Stumble swapping: The good and the bad
Stumble swapping: The good and the bad
It is no secret that Stumble Upon can potentially drive large volumes of traffic to your website or blog over a short period of time. It is also no secret that most, not all but most, people won’t stumble a site if left to their own devices. Getting you blog post or website stumbled can be a daunting task. You can do what many people do and simply wait, hope, and pray someone will stumble it. You can request stumbles from the readers and viewers. Both of those ways are largely ineffective. There is one effective way to guarantee stumbles. That is stumble swapping/exchanges
- How it works
- Briefly the way most of them work:
- Find a stumble swap website
- Register
- Stumble some URLs from a list
- Submit some URLs you’d like stumbled
- Wash, rinse and repeat steps 3 and 4
It may or may not be more complicated than that depending on the website doing the exchanges. There are also several forums out there which allow for swapping stumbles (and sometimes Diggs).
- Determine which method to use
- Like I mentioned before there are both websites and forums to choose from for stumble swapping purposes. Each one works, but both work in a different way.
Forums – advantages and disadvantages:
- Advantage: You can suggest the tags, category, and description for the stumble
- Advantage: There’s a much more personal interaction as forums naturally allow for discussion
- Disadvantage: You won’t get the volume of stumbles you would from a stumble exchange website due to the simplicity of the site
- Disadvantage: Usually the stumbles are slow in coming because there’s a lot more manual “labor” involved
- Disadvantage: Same people and faces stumbling your URLs over and over again and again
- Disadvantage: Are often private logins so the exposure is minimized
Websites – advantages and disadvantages:
- Advantage: The stumble volume is much greater much faster
- Advantage: Very quick process as you don’t often need to submit tags, category, or descriptions
- Advantage: Lot of different people stumbling your URLs so it looks much more natural
- Disadvantage: You can’t suggest tags, category, or descriptions
Common to both – advantages and disadvantages:
- Advantage: High volume of traffic to your website
- Disadvantage: May or may not violate some companies advertising rules
- Disadvantage: If you wish to ensure certain tags, category, description, you need to stumble it yourself first
- Advantage: An initial spike in traffic that wanes off, but always has the potential of sending you more
- Disadvantage: Both methods can be time consuming
- Google Adsense and stumble swaps
- Google is very sensitive to anything but strictly organic traffic. If you take the time to read the Adsense policy there are two things they say which may or may not be of concern for people who use stumble swap sites:
I
A site or third party cannot display our ads, search box, search results, or referral buttons as a result of the actions of any software application such as a toolbar.II
Webpages containing AdSense code may not be loaded by any software that can trigger pop-ups, redirect users to unwanted websites, modify browser settings, or otherwise interfere with site navigation. It is your responsibility to ensure that no ad network or affiliate uses such methods to direct traffic to pages that contain your AdSense code.
SourceI’ve tried a number of times emailing Google to get some clarification as to whether or not they view stumble exchanges as a violation of either of those rules or any other rules. Each time I get a canned response about how they take fraudulent activity very seriously and will investigate all such incidents. The bottom line is that if you choose to use stumble swapping to drive some traffic to your site you may run afoul of Google’s policies. That’s a decision you need to make as to whether or not it’s worth the risk. Keep in mind Google generally doesn’t give warnings they simply enforce the policy and move on.
- Stumble Upon’s “official” stance
- After reviewing Stumbleupon’s terms of use I am unable to locate anything that deals with this specifically. I also went through the archives of their help forums but found nothing there either. I am sending them an email asking what their policy is and will update this post when I find out for sure.
- Conclusion
- Using Stumble swaps/exchanges will definitely drive large volumes of traffic to your site. The real question is how useful is that traffic to you. If no one bothers to view the site then not very useful. If however you hook even 5 or 10 percent of the traffic stumble upon can send you then you’ll make great strides increasing your audience. A key ingredient to getting viewers who will actually read your site is to ensure it is categorized and tagged properly. People actually use the tags to find things they are interested in. If you tag for “animals” and your stumbled site is about “sewing” you can bet it won’t be very effective.
You also have to decide for yourself if it A) violates Google’s (or other ad publisher) Adsense policies and B) are you willing to risk being banned from the program(s). If you largely monetize using things like Adsense you might seriously consider if the risk is worth it. On the other hand if you monetize via direct sales as long as your advertisers don’t have a problem with it I can’t see why you wouldn’t use a stumble swap service. And even if they did there are always 500 more to replace them that don’t have a problem.
Do you use a stumble swap/exchange service? How has it helped or hurt your blog/website?
I don’t monetize my blog so I wouldn’t have any issues there. I’ve never considered/thought about swap sites or doing it myself. Self promotion isn’t my strong suit I guess.
Funnily enough, I found this site by clicking on a link at http://www.stumbleswap.com so it’s obviously working for you
I’ve yet to see any traffic from stumbleupon or any of the stumble swapping sites even though they say I have received a thumbs up from stumbleswappers… but I haven’t been doing this for very long yet so I’ll reserve judgment for a little while longer.
StumbleXchange say that they basically got a thumbs up from stumbleupon. Although it’s against their TOS, it’s adding value to stumbleupon so they don’t mind.
I’m pretty sure the same would apply for Google. This isn’t black-hat stuff; it’s not deceptive and the stumbler gets what they were looking for.
Point I of Google’s policy is referring to a Toolbar that would insert Adsense ads into every page a user viewed but is worded loosely so they have room to move.
Point II uses the phrase “redirect users to unwanted websites” which stumbleupon does not do. As long as you tag your site correctly, every stumbler who hits your site should be looking for sites like yours.
Mikster – Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment! I guess it really depends on the function of your blog and the reason you have it. I’m sure monetization is a huge reason for wanting the word of it spread far and wide, but there’s also personal edification, and a whole host of other reasons to promote your blog. If what you do works for you then I don’t see any reason to go beyond that.
Dave – Thanks for taking the time to comment! I’ve had varying levels of success with stumble swaps. The site you found this link on I won’t use anymore because it turns out they require you to stumble a thumbs up. Any site that requires you to give a thumbs up is garbage in my opinion.
As far as google policy goes – The wording is actually “such as a toolbar” which indicates to me that’s just an example not saying only toolbars. But beyond that if I click on my stumbleupon tool bar and get taken to another site that displays google adsense content it seems to me like I’m being taken to a third party site using a third party software application.
AS far as point II goes you might be right, but I’m not sure.
I used a site called http://suexchange.com
But if you thinking of signing up please use this address: http://suexchange.com/r.php?u=zanedickens
They have a referral system and the more people you have, the more points you receive, which in turn increases the amount of times your site is shown to people who are stumbling it.
Pretty similar to how StumbleUpon does it. I received in excess of 50 000 visitors from a popular stumble from this site.
Please this is meant to illustrative not spammy but if you want to know what works on StumbleUpon:
http://kungfucabbage.com/community/the-simpsons-for-real/
Good luck – if you want a stumble let me know.
Zane – I’m already a member of suexchange, but if anyone else would like to signup I encourage you to use Zane’s link.
I do pretty well on Stumble Upon as long as my sites are properly categorized when stumbled. That and there is an initial decent description beyond the copy and paste from the page.
And I could always use a stumble or 10
I generally dislike Stumble swapping because it pollutes the stumble index with junk. It’s far too mechanic and defeats the purpose of SU’s recommendation engine… to serve up pages that you might like or dislike.
And StumbleUpon forbids reciprocal stumbling as well:
“StumbleUpon does not allow personal accounts to be used for the purposes of incentivization or promoting sites. This would be considered a breach of our Terms.
The practice of sending PM’s encouraging or inviting other stumblers to rate/review sites in exchange for reciprocal reviews/ratings, monetary, or any other form of reward is strictly forbidden.
The practice of actively soliciting a rating or review for a site is also forbidden. Should you receive a PM, or encounter forum postings that breach this rule, you are encouraged to report this via feedback.
Accounts participating in such practices will be deleted and banned, and the related sites deleted and banned from the system.”
Link: http://www.stumbleupon.com/help.html#incentive_pms
Cheers.
Maki – Thanks for stopping in and having a say! I agree, I don’t like reciprocal stumble swap sites either. Especially ones that dictate how you must rate a site. That’s why I give an honest opinion of sites and vote thumbs up or down depending on what I actually think of the content.
As for SU’s policy there are so many sites out there doing this stumble swapping that either they are purposefully turning a blind eye to it, or they don’t get out much. I certainly see the problem with a reciprocal exchange (you thumbs up mine and I’ll do the same for you), but I don’t see a problem with encouraging someone to stumble your site (thumbs up or down, their choice). Either way I guess it’s SU’s rules that we either “live or die” by. When and if they decide to start enforcing those rules a lot of stumblers won’t be very happy.
Found you via SUExchange and found this article really interesting. I just started using SU Exhange and have so far only been Stumbling sites whose descriptions look like something I would actually want to read. If the post ends up being something I don’t care for or wouldn’t want to be included in my profile, I don’t Stumble it. Additionally, I don’t Stumble it if I don’t have a coherent comment to leave on the Claim It message for the user.
Although I do monetize my blog minimally, I see very little value in blind Stumbles through exchanges. I tried out StumbleSwap and disagreed with the format. Blind Stumbles that force a thumbs up are pointless.
My goal with StumbleUpon is to find readers, not clicks. Great article.
Megan – Thanks for stopping in and thanks for the compliment. That’s exactly my goal as well. To find readers.
Heyo, I’m a relatively new blogger. So I’m still splashing the virtual paint on the canvas so to speak, and hoping something interest comes out at me. I’ve investigated a number of referral link sites and I believe any tampering with exchanges to break down the quality of their systems. If you’re honestly rating each site you read, then I see stumble swaps as a time exchange, rate my site and I’ll rate yours-> which is completely legit!
I’m trying to learn more about SEO, web marketing, etc to update an ongoing reference page I’m writing on squidoo, http://www.squidoo.com/web-marketing–seo-tutorial
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