits from StumbleUpon on my latest post. That means that getting “unbanned” from StumbleUpon is as easy as being an active user with stuff other than site promotion on your mind. After all, those pictures of cats are pretty funny!
Does this mean I’ll stop thumbs upping my own site? Of course not! I’ll think about it. Still, it’s a relief to have such a good traffic source back with me again.
By Louis Liem on May 28, 2008 | Reply
I was once penalized for stumbling my own posts. I didn’t know it was cardinal sin number one. At least SU didn’t ban my URL
By Germz on May 28, 2008 | Reply
I wish more people would stumble my posts *hint* lol.
I once got 0 visitors from stumble upon but then I ended up getting over 650.
By Regretful Morning on May 28, 2008 | Reply
As my mentor you should’ve told me this! I think you did but I didn’t listen.
ps – you stumble one of mine I’ll stumble one of yours is my moto.
hint hint, I just stumbled this.
By GiorgosK on May 29, 2008 | Reply
Interesting theory Max
But I think it has to do more with the bounce rate of those visitors that you receive.
If you lets say stumbleupon sends sees that 90% of the visitors that come bounce back (most probably don’t thumb up then why send you more ???
That is what I have experienced with stumbleupon…
By Barbara Swafford on May 31, 2008 | Reply
Hi,
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I heard/read we can only Stumble a site 15 times. If that’s true, we certainly wouldn’t want to Stumble ever post of a favorite blogger.
I self stumbled, but that was before I knew we weren’t suppose to.
I guess I didn’t read the fine print.
By Wii Fit Accessories on Jun 1, 2008 | Reply
The traffic I get from Stumble Upon is usually garbage! They are on my site for less than 0 seconds… i dont know how you can do less than zero second! it’s like they went to my site and got a 110% refund because they didn’t like it so much!
By grace on Jun 1, 2008 | Reply
Yeah I have heard that stumbling your own page is not good. I am thankful someone warned me.
By Google Web Hosting on Jun 2, 2008 | Reply
I have also found this out the hardway. BUT, there is a solution. I came up with this all by myself, and I tell you , it’s downright freakin’ GENIUS! Ok, enough the with egocentric self-promoting.
1) Do not stumble your own blog. (ok, i thnk this horse is beat to death).
2) Create a hubpage or squidoo lens (see where I’m going with this)
3) Create a link to your page through said hubpage or squidoo lens.
4) Stumble the hubpage or squidoo lens!
tell me it’s not genius.
By Rita on Jun 6, 2008 | Reply
This morning I was stumbling and I received a message that said they are temporarily out of sites for me to stumble. I had only been on the site about ten minutes. Interesting you can’t stumble yourself I didn’t know that was a bad thing to do. I wonder if thats the case for other sites like Digg, technorati, and delicious?
By Hussein on Jun 6, 2008 | Reply
I don’ like stumble. Don’t use it. They are giving non-quality traffic.
They will just eat up your bandwidth..
By iHuman on Jun 12, 2008 | Reply
Oh man, i just found this post through stumble upon.
By Tiago on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
Stumble Upon is very fickle, it will get you lots of visitors on an irregular basis but that won’t stay for long and that probably won’t be back.
I know because that’s exactly what I do on SU.
By Samuel on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
thumbs up.
cheers.
By Stumbler on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
Just found this on stumbleupon
, Nice post
By Troy on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
I had the same problem on my blog, but then one day I left the pages alone and someone else stumbled, gave me 200 visitors the first day and some more residuals after that. Now I don’t even touch it.
By veronicaromm on Jun 14, 2008 | Reply
It is all about ratios. I have a blog I stumble each post but I have stumbled and reviewed over 4000 sites and have 160 plus reviews, and I have reviewed three times that. So yes stumbleupon is reciprocal, you use it well, be a member of the community and then you can stumble your own because you are active. And you know that SU traffic, it is consistant as well as abundant. I use it every day to keep in touch with my SU friends, and seeing the stumbles they leave me, ones that 4 out of 5 times are of interest to me. Great post, very educational for new users. Thanks
By matt on Jun 14, 2008 | Reply
interesting. I had never really looked into this from the log standpoint- but i kind of figured there was something like this.
By Michelle on Jun 15, 2008 | Reply
hey, same thing happened to me. I stumbled my own website, and first day BAM over 300 hits. And then it dropped. I get a few every week if I’m lucky. I never got a message from stumble that they were banning my page or anything. Is this what happened to others?
Well, if people are stumbling this page I’ll post my website here! http://www.freewebs.com/pleasewebegyou
By Alex filippi on Jun 15, 2008 | Reply
If you need the visitor quality stumble you can enjoy stumble but if you need more quality traffic
please foucus you target away
By Allison on Jun 15, 2008 | Reply
I’m from Stumble and I just thumbs uped you!
By gary norman stephenson on Jun 15, 2008 | Reply
stumbling is the best/// and i always will. very open source information and soft wear….
By Chandler Bluesoul on Jun 19, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the great blog! I am really glad I ran across and will bookmark and come back!
By Pavan Kumar on Jul 26, 2008 | Reply
Even I too got same punishment… Lets see now, I have stumbled it….
By Bible Crafts for Kids on Aug 9, 2008 | Reply
I never really liked SU for many reasons. I also hate toolbars. I find that Digg is way better at driving traffic than SU. I have had create success promoting my Kids Crafts site on digg. Even though Digg really is a place people go for kids crafts or anything besides tech.
By Nick on Sep 23, 2008 | Reply
Great post. I think this is what happened to me. I received great traffic from stumble upon for a while and then absolutely nothing.
By Will on Oct 25, 2008 | Reply
Yea, stumbling your squidoo or hubpage is definitely a better option
By Amit on Feb 19, 2009 | Reply
I just stumbled you too and gave you a thumbs up! Great Post…I only just realised this all today. Well you live and learn!
A
By Lisa on Jul 16, 2009 | Reply
Hi, Gave you a thumbs up but that should be ok cuz i’m not you…lol…I did’t know that information. (It’s kinda stupid isn’t it? What do they want us to do? Slice our wrists cuz it’s blatently clear we have no stumblers? LOL) DIGG encourages to Digg yourself once for each post…GEEZ…
By Marvin on Sep 29, 2009 | Reply
I’m at the point where I actually think I want to stop StumbleUpon traffic. I think it’s just a lot of wasted page views. I’m worried about it causing trouble with my webhost. 10,000 visitors in a day that leads to nothing of any value for me? That’s not really a good thing…
By Rick on Feb 4, 2010 | Reply
Great post. There are several sites I like to Stumble a lot. I guess I better back off to not punish them. My bad!
By Donalyn on May 30, 2010 | Reply
It is not stumbling your own posts that is the trouble – it is stumbling too many posts from the same site, without stumbling enough in between. To be on the safe side, about 50 stumbles between thumbs up on any site is as low as I will go. As for the quality of the traffic – the percentge of people who repeat visit may be relatively small, but w/out SU, they’d have never found my sites at all. That is why it pays to build relationships on SU and allow them to send to your toolbar – you find great sites to stumble and they come straight to you – being an active stumbler gives your thump-ups more power.
By kaye on Jun 17, 2010 | Reply
Pretty sure you’re all retarded. Stumble show people things they may like based on the likes of similar users. If you only like your own stuff then it has nothing to associate it with. If you were to start a gardening blog, sumbit all of your entries, and then like every goddamn gardening page in existence, you would get a LOT of people interested in gardening coming your way. lern2stumbl
By Mitch on Jul 19, 2010 | Reply
I have been having the same problem. My site has been on stumbleupon for 3 days. It has 32 thumbs up (I have been running a campaign.) But I receive little to no free traffic. I was told a few thumbs up would provide 100s. I was really excited to see 32. I think it is because I self submitted the site. At the time I had no idea it would destroy my traffic. Any suggestions?
By Mz. Bossy on Aug 14, 2010 | Reply
Hi, I SU here! I’ve been here about 10 minutes
After reading these post, I will now try to spend at least 5 minutes on a webpage. Hope this helps someone!
By Ryan on Nov 23, 2010 | Reply
The oddest thing… I found this via stumbleupon.
By Hammy Havoc on Dec 4, 2011 | Reply
Do they still do this? Makes me question the value of StumbleUpon traffic if it is essentially populated by other people stumbling to get their own content stats up.