StumbleUpon Uncover the confusion - Part one

Brief Description

StumbleUpon is one of the most powerful social bookmarking site on the web today. I know that a lot of folks may disagree with that statement. Here’s a couple of reasons they will disagree. They just don’t understand StumbleUpon or folks will say that the traffic is not targeted enough. It’s my hope to diminish both of those misconceptions in this series of articles about StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon currently has approximately 3.5 million users on it’s site. That’s not a lot of people considering the approximately 50 million internet users worldwide. StumbleUpon is becoming more popular because of the press it’s been getting about how some people are experiencing 1-3 thousand visitor spikes in a day. So what is this StumbleUpon thingy anyway? Well it’s a social bookmarking site with a lot Umph!

StumbleUpon is similar to other bookmarking sites that allows it’s users to vote on articles. The big difference is the algorithm they use to tally the votes. Users vote on articles using a thumbs-up (you like it) and a Thumbs-Down (you don’t Like it). StumbleUpon then uses it’s algorithm to not only tally up the votes but to also keep track of how long it took you to read the article and then vote on it. So, if you go to an article and you click a thumbs-up before the entire page loads, rest assured your vote will not count as much as someone who actually took the three to five minutes to actually read it then give it a thumbs up. It also compares your interests to others with simlar interests based on the types of sites you have votes for and against.

This is where the Umph part comes in. You can view other member’s profiles simlar to that of myspace. You can see their interests as well as the sites they have bookmarked and reviewed. Now that I have taken almost the entire post explaining to you how awesome StumbleUpon is, let’s start our tutorial about how to sign up and actually use this amazing tool!

Let’s Sign-up for StumbleUpon.com

1. In your Browser address bar type in www.stumbleupon.com
2. When you reach the stumbleupon home page you will see the big orange JOIN STUMBLE TODAY button.
3. Click on the big orange button
4. Simply follow the instructions by filling out your name, email, and birthday information.
5. After clicking the download and signup button at the bottom of the screen. You be prompted to run or save the toolbar. Make sure to click on the RUN.
6. After that you will be prompted again with another screen. Click on Install.
7. You will now be presented with a screen that ask for your interests. You can click on your interest now or you can do it later. I would recommend you click on a few for now.
8. Tomorrow we will cover completing your profile.
9. The Stumble Toolbar will now be installed and your are now READY TO STUMMMMBBBBLLLLEEEEE!

The first thing you must know about using StumbleUpon is that you use it through your browser toolbar. You can use it with Internet-Explorer and/or Firefox. StumbleUpon calls it Channel Surfing. The toolbar is how you “Stumble” sites. As you click on the Stumble Icon on your toolbar a new site will appear for you to view. If the site looks to be interesting to you, read an article then vote either thumbs up Like or thumbs down Dislike. It’s that easy. Now if you just are not interested in the site that comes up just click on the Stumble icon to being up a new site.

That’s really all there is to stumbling someone’s posted articles. Now there are many different ways to increase your traffic, get more votes as well as adding friends and fans to your personal network. This is what we will cover in tomorrow’s post as well as some examples to stumbling. If you are feeling ambitious go ahead and start stumbling some sites. Don’t start stumbling your own articles just yet! We will cover that tomorrow. If you found this article of value, go ahead and stumble it as practice of today’s lesson.