Let’s StumbleUpon This Project.

Generally speaking, the whole principle of dealing with online communities and Web 2.0 sites consists simply of 3 steps:

1) Create your account and login.
2) Write something as long as you leave your URL at the end.
3) Get out!

That’s it. The main motive is to leave a trail or footprints so interested visitors can follow all the way to your site and respond accordingly to your site’s message. I am especially excited that since joining StumbleUpon, I have been getting good traffic from the network and I have to credit Ian Fernando for coming up with the idea for a “StumbleUpon Exchange Project”.

The whole idea of this project is based on reciprocal review and ‘favoriting’, resulting in more traffic and more traffic = more prospects and sales. On a good day, I can have 50 readers based on the MyBlogLog stats. I only started out with Ian’s idea today by reviewing my own blog posts (a bit narcisstic and black-hat). Guess what? Within the last 5 minutes I have a stupendous increase by more than 200 readers. I don’t know where they all come from, but I think it works tremendously well. Just don’t overdo it on your own content but endorse others so you can get streams of visitors from other sources.

First of all, what are the benefits of being a favorite?

In general it provides social proof of your blog’s popularity. If it’s popular don’t you think others will want to read about it? When other members of the same social network endorse you, they are giving YOU unique targeted readers who will view and read your blog specifically for the information you provide. The results are multiplied.

Since now you know a little bit of what I have in mind, let’s start exchanging shall we?

Part 1: How To Exchange

1. The easiest way to exchange favs is to simply leave a comment about this post with your website’s URL in your name.

2. Fav my blog, this post and my main page. Once you favorite my blog through StumbleUpon I will do the same, or show me which pages you want me to review. Please give me some time if I do not fav your blog right away.

3. Add me as a friend, my SU nickname is webmastery within your network so you can easily check my favorites to see if I have fav your blog or site. If I have not done so please contact me, but please allow me some time as again I do not know what the reaction of this project may cause.

Part 2 Of StumbleUpon Traffic

1. Create a post on your blog announcing that you are participating in a StumbleUpon Exchange Project. Prominently include a link to this post to indicate that there is a similar exchange going on at Internet Mastery Center Blog. You can use any link text you want. I do however prefer that you make a new post on this topic instead of putting the link in a old post that is already deep in your archives.

2. You can copy the direction or modify it as you wish to fit your blog if necessary.

What Is The Main Goal?

Again the goal of this exchange project is to simply see if StumbleUpon is really a great traffic generator than the other social bookmarking sites. Is it that easy to get traffic like this for long?

Now other social bookmarking websites, you will need to be in the top X amount to get great traffic. With SU (that I have noticed), there is no such rating. There is a “Recently Popular Pages” page on the main interface, but it changes depending on the favorites that moment. Again, this is what I have experienced so far. If you have great ideas on how to tap on social networking as a group of people, please feel free to comment. As a Chinese saying goes, “Things are better done with more people.” Cheers.

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