The Older Geek

StumbleUpon is a website/community that allows you to share and discover new websites. It was started up in 2001, purchased by eBay in 2007, and then sold again. It’s now privately-owned. StumbleUpon is very popular among bloggers; getting a blog post “stumbled” can increase traffic exponentially. I have had blog posts receive upwards of 10,000 hits day!

However, StumbleUpon can look quite formidable for new users. There’s a lot to StumbleUpon (SU): it’s an Internet community, so there are profile pages, networks, and loads more. But at its most basic, SU is a way to share and discover new sites. There’s a very good video tour of StumbleUpon here.

Getting Started at StumbleUpon

1. Register.
In order to use SU, you must register with the community. SU is free to join. You can create a profile if you wish, or start using the website to discover and share other sites.

2. Download the toolbar for your browser.
The toolbar is the easiest and quickest way to manage your stumbles. A toolbar is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer. There is no toolbar functionality for Safari and Opera browsers, but Lifehacker has a great tip for you users. There is a lot to the toolbar:

a. Clicking this button will surf websites for you. Beware– not all websites are suitable for wholesome viewing. You can control the websites categories, though. In the SU toolbar, click “All” and then “Update Topics.” You can select topics you wish to discover. Also, you can log in to your account at StumbleUpon.com to block adult sites: Log in; click “Account Settings,” scroll down to “Stumble Settings,” go to “Content Filter.” Select “Don’t show adult content,” and save preferences.

b. The thumbs up and thumbs down are how you rate websites. Websites that get thumbs up get more traffic. After you click the thumb, it will change color to show it has accepted your rating. If you visit a site and click thumbs up, you may get a Review This Page popup if the site ha never received a rating before. Be very careful about the category you choose for the site– this will greatly affect the rating. If you want to share a terrific web page about cooking, but rate it under “politics” or something, that terrific web page will never see the light of day. Be sure to rate, categorize, and tag the website appropriately.

c. “All” manages the “Stumble” button (see a, above). If your toolbar is set to “All” while you stumble and surf for websites, SU will rotate through all your selected topics, randomly. If you click “All,” you will see a list of topic preferences that you created when you first registered. If you want to surf through, for example, history websites, go to “All” and look for the appropriate topic. Of course, if you do not have “History” as a listed topic, then you must go to your SU profile page (All > Update Topics) to select it.

d. The next few functions in your toolbar depend on your personal settings. You can see that I have Tags (as signified by the tag icon), Share, Info, Favorites, Stumblers, and Tools. You can customize your Toolbar by going to “Tools” and then “Toolbar Options.” The toolbar can do multitudes of things here: share your sites with your pals in the SU community, get StumbleUpon info about a certain page or stumbler, mark favorites, search websites that you have tagged, and much more.

3. Use the StumbleUpon blog button.
Many bloggers, including me, have a StumbleUpon button at the end of every post, to encourage readers to stumble a post that they like. It’s a convenient way to get readers to promote posts. StumbleUpon traffic can sometimes be extremely powerful. I have had my blogs crash from incredible traffic surges! If you are a blogger, grab a SU button to place within every post. If you are a blog reader, do the blogger a great service, and stumble one of his/her exceptional posts.

I’ll have a tutorial on how to add a StumbleUpon button to a blog post in the future. So stay tuned.

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