I have been enjoying a continual Stumble the last week or so and it has been great to see the number of readers that keep coming in through StumbleUpon. I know a person should not spend a lot of time on their stats but it is fun to watch the traffic spike. All of the Stumbles has me wondering about how to say a simple “Thanks” to all the people that review and give a “Thumbs Up” on posts.

Caroline Middlebrook’s post “Do You Thank Your Stumblers?” was an interesting read but to be honest I don’t like the idea of sending people a message thanking them. I know I get a few of those emails from people and I often get annoyed by them. I don’t want people to consider me a spammer. Not to mention the thought of going through the lists of Stumblers that “Thumbed Up” a post sounds like it would take a lot of time.

I also came across this post “The Best Method To Thank Your Blog’s Stumbler Is” on CompuWorld where they have created a post linking out to the stumblers that have “Thumbed Up” posts on the blog. That is a nice thought, since everyone can use some more link love, plus it does not fill up a persons inbox or get annoying. It does take time to write the post and that is one thing that I have very little of. Not to mention all a Stumbler has to do to get link love from my blog is leave a comment, since I remove no follow from comments already.

Instead of creating custom posts to give link love to Stumblers, or filling up inboxes here are a couple of ways I can think of to thank Stumblers:

• “Thumbs Up” their website as well. Tell them you appreciate them and their hard work the same way they have said it to you. If they don’t have a website “Thumbs Up” their profile.
• Review and submit another post from their website.
• Add them as a friend.
• If you use other social media websites submit the post there. Digg, Sphere etc etc.

Do you thank Stumblers? If you do how?

StumbleUpon has become a fantastic resource for sharing and promoting websites and blogs. One of the best things you can do to make your website friendly for Stumblers to encourage them to give it the thumbs up.

The best way to make your website Stumbler friendly is to create great content. Stumblers love content. This is true of all the social media websites, and StumbleUpon is no different. Eye catching titles, images, and videos can help to encourage Stumblers to submit and thumbs up your page.

Add “Stumble this” buttons to your website or blog. There are many ways to include a “Stumble this” button. If you are using WordPress you can add the Share This plugin that allows people to submit the content to multiple social media websites, including StumbleUpon. You can use the AddThis button like I have on this blog, which offers similar service to the Share This plugin. You can use the AddThis button on more than just blogs so it is easy to add to regular websites as well. If you are using Blogger or another blogging platform you can add a Stumble this button provided by StumbleUpon. They even provide you with instructions for each platform.

Welcome StumbleUpon visitors to your WordPress blog by using the Hello Stumbler – WordPress plugin. This offers StumbleUpon visitors a nice welcome message and encourages them to thumbs up your page. You can edit the message to say what ever you want. If you are not using WordPress, but you can run PHP consider adding a similar PHP script to welcome Stumblers.

Again if you are using WordPress, offer readers a place to go when they are done reading the post. Using a related posts plugin will offer readers similar posts. If you are not using WordPress you can offer readers a manual selected list of your top posts or posts you know are related. This is great to encourage Stumblers to move deeper into your website and possibly give a thumbs up to another page.

By making a few small changes to your website and blog you can make it more Stumbler friendly and before you know it you will be getting some great traffic from StumbleUpon.

I admit it! I did not mean to do it, it was an accident honest. I know I should not have been Stumbling when I should have been working. If I could take it back I would, please don’t be made at me. I don’t need 4 million plus users screaming at me.

I am sure I am not the only one to get this message today. Hopefully they will have it fixed soon. After all we all need out daily Stumbling fix don’t we.

Well it was made official yesterday on the official StumbleUpon blog that my favourite service to find new and interesting websites has joined eBay. While the blog says things won’t change, you have to wonder what the executives over at eBay have in mind for StumbleUpon. Do I like the idea of eBay having access to my Stumbling habits?

If you check out the StumbleUpon reviews of the blog post you have a distinct feeling that the StumbleUpon user community is not very pleased with the whole idea of eBay owning StumbleUpon. Some of my favourite comments:

There goes the neighborhood.Surprise, surprise. “Rumors” indeed. Holy drama, look at the negative reviews flood in. I’m relatively proud of you worthless !@##$$%^ right now.

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

There are some positive reviews as well, but I have to admit the negative ones are more fun to read. If the StumbleUpon blog post is correct we probably won’t see any changes. After all eBay owns Skype and they have not made any significant changes that the average user can see.