In my quest to review methods to bring more people to my blog, I decided to try StumbleUpon Advertising after seeing it on AdesBlog. I tried it for a period of 5 days with a maximum of 200 per day for a budget of $50USD. They stumble on the main page. The cost is $0.05 per Stumbler. Analyze This! The first half, I did not change anything to my blog.
On July 5, I removed the game banners making the site load a little faster.
On July 6, I had trouble in the night because the bar was all red. It started to stabilized in the morning and I changed a few banners to text link. During the day, I added Auction Ads in the main page for each of the 10 post. This slowed the page yet I had more clicks than with Adsense. I removed it anyway and put it in the post page instead and only show 5 post now on the main page.
On July 6 in the early evening, I added a welcome to StumbleUpon in my header.
I watched the feedback %. It went from 70% to now 80%. I should mention that I started with 80%. I paused it when I wanted to test things on the blog. I guest, I would have more now if I were to redo it.
Show me other numbers
For the amount that I paid, I should had 1000 Stumblers.
This is what Google Analytics got:
During the early night(July 8), I got 1 Stumbler.
This is what my host showed me:
This numbers can be explained. It is way better than my last review on buying traffic for very cheap.
Conclusion
I may had more visitors for awhile but not the clicks that goes with it. Most did not vote or may even decided not wait for the blog to load even if I had put the contest in the header(their lost ;) ). I also watched MyBlogLog from time to time and the pictures hardly changed even when I saw a new batch of arrival of Stumblers from the Live plugin. Of course, not everybody is in MyBlogLog.
At least, the feedback(%) gave me the opportunity to try things in almost real time thus making the blog better. :D I also increased the number of Stumblers that like my blog and that may help it on the long run. I had no real increase in RSS readers just a few more on the first day then went back to normal. It had the same effect on my other 2 blogs(no StumbleUpon advertising on them). Should I chosen another targeting audience?
In retrospect, I should had them land on a post or contest.
If you found this blog with StumbleUpon recently, leave a comment or if you used this method for your blog, tell us if it worked for you. Where did they land(main page or specific post)? You may put the URL if have already written about it.
Keywords: Blogging, Internet, Money, Review, Traffic