StumbleUpon Can Get You Big Traffic and Lots of Links Facebook and Twitter have both been proven to be valuablesources of traffic to many sites, but another potential source that you might be overlooking is StumbleUpon. It is true that in the past, StumbleUpon has been presented as a traffic tool, but the results weren't always what webmasters and marketers had hoped for. StumbleUpon has been changing though. Last year, the company's founders bought it back from eBay and have been busy ever since. They've been listening to users and playing catch up to the rest of the social media world and are now doing more for sites' traffic than ever before. Have you seen much traffic from StumbleUpon in the past? How about more recently? Tell WebProNews readers. At the recent SMX Advanced show in Seattle, WebProNews had a discussion on this very topic with Internet Marketing consultant Brent Csutoras. You can watch the entire conversation in the following clip.
In the past, Brent says you would get maybe three to five thousand visitors from StumbleUpon. "It was interesting, but it was just a little bit of traffic. It wasn't enough to really drive a lot of time spent within the site," says Csutoras. Users were only getting random content, and it wasn't all that great for links and targeted traffic, although it was always easy to see the potential of the technology. Now since StumbleUpon has become more web-based this year with features like a web-based toolbar, a navigational section with popular & related content, StumlbeUpon buttons for webmasters to add to their sites, etc., the company has been driving people to participate and interact with other users more.
According to Csutoras, StumlbeUpon went from 5 million users last year to 8 million this year, and they are now drawing a more social userbase that is prone to sharing content. So What Does This Mean for Your Traffic? Well, Csutoras says StumbleUpon is now capable of sending anywhere from thirty to two hundred thousand unique visitors over a period of a week. He knows this because he's seen it (the example is mentioned in the interview). Fortunately for webmasters and marketers, it doesn't end there either. When StumbleUpon users are stumbling through content and they come across your content and like it, they are apt to share it through another network like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. That's the beauty of the social web (and also a good reason to include as many sharing options on your content as possible).
If you weren't already getting enough links from StumbleUpon, this opens the door for many more links as your content is spread from network to network - from reader to reader. This is basically (at least partially) where social media fits into the SEO equation. Get Users to Stumble Through Your Content StumbleUpon also has a partnership program, which Csutoras says is likely to expand (and apparently requires you to have 3,000 indexed pages within StumbleUpon). What this program does is allow you to place StumbleUpon's technology on your site, so that readers can go through more of your content without actually being directed back to StumbleUpon at all. That means more time spent on your site. Interesting Social Advertising Opportunities StumlbeUpon also has a program where you can directly advertise through stumbles. Earlier this year, I interviewed the company's VP of Business Development, John Bryan about this. Advertising through stumbles, means people get to vote ads up and down just like any other content. Not a bad way to gauge how effective an ad is. Wrapping Up So the moral of the story is, StumbleUpon has the potential to send some good traffic your way. It's probably not going to happen all by itself though. You're going to have to push it a little bit, and I don't mean by spamming StumbleUpon. Create good content that people want to share. It's the same principal that applies to every other facet of social media (and search engine) marketing. People will share what they like. Give them something to like. Also make stumbling a clear option on your content. Give them that button. How have you encouraged users to stumble your content? Tell us what has or hasn't worked for you.
Amazon Ends Affiliate Program In Hawaii Amazon.com is continuing with its policy to abandon its affiliates program in any state that even considers legislation that would force the online retailer to collect and pay sales tax. Rebecca Madigan This time Amazon has eighty-sixed its affiliate program in Hawaii. Amazon informed its affiliates Monday, in an email, it was ending its relationship with residents in Rhode Island over a tax collection law passed by the general assembly. The company has also terminated its affialte program in North Carolina due to similar proposed legislation. Amazon notified it Hawaii affiliates of its decision in an email. "We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of the uncertainty and timing of a veto, and the possibility that a veto could be overridden. The governor has until July 15 to veto the bill but, as indicated, the bill has an effective date of July 1," the e-mail said. "In the event that Hawaii's governor vetoes this tax collection scheme, and that veto is not overridden, or in the event the law eventually is repealed, we would certainly be happy to re-open our associates program to Hawaii residents." Other states considering similar legislation include California and Connecticut. New York passed such legislation last year, and Amazon has begun collecting sales tax there as it challenges the law in court. "It's one of those things that on the surface looks interesting, but we believe the states are just shooting themselves in the foot," Rebecca Madigan, the founder of an affiliate trade group called the Performance Marketing Alliance told The Wall Street Journal.
The New Firefox Has Arrived Update: Mozilla is showing the real-time downloads of the new Firefox. It should approach a million downloads (worldwide) very soon:
Original Article: Mozilla has unleashed version 3.5 of Firefox, which is being described as a "major update." The new version is said to significantly boost performance while supporting a wide variety of web standards. "So much is happening on the Web right now, it's a great time for browsers. Firefox 3.5 brings together the most innovative Web technologies and delivers them in the most complete and powerful modern browser," says Mozilla CEO John Lilly.
What's NewPerformance Firefox 3.5 includes the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which Mozilla says delivers "unprecedented" performance with today's web apps. It's over twice as fast as Firefox 3 and ten times faster than version 2.
Open Video and Audio Video and audio content can be played from within the browser without the need for plug-ins. Firefox 3.5 comes with the first native integration directly into the browser. "Now everyone can easily watch open format Ogg Theora videos," says the company in the announcement. You can even right-click on videos and save them to your desktop, just as if it were an image.
Location Aware Browsing Location Aware Browsing allows websites to ask you where you're located, and if you choose to share your location, it can use that information to find nearby points of interest and return additional, useful data like maps of your area.
Before you freak out, it's all optional - Firefox doesn't share your location without your permission. In fact, this version of Firefox is more focused on privacy than ever. Privacy Controls With this version, you can use the new "private browsing" mode (available in the tools menu), and nothing will be stored during your browsing session. There is also a "forget this site" feature, that lets you remove "every trace" of a site from your browser.
If users want to remove all private data or activity from the past several hours, they can "clear recent history." To see these new features (and more) in action, watch the following clip:
Firefox 3.5 is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It's also available in over 70 languages. It can be downloaded from here.
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