What is StumbleUpon?
That is the tag line for the website StumbleUpon – Discover Your Web. StumbleUpon is a website that allows you to stumble-upon various websites that you might be interested in.
When you setup an account at StumbleUpon you select various interests or topics. Then, using the Stumble button, StumbleUpon starts showing you various websites that it thinks you might be interested in.
How Does It Work?
If you’re interested in a website that StumbleUpon presents you, you have the ability to give it a thumbs up by clicking on a thumbs up button, which means you like the site. If you dislike a site, you can click on the thumbs down button or just click the Stumble button for more sites.
This activity of stumbling and voting (by using the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons) will train StumbleUpon on what sites to present to you as you stumble.
What Can You Do With It?
You can focus the topics you’re interested in for your niche or topic. Using filters will allow you to tell StumbleUpon to find sites on a specific topic. This can be helpful if you’re doing some kind of market research or comparing your website or blog to other blogs and websites in your specific field.
As you like various websites in a niche, other StumbleUpon users might end up friending you because of what you’re interested in. This is a good thing especially if you have a blog or website of your own that you are trying to promote.
You can also filter searches on images and videos. You can tag websites that you find interesting, which will show up in a tag cloud on the right sidebar of your home page at StumbleUpon.
StumbleUpon Friends and more
You can find friends who are interested in the same things you are and see what their favorites are and Stumble their favorites as well. StumbleUpon has its own community with groups you can join and share Stumbles.
All this and much more is available on the StumbleUpon toolbar that you can install for your browser.
Here’s my profile on StumbleUpon – http://billbolmeier.stumbleupon.com. Feel free to add me as your friend and I’ll add you back. Leave your StumbleUpon profile in the comments for all to add as friends.
For Bloggers and Website Owners
If you’re a blogger or someone who owns and operates a website you can use StumbleUpon to guide a ton of traffic to your site in a short perioid of time.
If you create content that is considered good StumbleUpon content and people stumble your site, there is a good possibility that you’ll see a spike in your site visitors. Sometimes this can be massive.
You could certainly stumble your own site but it’s best to have someone else stumble it for you. Also, don’t stumble everything on your website or all the articles on your blog. StumbleUpon folks don’t appreciate a bunch of self promotion that is prolonged over a period of time.
Use StumbleUpon the way it was meant to be – stumbling websites and you’ll do just fine.
If you liked this article please Stumble It! and subscribe to my blog to keep up to date on StumbleUpon tips, tricks and features.
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