'Net Features : stumbleupon

Re-Stumbling Upon StumbleUpon for Affiliates

Michael Garrity — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 19:24:00 GMT

Social discovery engine StumbleUpon has been a major driver of traffic for many websites for a while now, particularly interest-specific sites (like those run by affiliates). But for some reason, its full potential as an online advertising tool has never really been exploited. StumbleUpon, of course, wasn’t content with this, which is why it has given its Paid Discovery ad program a bit of an upgrade to help it better compete with other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter.

Paid Discovery is a product of StumbleUpon Labs – where the company develops its new features – that promises to deliver the “right traffic” straight to a user’s website or content without making users click ads or links to get there. It guarantees 100 percent engagement 100 percent of the time – a lofty claim, indeed.

Affiliates simply have to submit their desired URL to Paid Discovery and target the users they want by selecting specific demographics and interests. Then, they’ll be able to reach a new and larger audience (StumbleUpon users currently stumble over 1 billion pages a month as a collective) that is actively seeking content in their specific field or fields. StumbleUpon will even highlight the most engaging content directly and frequently.

StumbleUpon Paid Discovery comes in three different pricing plans. The Standard plan for those looking to engage their target audience costs 10 cents per engaged visitor and offers priority serving in content streams, targeting (by interest, location, demographics and device), advanced reporting features and integration with Google Analytics. After that is the Premium plan, which costs 25 cents per engaged user and offers most of the same features (except for device-specific targeting), as well as guaranteed top serving priority in content streams. And for marketers looking to make more of an impact, the program also offers an option for a customizable plan.

The benefit for affiliate marketers should be clear. By submitting their affiliate sites to StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery program, they will be able to drive some of the most relevant traffic on the Web in a way that feels organic to the visitors. These users are going to be more likely to engage with a site and click on ads, because they were specifically targeted to stumble upon that site’s content.

Since Paid Discovery intentionally works like a typical organic stumble for the end user, especially considering that paid pages are inserted in a user’s stumble trail in-between other actually organic results, it helps affiliates attract relevant visitors based on their interests. The downside is that although the clicks are relatively inexpensive (when compared to, say, Google AdWords), the visitors are also less focused on conversions when they arrive, meaning affiliates will have to make sure they create engaging content that will hold their interest and keep them on the site.

Though new changes to the ad system are primarily cosmetic, marketers are given an improved way to view and manage their account activity. This includes a new dashboard, a consolidated graph for campaign information and options for both active and archived campaigns.

If you haven’t looked at StumbleUpon yet as a way to improve the relevancy of the traffic to your affiliate site, now may be the time to do it as the company makes some changes to the program. After all, it’s easier to engage interested users that are sent directly to your websites or content than it is to try to get them to click on your website first from an organic SERP, so the investment could very well be worth it in the long run.

StumbleUpon Facelift and Discovery Enhancements

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:45:00 GMT

Website discovery service Stumbleupon, which was just referenced on WM’s new Big List of Social Media Sites, has received a rather substantial update (rolling out through the day apparently) which focuses on the site’s design and adds a new channel feature.

For those unfamiliar with the service, StumbleUpon enables Web users to discover and share content based on categories. Users “stumble” recommended content and then have the option of voting and commenting on the selection. While I personally have questioned the value of the content discovery service in relation to conversion rate, the service now boasts 20 million active users with over 1 billion “stumbles” per month. So regardless of how well it performs to general sales, it’s a popular service that demands the attention of digital workers.

The service’s navigation tool, the Stumble bar, has been updated to display fewer buttons which makes the voting button more prominent. The Stumble bar has also integrated Explore Box, a feature the company added back in August of this year that allows users to search through more specific categories.

Perhaps the most important enhancement to the service is the addition of Stumbleupon Channels, which provide users with a way to explore content from sites, celebrities and brands. There are upwards of 250 existing channels currently which are curated by the brand (and authenticated by Stumbleupon). Early reports indicate that channels are separate from SU’s current discovery algorithm.

Related news on Stumbleupon from Website Magazine:
- Stumbleupon Refers More Social Media Traffic than Facebook
- Stumbleupon Releases an Explore Feature
- New Publisher Tool from Stumbleupon
- Stumbleupon Launches New Social Media Brand Advertising

StumbleUpon Refers More Social Media Traffic than Facebook

Allison Howen — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:25:00 GMT

StumpleUpon reigns supreme over social media trafficking.

According to StatCounter, StumbleUpon has passed Facebook and now refers more than half of all social media traffic in the U.S. as of August 2011.

Facebook has fallen to second place, referring around 38 percent of U.S. social traffic. Other sites such as Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, MySpace and Digg refer fewer than 4 percent each.

Although this study may not be surprising when taking into consideration that StumbleUpon is created for users to stumble onto sites around the web, the surprising aspect is the difference between each sites user base. StumbleUpon has a much smaller user base at 12 million compared to Facebook’s 750 million.

Additionally, it will be interesting to see if StumbleUpon’s recently released explore feature, which makes it easier for users to stumble upon desired topics, will lead to an even higher referral rate in the coming months.

Stumble Upon Releases an Explore Feature

Allison Howen — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:00:00 GMT

The new explore feature from StumbleUpon provides users with a search engine-like aspect that allows stumbling to be more directly correlated with specific topics of interest.

By typing in a word to the Stumbleupon Explore Box, users are brought to related community-endorsed content. The explore box also gives automated suggestions that users can choose from. For example, when typing the word “pets” suggestions for "Zhu Zhu", "pets and animals", "pets desktop wallpaper" and "funny pets" appear as well as suggestions for topics “you may also like” such as dog, dog health and dog breed.

This new feature makes filtering results easier than customizing the 500 set categories, which was the only way to filter previously. It also may lead to longer time on site for the sites that are lucky enough to be stumbled upon.

New Publisher Tool from StumbleUpon

Linc Wonham — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:00:00 GMT

Web recommendation site StumbleUpon has created a new widget designed to help keep users on the websites they visit.

Called StumbleUpon Widgets, the new tool involves embedding a small box on a page that will include links to other content on the same site. The company claims that the service refers more traffic to external websites than any other social media organization outside of Facebook.

“The widget is a way for us to offer people a better way to see curated content on a specific website that other users have surfaced,” explains Marc Leibowitz, vice president of business development at StumbleUpon.

“The widget looks like a typical recommendation list, but instead, our recommendations are created using an algorithm that isolates users who are experts in a topic or area. Then the content they have rated is highlighted within the widget.”

StumbleUpon Launches New Social Media Brand Advertising

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:15:00 GMT

Content discovery engine StumbleUpon announced today the availability of a social media brand advertising platform dubbed Paid Discovery - and you are either going to love it, or hate it.

"Today's display ads fundamentally miss what is critical for brands: integrating relevant sponsored content with the intended user experience," said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon CEO and co-founder. "With Paid Discovery, marketers and agencies can connect directly with customers interested in discovering their products and gain valuable insights into how their customers are engaging with them."

Paid Discovery recommends sponsored content to users who have expressed preference for a particular interest. What StumbeUpon has effectively done is start charging advertisers for that preference and ad priority creating a social-driven promotional paltform.

Brands of course don’t “connect directly with customers” for free. If you're a brand advertiser looking to increase awareness (and site visits) then the modest cost (discussed below) is going to be attractive. The end result however for millions of publishers distributing their content through StumbleUpon (or letting consumers spread content naturally) is that their own messages might simply be drowned out among the advertising noise.

StumbleUpon has had a pay-per-visitor program for about as long as I can remember, but what makes the Paid Discovery offering just announced so appealing for brand advertisers, is that in addition to being able to target users by standard criteria (interest, location and demographics) which costs $0.05/per visit without much control, sponsored content from these brands can now receive priority serving ($0.10/per visit) or guaranteed top serving priority ($0.25/per visit) in content streams. And as you might imagine, you have to pay more for the privilege.

ShareThis Social Tool Gets Big Update

Mike Phillips — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:59:00 GMT

ShareThis, the popular social sharing widget, has released an update that is currently in beta. The biggest upgrade is the ability for users to share a page's content to more than one destination simultaneously. With a single click, users can share your content via email, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, LinkedIn and more. This added convenience for the user could be significant - anything that makes content sharing easier should also be on publishers' radars.

Also included in the update is the ability for users to share content without ever leaving your website and the incorporation of custom themes and colors. In the works are updated plugins for Wordpress, Blogger and Typepad. ShareThis claims nearly one million websites use the tool.

You can see an example of the new widget functionality below, and vist the ShareThis website for more details and to test it out.

Twitter, Facebook and SU as Marketing Machines

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:41:00 GMT

According to Web analytics firm StatCounter’s new Global Stats report, Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon are sending a significant volume of traffic to websites. Hopefully you’ve already established a presence for your brand/website/company on those channels and the report will not come as too much of a surprise.

Facebook is the primary driver of traffic to goblal websites with half (48%) of social media hits followed by StumbleUpon (25%) and Twitter (10%). Others rounding out the list of top sources include YouTube (6%), reddit (4%), Digg (2%) and MySpace (2%).

“From a business perspective the findings suggest that there is merit in having a corporate Facebook page or Twitter account,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “The surprise packet is StumbleUpon, which over the past year has been consistently in the top two Social Media sites in terms of generating global website traffic. Indeed, in the US in March StumbleUpon was number one ahead of Facebook in terms of website traffic generation.”

The State of Content Submission Sites

Mike Phillips — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:14:00 GMT

Content submission sites can garner a fair amount of traffic for a website. So it's good to know where your content stands the best chance of reaching the widest audience. Compete.com has returned new traffic results for March 2009, and the numbers suggest that most of these sites are doing extremely well, meaning they are still viable - if not essential - places to market brands, products and services. Of course the first focus should always be on your company, but you will want to take advantage of free promotional services.

Digg.com remains strong, getting more than 36 million visits per month, according to Compete. For the year, traffic at Digg is up 71.5 percent. The attractive part of Digg is that it is widely used, both in and outside of the Web professional industry, meaning that you have a good chance of making an impact with consumers, not just fellow marketers. The down side is that the very structure of Digg caters to those with connections and those who know how to make the system work for them. Otherwise Digg can take a lot of effort and time to be truly effective.

Twitter is far and away the fastest growing network online, both in terms of traffic and overall industry buzz. The site is up to 14 million uniques per month, up from 8 million last month (a 76 percent increase) and up more than 1,200 percent this year. There's no denying that Twitter is an important place to submit content, or at least have a presence. Be sure to take advantage of URL shortening services like bitl.y, cli.gs, or budurl to track how (and if) your content spreads through Twitter.

Then there are the rest. There are may niche content submission sites and some of them may hold real value, depending on your industry or focus. But for general purposes it makes sense to focus on those with the widest reach. Below is a chart from Compete.com analyzing five popular submission sites and their current traffic data: Newsvine, Propeller, Mixx, StumbleUpon and Reddit. (Article continues below)

Reddit holds the overall edge, in both traffic numbers and growth, closely followed by StumbleUpon. It's also interesting to see that Reddit has a very steady growth pattern, usually indicating a site with staying power. Also note that all but one of these services (Propeller) is experiencing growth. And while the numbers of any of these sites might suggest it's simply not worth the effort in comparison to Digg or Twitter, it could be argued that while these sites are growing, now is a good time to get involved and stake your claim.

It should also be noted that StumbleUpon, while used as a submission site by many, is not necessarily intended to be a content submission site. It might fall under the category of content discovery. And, for that matter, Delicious.com could fall into that category as well. Delicious had over 1.8 million unique visits in March, a 13 percent boost from February 2009.

Submitting content to these sites and establishing a reputable presence (including networking and making influential friends) can take an extraordinary amount of time. Sometimes too much to be worth the return. Therefore, it's always important to use your analytics to closely monitor the returns you are getting for your efforts. If you see that site visits from one particular network are resulting in high bounce rates, limited time-on-site or any other factor detrimental to your overall goals, don't be afraid to jump ship. Or find the network(s) with the highest return toward your goals and focus on those instead.

Reality Check: StumbleUpon Doesn't Work

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:51:00 GMT

I know what you've been told, but StumbleUpon doesn't work for promoting products - much less someone else's products as is the case for affiliates. Parent company eBay is supposedly trying to find a bidder while the traffic at StumbleUpon is at best on a plateau and at worse taking a nosedive. Here are a few reasons why StumbleUpon is a joke, and a few alternatives for acquiring visitors that can actually contribute to the conversation happening in your community and attracting visitors that will actually buy your products and services.

Read "StumbleUpon Is a Joke, Stop Using It" which appeared in yesterday's Affiliate Insider bi-weekly newsletter.

Sign up for one of the Website Magazine newsletters now!

The Complete Publisher's Guide to Yahoo Buzz

Mike Phillips — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:35:00 GMT

Yahoo Buzz has opened up to all publishers, meaning that - like it or not - you need to get involved. The big bonus for publishers is not in getting a few thousand hits at a time, but millions. Yahoo Buzz gives you the opportunity to get your story - your website - on the front page of Yahoo. Whether for 10 minutes or 10 hours, that kind of exposure will garner significant traffic and could make a huge impact on your online enterprise.

How it Works

You submit stories, videos or photos and the public buzzes (votes) them to the top. The top buzzed stories can appear on Yahoo's home page. However, it's not totally automated. While Buzz is determined by voters (among other factors) and not editors, Yahoo editors use Buzz to help determine what's worthy of a cover story on the home page. According to the website, "We also have members of our team comb through all the top content on Yahoo! Buzz and select items to appear on the Yahoo! homepage."

Submitting

Before you do anything, make sure your website can handle a huge spike in traffic, just in case. And think about placing Buzz buttons in your posts so those viewing your story elsewhere can buzz it. The larger buttons will probably work best, especially those with vote numbers if you get significant views. Consider placing one at the top and one at the bottom to give your readers more chances to buzz your story. There are many to choose from and even some custom options. You can find the buttons by clicking the link "Publishers: Get your content on Buzz!" under the submit button.

On the right side of the home page you will find the button to submit. Next, enter your story URL, title and a short description. Select your category and media type (text, video or photo) and click "preview." Here, look over your submission carefully, as you cannot edit the post after submitting. Enter one of those wonderful captcha codes and click submit. And this is what you will see:

Sharing

Now you need to make sure your story gets some attention. Click the "Send" button to open a window where you can enter email addresses to send the story. Keep in mind that it's coming from whatever Yahoo ID you are currently logged in with, and that corresponding email address is what the recipient is going to see. So you might consider setting up a corporate Yahoo account (if you don't have one already) and using that for submissions. This way, your brand will appear every time you submit and every time you email. The email recipient receives your personal message (if any), title of the article and a link - unfortunately a very, very long link. After clicking the link, they get the page with your story, including three different places/opportunities to navigate to your website.

Of course, you don't want to swamp people with emails all the time, but there appears to be a serious benefit. According to the Buzz website, "The Web's most remarkable stories, determined by people like you. Stories are ranked based on your votes, emails, and searches." So, the more friends that forward your email to others, the more likely it's going to get buzzed and move that much closer to Yahoo's home page. And Yahoo must be paying attention to the number of times a story is emailed.

You can also click the "Share" button to submit your story to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Propeller, Digg and Facebook. Take advantage of that. And don't be afraid to promote your story and ask for votes. In fact, Yahoo encourages it: "Tell your visitors what Yahoo! Buzz is and encourage them to vote for your stories (and send them to friends)."

Some Tips

Like anything social, get active. You need to submit several different types of stories and not only your own. Yahoo is pretty mum on the details, but you can be sure that like Digg, StumbleUpon or Mixx, the more diversified and active you are, the better chance of exposure for your submissions.

There is not a "friend" feature on Yahoo Buzz yet, but that will likely happen. According to the website, "In the 'beta' version of Yahoo! Buzz, we do not yet ways for you to connect with other Buzz users. Please stay tuned over the coming months as we layer in more features." By being active, you'll gain a reputation with Buzz. If/When a friends feature is added, you'll want to have some clout - others will seek you out to befriend you and begin the whole process of building communities - just like on Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx and other social sites.

Be vigilant and patient. As you can imagine, the stories at the top of Buzz and those that appear on the home page of Yahoo are overwhelmingly from big-time sources like CNN, The New York Times, Time.com and even Yahoo itself. Yahoo wants to make sure that the stories reaching their home page are reputable, well-written and worthy.

In fact, you'll notice that on the Buzz home page the stories with the most activity tend to have accompanying images - that includes ALL of the stories on the rotating top banner, "Just Added." According to the publisher FAQs, "Yahoo! Buzz currently partners with certain publishers, and as part of this partnership we are able to receive and display their images on Buzz. We will reach out to additional publishers whose content is doing well on Buzz, and invite them to do the same." No word if Yahoo will require those publishers to use Yahoo Publishers Network (YPN) instead of AdSense, like the early publishers on Buzz were required to do.

If your aim is to reach the Yahoo home page - and that's really the ultimate goal here - in addition to following these tips, be careful not to submit duplicate content. Just like it can hurt your reputation on sites like Digg, it's likely the same can be said for Buzz. It's early and you'll want to get in good with Yahoo right now. Submitting duplicate content may weaken your standing in this developing community.

Also see The Complete User's Guide to Yahoo Buzz.

Yahoo Buzz Opens to All Publishers

Mike Phillips — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:55:00 GMT

It's official, Yahoo's Digg-style Buzz is now open to all publishers. Unlike Digg, one of the main features of Buzz is to push content to the home Yahoo page - a chance for publishers to gain a monumental amount of attention and traffic. In addition, Buzz's algorithms take into account search engine popularity (so it takes a little more than voters gaming the system) and there's a push to feed Buzz stories into users' personalized Yahoo (my.yahoo.com) pages - another good source of significant attention. Through Buzz, after submitting you will also be able to share content through Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Facebook and Propeller.

Simply put, Buzz cannot be ignored. Publishers have a big opportunity to hit an enormous audience - far, far beyond Digg or any other single bookmarking service. Like anything else, the earlier you start, the better.

StumbleUpon Enhances Toolbar for Firefox 3

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:01:00 GMT

StumbleUpon this week announced an enhanced version of its toolbar to support the release of Firefox 3, the latest version of Mozilla's Web browser. The StumbleUpon toolbar now has new bookmarking capabilities and has made enhancements to the current sharing and discovery features, taking advantage of some of the coolest additions to Firefox 3, including the Smart Location Bar and the browser's improved performance and speed.

With the StumbleUpon toolbar on Firefox 3, users will be able to import all of their StumbleUpon "thumbs up" sites to their Firefox 3 bookmarks, and access these past favorites by typing text into the location bar where (using an auto-complete function) which will display matching Stumbles. The toolbar also enables user to share sites they like more quickly and see when they recieve new shares from their SU friends.

"The StumbleUpon toolbar for Firefox 3 will greatly improve the way users interact with StumbleUpon," said Michael Buhr, general manager of StumbleUpon. "Previously, users had to search through all of their past Stumbles to find a site they rated in the past; now they can retrieve that site in seconds with just a few keystrokes."

If you're already using FireFox 3, you can download the enhanced StumbleUpon toolbar.