I recently attempted using paid advertising via Stumble Upon to promote one of my blog’s posts. In particular the blog post I tried to promote the Godaddy free private registration loophole post.
The main reason why I chose that post over all of my other blog posts for this paid Stumble Upon case study is because of the fact that I believed that it had the best chance at going viral as a result of how practical the tip is and how it would many people it would help. So with that as a motivation behind my campaign I set out creating it.
Selecting an Interest Group:
I decided to select weblogs as the niche I would target as it was the best fit for what I was trying to promote. If they would have had a niche like internet marketing than I would have definitely used that one instead.
Selecting Demographics:
I chose to only show the advertisement for male and female US visitors between the ages of 18 and 40. Again, this decision was based on the fact that I knew there would likely be less people over 40 years old that purchased domains than people that were under 40.
Analyzing the Results:
I only spent $10 on the campaign which gives 200 visitors because I know that would give me enough data to determine if the campaign would be scalable. Here are the results of that campaign:
As you can see from the image I was off to a great start. On average 3.95% of people liked the post by giving it a thumb’s up compared to 1.05% that did not like it. So with this data in mind I know that if I keep tossing money at this campaign on average more people will vote it up than those that vote it down. Meanwhile the results from Google Analytics show that the only traffic I received from Stumble Upon was from the campaign I paid for which I expected.
However, I wanted to try spending even more money to see if I could get the post to go viral. By going viral I am saying that the post would continue to display without having to pay as a result of the people that first voted it up during the paid campaign. So I spent another $20 and got similar results (more positives than negatives) but still no Stumble Upon traffic came after the paid campaign was over. I’m certain that if I continued to spend more and more money that there would be a tipping point where people would start to see the post regardless of whether I was paying for it or not; however, I didn’t want to spend $XXX to find how many positive votes it took to go viral.
Why I won’t pay for Stumble Upon traffic on a blog post again:
I won’t ever pay for Stumble Upon traffic for a blog post again because I have had free Stumble Upon traffic come in when people submitted my content to Stumble Upon on their own accord. Just a few days ago SuiteJ submitted one of my posts (Thanks Jay) and I got 67 Stumble Upon visitors naturally. Maybe some more of my readers should do the same 🙂 only kidding… but seriously do it please. (lol)
Anyway, I was using this case study as a tool to test Stumble Upon’s advertising platforms and go for an attempt at getting one of my posts to go viral. While I believe this can be done if you’re getting more positive votes than negative votes in your campaign and scale the campaign up by pay a lot of money it isn’t worth it. With that said, I would recommend using Stumble Upon to advertise a website that is trying to sell something (perhaps my WordPress themes?) or can quickly entertain a broad audience.
I’ll of course write about Stumble Upon in future upcoming blog posts, but in the mean time I want to continue to focus on increasing my Stumble Upon network of friends. If you like my blog feel free to add me as a friend! I’ll Stumble posts you write that I really like and I’d love for you to do the same for me.
The favorite posts I write on this blog are the case study style posts because I use specific examples of how I’m managing my network of websites, trying to make more money on my blog or discussing other practical ideas for success online. So if you like this post please share your thoughts in the comments below or better yet why not Stumble this post? Who knows maybe it will go viral for free? 🙂
Hey Chris, no problem on the Stumble. 🙂
I see the same advice everywhere that the best way to get great results is to be genuinely active yourself, add friends with the same interests, and keep the self promotion to a low percentage of your own stumbles.
I find it hard to be as active as I should be, but it’s a good idea to make it part of your work schedule if you can. It’s worth it in the long run.
I wish you would have continued, I would have been interested in longer term results. lol
Thanks for sharing the experience!
Jay
SuiteJ�s last blog post..SuiteJ Vs Bryan Clark: Why The Blog Flipping Blueprint Review Didn�t Happen
I would never *directly* pay for social traffic… it’s often a waste of time.
I’ve found that paying for a top notch article and building relationships in social networks will likely be a lot more cost effective and send 100x the amount of visitors 🙂
[…] Never Pay For StumbleUpon Traffic – I forget exactly how I found Chris’ blog last week. I know it was through a comment but I forget which site I saw him on. Anyways, I checked out StumbleUpon advertising awhile ago and saw that you could pay for traffic. It didn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me as you can just discover your site yourself or have a friend submit it and receive a good amount of traffic. I am not sure exactly the benefits to paying for it from StumbleUpon other than the fact that people may thumbs up it more? Chris found out that it isn’t worth paying for it which he explains why in his post. […]
Hey Jay,
Yah lol… I was thinking about just continuing to spend more money each day. $50, then $100 than $200 etc. until the traffic continued even after I paid for it but I knew that it wouldn’t be worth it.
I was primarily interested in just testing out their Stumble Upon advertising system and wanted to use this blog as a case study.
I think it takes at least $XXX to have a potential long lasting impact. Anything less than $100 won’t cut it.
Hi Chris, Yep I had similar results with a paid Stumble Upon test I did.
People voted positively on it, but they did not convert well into subscribers (my main goal).
One of my posts did go viral organically on Stumble Upon which was great and brought in 3000 visitors. It wasn’t even related to my niche, and was about How To Stop Letting Little Things In Life Piss You Off.
http://www.startbreakingfree.com/226/
That’s one of the interesting things about blogging. It’s really hard to tell what people will respond to!
Some of (what I think are) my best posts hardly get noticed, while a quick throw away post will go viral.
Good topic!
Brian
Hey Brian, I remember that post and agree that it’s tough to tell what people will really like. Yah, I’m going to try using Stumble Upon to help advertise a new website I’m going to be launching and wanted to use this as a bit of a dry run.
Interesting results indeed, but all the way around it was a one-off test….is that really accurate enough for a “case study”?
Dennis Edell�s last blog post..Knowledge Link Love #1: What Are Your Favorite Social Networks and Why?
I agree….my stumble traffic rarely converts to anything in terms of any real activity on my site. While the traffic is nice when i get stumbled, I wouldn’t pay for it.
Kurt Henninger�s last blog post..How To Get Free Network Marketing Leads
OK – I paid and paid and paid for traffic on a blog on SU – The blog was just starting out and I was able to use the voting to help me change the layout and some of the post. I paused and made the changes. I was able to get things to where people did start voting and the blog went viral Months later I am still getting traffic and twitter traffic to the site is secondary to the SU traffic I get.
Will I pay for SU traffic for the blog again?? Well I spent $500 (still sick of that) on the traffic and I am still coasting off it at 1,000 impressions a month SU traffic. So another few months – but ill do the $10 test you did here to improve the site and then kick in for another round but not more then say $50-$100.
So for me it did work to some extent – but I would much rather SuiteJ bookmark a page !
Luke Smith�s last blog post..Mira Mesa Blvd & Lusk Blvd, San Diego, CA 92126, United States (via brightkite.com)
Hey Luke,
Yes I think you’re right that if you do pay for Stumble Upon traffic it’s entirely possible that you can have better results than I did. Besides I think that topics that focus more on a general audience will do better than those focused on a narrow niche (i.e. my blog)
I did a campaign several months ago, but I have continued to submit articles here and there and have gained a ton of traffic from it. I would love to see, however, how many people are voting them up or down.
Jen Brister�s last blog post..How Do YOU Blog?
Its weird, I have had trouble getting traffic to my blog, and then today some random twitter friend said she like my blogged and added it to “SU”. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I got like 80 visitors from it.
I was curious so I googled “stumble upon is it worth it” and I got your article. Looks like stumbe upon is awesome if other people add it for you, but not worth it otherwise.
What I don’t understand though, did the twitter friend have to pay for the traffic she sent to my blog? How does that work?
Adrian @ adriandayton�s last blog post..Anti-pirates Don’t Even Realize