Internet Marketing Tycoon

**willcode4beer** · 06-18-2007, 10:56 AM

Yesterday (Sunday) I received an unusual spike in traffic. My site is mostly developer oriented so, weekends are normally slow.
A check to the logs shows the cause was somebody listed my bubble tooltip page. I've heard of this site in passing but, never bothered to give it a serious look. Analytics showed the average time on the page to be about 2mins so, people may have actually read the page.

The interesting thing was, the traffic spike only lasted about two hours. Things dropped to normal shortly afterwards. A short peak and drop-off suggests that its not really worth investigating further. Since I'm not big on the idea of installing random toolbars in my browser, its another reason I won't bother.

Anyway, I've noticed that alot of folks in this part of the board are always looking into traffic so, I figured I'd ask what are your experiences (if any) with this site? Is traffic always a short spike or is it because of a weekend? Should I just ignore this as a passing breeze?

thanks

**ADAM Web Design** · 06-18-2007, 11:07 AM

My experience with the SEFL site and StumbleUpon is that people do tend to stick around. There's usually an initial spike (like you got) which peters off into a consistent daily traffic count. Mine went from 1000 visitors in a 14-hour period to about 100 per day and remains there.

Good on you. You got out of SU the same thing that I did (and that everyone else is supposed to get.)

**willcode4beer** · 06-18-2007, 04:58 PM

Cool, thanks.
I checked my stats this afternoon, I am seeing the steady traffic now. Interesting thing is, the average time on the page is increasing. So, maybe the random stuff I spew out is being found useful
:-)

**vangogh** · 06-19-2007, 03:06 AM

Paul what Adam describes is just what's supposed to happen. Someone liked the page submitted it and others must have given it a thumbs up. As long as people continue to like it you should keep seeing traffic.

I haven't been as successful with SU as either of you, but I have noticed stumblers actually tend to look at your page and also tend to click on at least one other page of your site. They have for me anyway.

**willcode4beer** · 06-19-2007, 08:13 AM

Wow, I missed that. Analytics shows the bounce rate for that page at 33% which is quite a bit lower than my site average of around 50%.

One funny thing is, I noticed that adclicks from analytics and adsense are way out of whack with each other. I've got that wacky script to set ads as 'goals'. I know the script can't be 100%. All I can think is, maybe those people are heavy ad clickers and don't get counted :-)
Of course, only a few dozen ad clicks isn't anything to worry about.

It will be interesting to see if any of the visitors find the information useful or find something to ad. I'll have to run a link back check in a few weeks (if I don't forget).

BTW, I forgot to mention. I've been out for a week for fun in the sun at the IBM Rational Conference down in Orlando. I swear, a developer conference is like cramming a whole semester of school into a single week (only more educational).

**ForrestCroce** · 06-19-2007, 09:41 PM

They've sent a lot of traffic my way, but it comes and goes. The graph looks like a roller coaster. Typically it's a page at a time, and it seems to last a few days and then taper off.

It has nothing to do with anything I do; a page I haven't touched in three months is as likely to get a spike of traffic as one I just published. I just went back and joined a couple of groups ( photography, digital photog, portrait photog, etc ) hoping that will draw more visitors to have a look at my site, but I kind of doubt it.

I've noticed that while Stumble traffic drops off after a few days, I get a steady trickle of visitors to a page that used to be popular. My North Vancouver page fell out of Google's index entirely, got a few thousand stumbles, and now I get 15 to 20 views on that page every day. Some from forums I've never heard of, some from Google Images, and so on. My guess is people like what they see and create some organic links.

Adam is right ... you got a nice reward you didn't ask for, for putting together a good site with good information that people actually find useful, and enjoy visiting. That's exactly how SU is supposed to work, if people don't kill and bury it with exchange programs.

I kept seeing them in my referral logs, so I had to sign up for an account, even though I really hate toolbars in my browser. I don't have Google's, Alexa's, or any of the ones that don't come built in. But ... when I'm putting a page together, and can't decide between two ways of doing something, if one is likely to bring in more semi-targeted traffic than the other, all else being equal, that's probably the winner.

**jontu** · 06-20-2007, 04:03 AM

Some people send a message to my inbox in stumbleupon saying that they liked my page and given a thumbs up. They also insist to do the same for them. Is it a good thing to get traffic like this?

**vangogh** · 06-20-2007, 04:07 AM

I tend to think the people who say they gave you a thumbs up and ask for one in return have only visited so you'll give them the thumbs up. Chances are they didn't actually give you anything.

**Learning Newbie** · 06-20-2007, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jontu

Some people send a message to my inbox in stumbleupon saying that they liked my page and given a thumbs up. They also insist to do the same for them. Is it a good thing to get traffic like this?

Send then an email back that says "Thank you for the vote of confidence in the information I publish! I'm glad you found it helpful. I'll have a look at your site when I finish writing it, and you can rest assured I'll give you a thumbs up if your site merits it."

Pretend there's no social media sites. You just got a spam email from someone asking you to promote their site. Now back to reality, and there is a Stumble On site. It's there so people can channel surf good sites. Not so spammers can spam more people. Not so people are forced to watch **** commercials like a captive audience in the DMV.

And no, it's not a good way to get traffic at all. If your site is crappy and doesn't deserve traffic, it means you'll have thousands of new people laughing at you every day. I don't know about your site, but the guy who spammed you can't get anyone to look at his site without spamming, so for him, it's a stupid waste of time.

I used to use Stumble On all the time. Really great political info in there, when you can find it. But all these threads about using it for SEO, and I lost confidence in it. I just don't use the service at all anymore, because I don't want my nose rubbed in someone else's poop as it stops being about finding good sites and turns into free spam dumping grounds.

**Learning Newbie** · 06-20-2007, 05:26 PM

Oops, I just realized I called it "Stumble On" instead of "Stumble Upon" twice. That's what happen when you don't use something for a couple months, I guess.