StumbleUpon: Is it Worth It?

Posted on by Shari Lopatin

I’ve been hearing it everywhere lately: StumbleUpon drives more traffic to your site than any other social bookmarking service.

But is the traffic GOOD traffic? By this, I mean do people stop and read your work? Do they comment on it? Do they poke around your blog and possibly follow you on Twitter?

All traffic isn’t good traffic

For the past few months, I’ve been experimenting. I signed up for Digg, as well as StumbleUpon. Both are social bookmarking sites. For those a bit newer to the social arena than myself, social bookmarking sites:

  • are like a mix between Twitter and blogs.
  • allow you to follow people, and others can follow you.
  • give you the ability to submit links to be rated higher or lower. The more people who rate them well, the more sets of eyes will see your links.
  • let you leave comments, like blogs.

OK, so back to my original point. I’ve been experimenting. Are social bookmarking sites worth my time? Digg has hardly brought me any new traffic. StumbleUpon has. Check out these page hits (from StumbleUpon only):

  1. This Year, I’m Thankful For … = 49 “Stumbles”
  2. Occupy Yada Yada Yada = 80 “Stumbles”
  3. Top 5 Posts to Develop a Solid Online Presence = 58 “Stumbles”

But I had no new subscribers, no unusually high amount of comments, and no new Facebook or Twitter followers. In essence, these people literally “stumbled” on my site and then continued “stumbling” through more. They probably read nothing other than the first line.

So, is it worth it?

Well, that depends–on YOU. What do you care about? If all you seek are traffic spikes to count in your stats, then yes! StumbleUpon is worth it.

But for me? I’m building a readership. I’m building a community. Traffic spikes mean nothing to me if visitors don’t return. So for the time being, I think I’ll stumble over StumbleUpon.

**If you’re curious about this tool, however, I’ll run a post within the next few weeks explaining how to use StumbleUpon, so it actually works for you. Stay tuned!**

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Have you had any success driving traffic to your blog or website using social bookmarking sites, like StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit? What worked, and didn’t work, for you?

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