Compare the following two graphs taken from Google Analytics.
Hits from StumbleUpon
Hits from Digg
At first glance, an appearance on Digg.com looks great! All those lovely hits. 5 times more in a few hours than StumbleUpon sent over a few days. What you don’t see there is the bounce rate. That is the rate at which people visit your site and never come back.
According to Google Analytics, the StumbleUpon bounce rate is 29.94% while a whopping 77.58% of Digg users visit once and leave. I’d rather have the visitor who comes to my site, browses around and then hopefully subscribes.
It’s also easier to gain attention on StumbleUpon and it is likely to continue to send traffic to your site long after your Digg submission disappears into the nether regions of that site never to see the light of day again. That bump on the StumbleUpon graph a few days later was yesterday as people came back into work after the weekend.
In this example, there’s a large difference between the number of visitors Digg and StumbleUpon sent, but StumbleUpon can send you a torrent of traffic too. After I stumbled Grandad’s How to survive your first Guinness post, his site received an extra 16,000 hits plus his subscriber count jumped by a few as people enjoyed what they read.
So, sign up on StumbleUpon and add me as a friend and I’ll pop by for a visit.
Update! Grandad sent me a graph of his traffic over the last month. That big spike is the “StumbleUpon Effect”, but the extra traffic afterwards is more interesting. That’s from his new-found regular readers. Glad I could help!
You stumbled my post on the 10th of October [for which I am eternally grateful!], and I am still getting traffic, though it has died down to a trickle at this stage.
Since the 10th, I have had 32,500 referrals to that one page!! I reckon my overall regular readership has risen by around 400% since then
Crikey, that’s some amount of traffic, but I think that post should be compulsory viewing for any Americans who visit Blarney. It should be pinned to the wall of all the pubs here. 🙂
Great post, been a fan of stumbleupon for a long time now, I think it often gets overlooked… not sure why except that maybe it’s just not ‘trendy’ enough…
Dear Santa,
I have been a good girl ALL year. Please do you think that ‘stumbleupon’ would fit in my stocking? 😉
I always thought that the traffic from Digg wasn’t as ‘sticky’ as other sources. You’ve inspired me to check out StumbleUpon!
Donncha thanks, I’m sorted! 🙂
Refreshing look at StumbleUpon traffic. I have been using it for many months now off and on. I used to get thousands of visitors from it, but that has died down. I have added you to friends.
I wonder if it is possible to resurrect my reputation on StumbleUpon to be able to send more visitors?