I thought it would be interesting to do a quick post, just before we begin the 2009 Thirty Day Challenge. Over the next 30 days, we’ll learn a lot – about a lot of different topics. We’ll hear about things like markets and niches, keywords and conversions – and one of those topics will be traffic.
Now this blog is not really focused on conversions – it’s a resource, and as such it gets a little bit of traffic.
A few months ago, I got an opportunity to use a tool to help with bookmarks and backlinks. It’s called “Traffic Bug” – let’s see what happened to traffic once I started using it:
Traffic Stats Before And After Traffic Bug
I started using Traffic Bug in May, 2009 – you can see what happened in June and July…
From an average of about 300 visitors per month (September through May) to exactly 2,000 visitors in the month of July.
Is it all from Traffic Bug? Probably not entirely – there were also a few important mentions and links from the 30DC forums. But the fact is, I got serious about backlinks and bookmarks in May by using Traffic Bug – and this picture is worth at least a thousand words…
When we’re learning about the important of bookmarks, directory submissions and backlinks, remember how important they really are when it comes to YOUR site’s traffic.
And best of luck to you throughout the 2009 Thirty Day Challenge
Time to watch today’s videos: Approximately 17 minutes.
Additional time to complete today’s action steps: If you have never created any social bookmarking accounts – or want to create new ones, this could take 1-2 hours. Most of that time would be in account creation. Bookmarking your posts, once you’re all set-up with Social Marker usually takes 15-20 minutes…
Thirty Day Challenge Transcripts and Training are available below each video.
Learn effective ways to use Social Marker and get to know some of the social bookmarking sites.
Then submit your blog post to various bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Twitter and StumbleUpon. There are many others – but it’s a good idea to make sure that the content you want to bookmark fits some of the other sites.
For instance, Digg is really geared toward news and technology posts. A post about crochet, may not go over very well there. 🙂
Social Marker – Click here to start using Social Marker.
Go ahead and add the Social Marker button to your toolbar in Flock/Firefox. It will speed up the process by importing some of the web page details for you.
You may notice the handy little buttons below – they are there to make it easy for you to socially bookmark THESE posts. It’s something that you should get used to doing, not just to your own content – but also to other content and posts that you find helpful and/or interesting. Go ahead – give it a try when you’re ready. At some point, I’ll do a quick post to explain how I added those to this wordpress blog…
Today, as the video opens with some awesome sounds from a V18 amp head in the background – Ed lets us know, we’re going to be learning about StumbleUpon…take a look at the video below.
Find Great Websites With StumbleUpon
This lesson is kind of a tough one to do, and the reason for that is StumbleUpon. It’s a powerful tool, it’s very cool – but it can also be a bit of a distraction. You’ll see what I mean.
So, what is StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon - SU Logo
Basically, if you’re in a “discovery” frame of mind – or looking for ideas, StumbleUpon is a terrific way to go through the internet looking for things you like. It gradually gets to know the things you like and the things you don’t like – and comes up with some real gems based on your preferences. The longer you use StumbleUpon, the better it gets at serving up sites that you’ll like.
The reality is, there are billions of web pages out there – you’ve probably only actually seen a tiny fraction of a percent of them. You’ll never get through them all – and you could never search out just the ones you’d like. In fact, you probably have a fixed set of sites you go through and rarely discover anything outside of your “bubble.” And I mean that in the nicest possible way…
StumbleUpon also has awesome potential for internet marketing. We’ll learn more about that as we get into the actual Thirty Day Challenge. Like many social bookmarking sites, the more a site gets a positive rating – a thumbs up – the better it is. This ranking system works very well to connect users with sites based on their preferences. We can utilize that to bring attention to our sites as well.
This should be mentioned now, Ed and the Thirty Day Challenge Team is operating under the assumption that your content adds value for the reader, offers up a solution to a problem or just plain makes somebody’s day. If it’s none of those things, social bookmarking will work against you and eventually lead to your demise.
Take this site for example – does it add value for you the reader? I hope it does. I hope that you’re watching the training videos in their entirety – and then I’m hoping these notes add value as a reference tool for you.
Do these posts offer a solution to a problem? Well, that may be debatable. But it probably solves a problem for some people. By posting summarized notes on the thirty day challenge – I’m creating a reference tool for my own use that I expect will also become a reference tool for other thirty day challengers.
Does finding a resource like this make your day? Only you can answer that one – but I’d like to think I made your day a little bit better. Whether I did or didn’t – please let me know in the comments area below.
StumbleUpon, and sites like it want to add value for their users – and because of that, they don’t want to be victimized by spammers. So they look closely at how people use their service. If you want to avoid being lumped in with the spammers, don’t spam. Learn how to use social bookmarking sites the way they were intended to be used.
Let’s Get Ready To Stumble!!!
Now, I’ve been holding off on this – and I’m glad I have. To review, back in the post “Extensions To Install In Flock” one of the extensions we installed was the StumbleUpon toolbar.
If you haven’t signed up ro StumbleUpon yet, you should go ahead and do it now:
StumbleUpon - Join
Now, let’s get it fired up.
Once I’d installed the StumbleUpon toolbar and restarted Flock – my screen came up with this:
StumbleUpon - Continue Customizing
And the actual toolbar looked like this:
StumbleUpon - Start Stumbling or Sign In
What to do…What to do…Okay, I’ll hit the “continue” button… and here’s the screen I get:
So this is how StumbleUpon gets to know me in the beginning…
StumbleUpon - Select Your Interest
Now it’s time to open my StumbleUpon account
StumbleUpon - Create Account
My user name is SteveH2008 – feel free to look me up if you’d like to be my StumbleUpon friend.
And now my screen shows this:
StumbleUpon - Start Stumbling
AND – my toolbar now looks like this on the left:
StumbleUpon - Toolbar, Left Side
and like this on the right:
StumbleUpon - Toolbar, Right Side
Now We’re Ready To Stumble!!!
The Thirty Day Challenge is all about taking action – so let’s take some action now. Go ahead, click the Stumble! button.
StumbleUpon - Stumble Button
Let’s see what comes up:
StumbleUpon - Nelix Nebula
This comes from www.wikisky.org – a picture of the Nelix Nebula.
What do I think? Do I like it or not?
StumbleUpon - Thumbs Up-Thumbs Down
Now, it has nothing to do with making money online, but at the risk of revealing my own inner geek – I happen to like it – so I click the “I like it” button
StumbleUpon - I liked it
Let’s try one more – I click the Stumble button and…
StumbleUpon - Dr. Grammar
This comes from www.drgrammar.org – and might come in handy if, say for instance – you have to do some writing 🙂
What do I think?
StumbleUpon - Thumbs Up - Thumbs Down
Now, this could actually be a good resource for copy writing – AND I can think of a few people who might like it too – so I click the “I like it” button
StumbleUpon - I Liked It
Enough of my little personal digression…let’s get back to the rest of the lesson.
What if I didn’t like it? Well, I could just click on the “thumbs down” button. Does that deal a devastating blow to someone’s content? Not really, it’s mainly a way for StumbleUpon to serve up websites that I would actually like.
If you use this in a genuine way, any time you come across a page or a post or content you like – you should get into the habit of clicking the “I like it” button.
Now, as I click the Stumble! button – I’ll be going through pages that have already been “Stumbled Upon” by someone.
What if I come across a piece of content that hasn’t been “Stumbled” before?
Man, I am so glad you asked that. Here’s why…
I haven’t done any social bookmarking for this site yet. I’ve made a few blog comments, and started including it in my Thirty Day Challenge signature – but that’s it. So, I’m going to go ahead and “Stumble” one of the posts here that I think is very useful. The “Table of Contents” page…
StumbleUpon - Submitting the TOC
So – that will become part of my routine. In addition to writing up my notes, once I publish the post – I’ll start using the “I like it” button to add my posts into StumbleUpon.
As I was typing this post and doing the screen capture above, I realized that I forgot to add tags before I submitted the site to StumbleUpon. In fact, in looking at the screen shot – there wasn’t a place in the dialog box for adding tags. In the video, Ed talks a little bit about tags – and they are important. But I couldn’t add any – so, now what? I’m glad you asked…
To fix or edit something like that, I’m going to click on the link in my toolbar marked “Favorites”
StumbleUpon - Favorites
From here, I can locate the site I just posted.
StumbleUpon - EditMyPostTags
I click on the “edit” button in the upper right corner of the entry.
StumbleUpon - Adding-Editing Tags
The editor allows you to edit your description, and also add tags at the bottom. It seemed to limit me to 5 tags, I’m not sure if that’s consistent within StumbleUpon. But I wasn’t able to get more than 5 tags to save or display. Take that for whatever it’s worth. Once I was finished adding tag, I just clicked the “save” button.
Of course, if you’d like to practice using StumbleUpon – feel free to click YOUR “I like it” button while you’re still reading THIS post. If it’s already been “stumbled” – that’ll be all you have to do. If you happen to be the first to “stumble” a post – well, you may end up writing a description and selecting a category and tags too.
Now, the homework Ed assigns is pretty simple. Spend some time, maybe an hour or so – and Stumble. Click “I like it” for the things you like, and click the “Thumbs down” button if you come across something you don’t like. This will help you get to know StumbleUpon better AND will also help StumbleUpon get to know you too.
Keep in mind as you start stumbling – use it the way a person would use it, not as a “marketer” would use it. It’s like a bank account. By “stumbling” sites that you enjoy – it’s like making a deposit to your account. If you “stumble” one of your own posts – it’s like making a withdrawal. Make sure you don’t overdraw your account. That’s something a spammer would do.
Let’s wrap this up with a look at the “Channels:” section of your toolbar.
StumbleUpon - Channels
Notice the “Globe” icon – that one randomly takes you through everything.
You can Stumble through “favorites of friends”
You can Stumble through images.
You can Stumble through videos.
You can Stumble through a list of popular websites, like YouTube or WordPress or Flickr – the drop down menu gives you a lot of options.
You can Stumble through News Items.
And the “All” drop down menu give you a host of ways to filter through the items you Stumble.
One thing I noticed – when I’m on this tab in my browser, editing my WordPress blog – the WordPress icon appears to the left of the Globe icon.
StumbleUpon - Channels-WordPress
If I switch tabs to a YouTube video, the YouTube logo appears there.
StumbleUpon - Channels-YouTube
When I switch to my Flickr tab to grab one of my screen captures – the Flickr logo appears in that place.
StumbleUpon - Channels-Flickr
I’m going to go out on a limb and say the StumbleUpon toolbar can recognize the site you’re on and offers up the option of stumbling through items within that site. Pretty cool trick if you ask me…
So go have some fun getting used to StumbleUpon.
And if you appreciate this post, please take a moment to spread the word…
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The actual Thirty Day Challenge began on August 1st, 2008. But you can start anytime. There is some "Preseason" training that gives you a chance to familiarize yourself with basic tools and skill sets that will be critical to your success as you go through the challenge. To get the most out of this free training - join the
Father and Son, 37 and 10 - taking the Thirty Day Challenge together and sharing our notes on what we learn about earning money online...
The Father & Son Thirty Day Challenge|2008 