Ask HN: What is your experience using StumbleUpon for marketing?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2222265

by swellular • 15 years ago

6 6 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

swellular3• 15 years ago

I asked because I'm seeing a good percentage of links to our site, but when I click through to them all I get is a salesy page about advertising on StumbleUpon.

On a related note, I read you can buy "stumbles" and readers from StumbleUpon and Reddit, but it sounds like DuckDuckGo and Whiteboard had mixed results: http://tinycomb.com/2010/07/19/our-reddit-ad-by-the-numbers-...

dawson2• 15 years ago

Yeah, StumbleUpon do that with their links, it confused me too at first.

Instead try using http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.yourwebsite.com/

You'll be able to see the review page that people are stumbling from. One one of my websites receives average 200 unique free stumbles per day and I have since become a paid advertiser, though their categories for targeting are very limited, imho.

swellular3• 15 years ago

Thanks.

What kind of results have you been getting with paid ads?

miserabletemp• 15 years ago

Before I bought stumbleupon stumbles I was amazed at the exceptionally high pageviews per visit I was getting from SU. As soon as I dropped real money on it, the PV/user went to roughly the same as everywhere else.

I looked at the "referring sites" (in google analytics) and found that one of the pages was /refer.php which was the advertising page you mention.

I have an unproven feeling that my analytics from SU were somehow artificially inflated or something like that. My own personal experience is that I'm unimpressed with SU.

Others would disagree with me, and hopefully, someone somewhere will be able to convince me otherwise.

swellular3• 15 years ago

Thanks for the insight. Yes, perhaps they inflate the pageviews (somehow) to garner interest and get you to throw down money.

In general, I'm not a fan of paid search since it creates an artificial boost in traffic. It's fine if you're a large company with a big ad budget, but even so, as soon as you turn of the spigit, the water runs dry...

Ask HN: What is your experience using StumbleUpon for marketing?

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