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This is the second part of Caroline Middlebrook Traffic Tips on Getting Traffic from StumbleUpon Lessons I. I post the first part at the last update of this earn money blog. Are you ready to reading this second part of traffic lessons? Here you go…

How Much Traffic Are We Talking About?

That sounds great in theory but does it really happen that way? Oh yes it does! But what is perhaps even more compelling about StumbleUpon is that you don’t need every page to take off virally to see some very good traffic. Even a handful of votes can bring hundreds of visitors to the page and with good content this can happen over and over again.
Let me give you some concrete examples from my own blog at http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/ which has been running since September 2007. I have made a video showing a look into my Google Analytics account for my blog:

I have highlighted the traffic for a six month period from 19th September 2007 to 19th March 2008. In that time my blog received a total of over 135k visits but what is amazing is that StumbleUpon sent me over 40k of those visitors! What is even more incredible is that one single page brought in 23k of those visitors purely from StumbleUpon – that is the power of the viral nature of StumbleUpon!
If you can learn to tap into that and create the kind of content that goes viral and you can bring huge amounts of traffic to your site. That is what the rest of this course is all about.

Brand New Site? No Problem!

In the bad old days before social media most people who set up a website would be looking at either search engines or Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns as their main sources of traffic. PPC is not ideal because you have to pay for it so of course most people want to get lots of search engine traffic which is free.
The problem with attempting to get search engine traffic is that the biggest factors that affect ranking are biased against the new site. To start with Google trusts old domains and does not like brand new ones. When you start a brand new domain Google will often put it in a ’sandbox’ which means that it will rank lower for some time until Google has had a chance to develop trust with that domain and this process usually takes several months.
The second problem is that if two pages are competing on the same keyword phrase, with all on-page factors being equal, Google looks to the quantity and quality of inbound links to the site. It is very difficult for a brand new domain with 0 links to compete with an established one. My blog now has over 8,000 inbound links so I am starting to see some search traffic now. Note that StumbleUpon can actually be used to build backlinks to your site. You’ll learn about that in lesson #16.
StumbleUpon does not care how old your site is. It will send traffic to a site that is an hour old if the content is good. The only thing that matters with StumbleUpon is the content on the page, and the users that see it and how they vote. Okay it is slightly more complicated than that but my point is that StumbleUpon is an excellent way of kick-starting your efforts to drive traffic to a brand new site.
Want proof? Since releasing Traffic Rush I have launched another blog Life Should Feel GOOD! I launched this on July 27th 2008 and by August 15th it has got over 1300 visitors from StumbleUpon. Check out this video showing the stats:

Crowded Niche? Even Better!To Get Traffic You Must USE StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is not one of those services that can be ‘gamed’. Don’t think you can just signup for an account, submit all your own stuff and sit back and wait for the traffic to roll in. That is a great way to get exactly zero traffic, get your domain blacklisted on StumbleUpon and your account banned!
No, to be able to build up that rush of traffic that this course is all about, you need to really use the system and learn how to use it properly. This takes time and effort and if you want to get the most out of this course you will need to follow along with the action items that I give you.
Let me sidetrack for just a moment here. I could have put all of this information together in an ebook but the problem with ebooks is that they rarely get read in their entirety and even in those rare cases when somebody does read the whole thing, even rarer still is the person who will take solid action based on what they have read.
Like anything else in life, to get results you need to put some effort in and it is no different with StumbleUpon. I’m going to show you exactly what to do, but you need to actually do it! At the end of each lesson I will put a series of action items. These are actions that you need to take in order to get the best results. Some actions such as signing up to StumbleUpon and getting the toolbar installed are one-off items. Others will be on-going; actions to be repeated on a regular basis.
A good example of an on-going action is using the StumbleUpon toolbar. You’ll want to do this every single day. Over the rest of this course I will teach you how to use it in better and more efficient ways but I want to get you into the habit right now of using it. Let me emphasise once more – if you do not use StumbleUpon as an end user, you will not benefit properly from the traffic that it has the potential to drive and you risk getting your domain and account banned!

Getting Started with StumbleUpon

I’ve made another video for you here which gives you a very brief introduction to using the StumbleUpon toolbar. At this point you are not doing anything to drive traffic – you are just laying the foundation here but this is crucially important.

In the video I mention that StumbleUpon only supports either Internet Explorer or Firefox. However, it also supports the Flock browser which is built on the Firefox engine. If you are not using one of these three officially supported browsers there is a workaround in the form of a web based toolbar. Visit this article on the Digital Inspiration blog for instructions and a demonstration of it working in Opera and Safari.

Wait! Think About Your Username!

If you are already on StumbleUpon then skip this paragraph as it is too late for you! However if you haven’t signed up yet then please stop and think carefully about what username you would like to use. The username makes up part of your brand and I will be talking more about this in lesson #5 when I discuss your profile. Here’s a few do’s and don’ts to think about:
• Do make your username pronounceable
• Don’t fill it with random characters
• Do make it memorable
• Don’t stuff it with keywords
My username is cmiddlebrook and as you can see, it’s just my name. If my brand was this course then I might have been “trafficrush” instead.

Action Items for Lesson #1

1. Sign up for a StumbleUpon account
2. Download and install the StumbleUpon toolbar
3. Select a few interests for your profile
4. Start Stumbling! Do this every day (on-going action)

Coming up in Lesson #2
Lesson 2 is all about creating content that gets stumbled. As you saw in today’s video, I am very quick to stumble onto the next site and I am a typical StumbleUpon user. It is crucial that you get people to stay on your site and click the thumbs up button. There are a great many factors that affect the likelihood of a page being thumbed up. I already mentioned one of them – slow loading pages don’t do well! In lesson #2 I’ll break down all those factors for you.

Can’t wait for the next lesson? Purchase the full Traffic Rush course and get instant access to all 20 basic and advanced lessons!