I received this bullshit notice from StumbleUdon. You can view it here. I have used this service for about a Month and noticed many things.

1. Increase in spam comments
2. No increase in referrals from StumbleUpon
3. The discover credits work sometimes
4. You only get to use your Udon’s once for referrals
5. They increased the credits to submit a fresh url
6. The forum moderator thinks they live in a perfect world

Overall they can kiss my ass from California to New York! Any service that identifies a web site that violates their terms without reviewing the site is unsystematic.

StumbleUdon should be worried about being banned from StumbleUpon. Why? Who’s actually stumbling? Are they the same group of people? If this is the case your traffic will not increase.

How to use StumbleUpon to your advantage?

I have tested StumbleUpon myself. I noticed that some of the members of Entrecard have told me from my stumble they received more than 100 uniques in one day. I also get quite of few people sending me requests to stumble, review and tag. I must be doing something right.

Tips on getting the most for your Stumbles:

1. Avoid the same people stumbling your content
2. Make friends who are top stumblers
3. Your content must be worth reading and have a little controversy
4. Title must make the reader curious
5. Proper tagging is very important
6. Write a review using your own words and make it very interesting (stop the reader in their tracks)
7. A stumble with thumbs down and a review is better than thumbs up with no review

If your stumblers follow these tips you will see an increase in web traffic from StumbleUpon. Make sure you understand their terms and conditions or you may get banned. Be careful it’s not a free for all.

My 2 cents. Did I mention that StumbleUdon sucks!

It’s not the March Madness you know of, but more like my progress report. March was a great Month for BlogTBT.com. The web traffic and loyal fans have increased tremendously. I am still amazed that since January 23rd, just a little over 8 weeks our popularity and Alexa rank have sky rocketed.

Statistics:

Alexa
1/23 - 12,345,537
3/30 - 93,372

Chart from StatPress from March 15th to March 31st

Targeted Monthly Uniques = 22,823

Targeted Monthly Pageviews = 74,949

Top 3 Referrals
1. stumbleupon.com / referral = 8,824 51.05%
2. entrecard.com / referral = 4,474 25.88%
3. (direct) / (none) = 1,634 9.45%

StumbleUpon has really been the bright spot for my referral traffic. In order to get good results from SU, you need to provide a review that will stop a reader in their tracks. You also need to tag it properly. My average Stumble receives about 100 unique visits.

The average Stumble traffic from the Entrecard forum is around 27 unique visits.

My next blog will be about “How to get the most out of StumbleUpon”

I am exposing some facts about spam that most consider a bad thing. Not the X-Rated you were looking for, sorry. Maybe I will show you a little skin as you read on.

Spam is not as bad as you think. I know it’s annoying to manage spam email, but that’s why we have tools to manage it for us. The good thing about spam is something that many people don’t realize. Web related spam is an awesome indicator that your site is becoming recognized! Yes, can you believe it? You’re among many sites that stand out in front. It could be bots or human type spam. Whatever the type, you’re still getting web traffic.

Webmasters and web authors will tell you that spam is not quality web traffic, and they’re right. It’s just traffic and an indication that your site is getting noticed and found. I would rather have spam on my site than a high bounce rate%. Why? High bounce rates are quick visits, more like hit and run accidents. Spam at times can increase your time on site average, whether it’s a bot or human.

Example Spam Statistics:

Average Spam daily = 30

Average Spam Monthly = 900

Average page views Monthly = 1840

As you can see this web traffic is not bad, but a good indicator that your web site is being found.

What can cause spam traffic?

There’s many answers here, but I will speak about one. The way spam finds it’s way to your web site is from inbound links, also known as backlinks. The more backlinks you have, the more exposure your site will have. This is a good thing.

You can get more info on backlinks by clicking on this link http://blogtbt.com/wordpress/pagerank-and-backlinks-oh-my/

Spam is not all bad, but annoying at times. You need to look at the big picture and realize that you’re doing something right to get noticed.

I know many web site owners utilize Alexa as their tracking vehicle. Quantcast is another great web information company that also provides various tools and web ranking statistics. I use both of these companies to measure my web sites analytics.

Quantcast rates over 20 million web sites and Alexa rates just over 16 million. Quantcast has a great free service called the Quantified Publisher program. This enables publishers to tag their sites and services for measurement. You can then gauge the actual reach, frequency and popularity of your websites, videos, widgets, games and more.

How does Quantcast collect data?

They collect data through affiliations with partners, who include advertisers, publishers, ISPs and advertising networks. All the data they collect is anonymous and contains no personally-identifiable information.

General Analytics:

• Global Reach: 5,793

• US Reach: 3,360

• Rank: 339915
• Monthly Page Views: 17,469
• Monthly Uniques: 5,793

Quantcast provides many analytics such as web traffic, demographics, and geolocation. You have the ability to get vital information on gender, age, and so much more.

Easy to join! Get quantified with Quantcast!

Are you only playing in one advert? You like your comfort zone don’t you?

Big, big mistake. You should never put all your eggs in one basket! The concept of staying with an advert that works is all well and good, but this is making up a very high percentage of your referrals. Why not spread the cheer around. Let’s take a look at some charts, people like charts.

Source: Google Analytics 

Chart Analysis:

Notice a high percentage of referring sites. This web traffic is coming from other advertising web sites such as Entrecard, Social Bookmarks, Project Wonderful, Google, etc. Though the percentage of referring sites is high, I am using 4 different campaigns from different advertising sources.

Social Bookmarks referring web traffic percentage = 35.76%

Entrecard referring web traffic percentage = 26.87%

Direct Traffic = 13.57% (This could be better, but it has improved each week)

StumbleUpon Advertising Budget $4/day = 8.1%

Project Wonderful = 4.8%

Search Engines = .76% (This percentage has doubled in 7 days)

There’s more than 60+ referring sites, but the percentages are not worth mentioning here. You get the point. I have my advertising campaigns spread out using more than one advert. Direct traffic is important as this indicates visitors who are into your niche and return daily to see what new information they can review.

My #1 priority is to increase my Search Engine referral percentage. This will improve my page rank and the value of my web site.

The lesson here is to spread your campaigns all around. It’s important to test as many advertising web sites as possible. I have tested 6 adverts so far and ran each test for 14 days. I am going to share with you my grading and comments for the adverts tested.

Adverts Tested:

Testing based on credit consumption, credit allocation, CTR (Click Through Ratio)

Test time on each advert = 2 weeks or 14 days.

Entrecard: (B) Entrecard has been a reliable source for web traffic (26.87%). The problem with this advert is stability with the web site. They need to improve uptime and prepare for scalability. I am still an active member.

Project Wonderful: (C+) PW has paid me more than Google Adsense in the last 2 weeks. However, I think PW needs to increase their own web traffic outside the Entrecard user base. I am still an active member.

StumbleUpon Advertising: (C) Traffic burst is fast and furious. They need to serve up impressions throughout the day and not in 5 minutes. I am still an active member.

Bidvertiser: (C-) As for a publisher to make money from advertising ads on your site, this advert falls short. I mentioned in another blog that it could be a good service if your looking to advertise your web site. No longer use this service.

Trafficera: (D) Earn time credits by browsing through ads that refresh every 10 seconds. By far one of the worst. I have better things to do with my time than sit and earn credits based on time. No longer use this service.

TrafficSwarm: (F) Another time consuming effort to gain credits, but what’s worse is credit allocation. It takes forever for your credits to be used to advertise your site. In fact, out of 450+ credits I earned, the credit allocation has taken more than 4 days. No longer use this service.

Testing in progress:

AdsFlip (Will provide my results in 11 days)