I am not officially open for business as you can see from the sad state of these pages but this afternoon I checked my stats and noticed that I was starting to get a lot of visitors from this page on StumbleUpon. Andy Beard, one of the most interesting search engine optimization bloggers I follow, apparently found my site via the magic of the Internet and reviewed it. This link has sent me 56 unique visitors so far today (not huge but seeing as my biggest previous day was 6 uniques it still feels like hockey-stick growth). The moral of the story: a powerful reputation (Andy) + a powerful social network (StumbleUpon) = traffic.

If I were really on the ball I would challenge all other SEO/marketing blog gurus (e.g. , Michael Gray, Rand Fishkin, Aaron Wall, Tadeusz Szewczyk, Lance Loveday, Dazzlin Donna, Bill Slawski, Tropical SEO, Dosh Dosh, anyone on Sphinn, etc.) to see if they could do better with a StumbleUpon review. But really I am not open for business yet…so don’t do anything crazy. Honest.

9/25 Update: If you want to see how this whole crazy thing got started check out How To Get to the Top of Sphinn on Your First Try. If you want to see how much traffic this whole thing generated look at my stats here.

Share This Story!

About Author

12 Response Comments

  • Matt McGee  September 21, 2007 at 12:15 am

    Well hurry up and open for business, would ya Andrew? 🙂

  • Andrew Shotland  September 21, 2007 at 12:20 am

    Nice to see you Matt. This is the special pre-opening event. For VIPs and insomniacs only. 🙂

  • Tad Chef  September 21, 2007 at 12:37 am

    Sounds like shameless flattering to me! While I found this article via Sphinn (not by following my backlinks) I still like the idea of it. Just yesterday I was wondering if my StumbleUpon authority is anyways near the number where I can send a siginificant wave of traffic to a site I review. As I do not review my own sites and reviewing my own blog posts does not work out I am really interested in the outcome.

    I agree that SU has the power to really drive traffic to your site. On a side note: Stumbling homepages does not bring as much traffic as stumbling relevant articles.

  • Andrew Shotland  September 21, 2007 at 12:57 am

    Bienvenido Tad! A little shameless flattery can work wonders especially if it’s sincere. Glad you liked the post. I can always change the headline to “The Power of Tad Cef & StumbleUpon” if you supply the goods 🙂

  • Andy Beard  September 21, 2007 at 5:29 am

    You know that 3MB image of the kids doesn’t load very fast.

    I just discovered the site, not a particular article, so it is unlikely to gain a lot of traffic

    I suppose it is a little premature to really judge the amount of traffic, as whatever might be credited from my account might take a while to filter in the system.

  • lou  September 21, 2007 at 6:59 am

    Get open for business bro…Time to start ringing the cash register. I have a few friends/business owners who need what you got!

  • Leslie  September 21, 2007 at 7:54 am

    As someone who just invested in “The Savvy Girl’s Guide to Online Networking (Or what would Jane Austen do?), it’s clear that I need my online networking advice either 1. wrapped in chic lit packaging…or 2. put forth in straightforward, no bulldinkie lingo from someone like Andrew Shotland. See you in cyberspace old friend! Leslie Billera

  • Andrew Shotland  September 21, 2007 at 8:16 am

    Point taken Andy. The kids have been reduced. BTW it looks like you sent a few more while I was snoozing.

    Welcome Lou & Leslie!

  • aimClear (marty)  September 21, 2007 at 2:28 pm

    We’ve experienced 5000 visitors from 2-3 Stumbler’s of Andy’s stature taking hold of our content. Welcome to the jungle!

  • Andrew Shotland  September 21, 2007 at 2:30 pm

    Man now I feel like I am severely underperforming Marty. Perhaps it is the anticipation of the Yom Kippur fast that is holding everybody back 🙂

  • Tinu  September 22, 2007 at 6:51 pm

    He’s sent me over 500 before. Then Maki did too and I thought my server would break! *shakes fist at server*

  • Vacation Rentals  July 14, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    I totally love stumbleupon or did anyways

    I had a rocking profile that had a lot of great stumblers.

    Pretty much any post I stumbled got a good 10k visitors on it.

    I was informed my profile has been put under review & deleted.

    Damnit to hell! Time to start over (with SU).