How to Promote your Web Site
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As my newsletter readers will know, I recently began to offer an online version. All I did was put a very basic plain page up and linked to it as an alternative to reading the text email [it also allowed me to do better links].
Of course being the savvy Internet guy that I am, I also went and grabbed a stats project and stuck it on the template for the newsletter, so I could see if anyone was visiting the online version.
Traffic Spike to my online Newsletter [Passive income Tips #14]
On average about 1 or 2 people a day read the online versions but, a few days ago I had 123 visitors to this one.
What happened?
Someone bookmarked it on StumbleUpon.
Here’s the link where the traffic came from. A guy named Mike Levin bookmarked my newsletter…thanks Mike!
Let’s find out a little bit more about Mike…click on his profile in Stumble Upon. Notice the URL beside his photo…connors.com. It rang a bell to me:
“Hit Tail is brought to you by Connors Communication.” from here. Did you make the connection?
I mentioned Hit Tail in the newsletter [at the very bottom]. Mike looked for links to his cool new Hit Tail service [and it really is worth a look, I'll do a full review in an upcoming post] and then sent traffic from his bookmarks in StumbleUpon and Squido to sites that were linking to his company’s site.
I’m impressed, a very Web 2.0 way to say thanks for the link and it shows that his company is on the ball and really gets how the web works [this is even clearer when you actually start to use Hit Tail].
Takeaways:
- Always track your visitors.
- You can promote your site or service or product by promoting other people’s sites…even indirectly.
Another thing that I was thinking about is that there is something cool about the way my newsletter is online in its very plain form, I wonder if that leads to a sense that one has found something that is not commercial and not really meant for human consumption, like it has a “hidden gem” feeling.
It would be worth testing out that theory with a plain text website 
Jon Symons
Obsessing on my web site stats…so you don’t have to.
Thx for the stumble upon link.
btw - did you have a look at their Terms of use - necessary to walk a fine line between their definition of sp$m and that of indirect promotion.
regards
No, I didn’t look at their terms, but I know that in general those types of sites are ripe for spam…I even know that I certain mentor that we both know, “encourages” his interns to bookmark his articles
…only a natural result of the massive traffic that those sites push around.
My experience is that it is pretty low quality traffic, today I had about 200 visits from Stumble again, zero comments, and 1 newsletter sign-up.
For the life of me I cannot figure out how that particular social bookmarking site works.
I was stumbled upon last month and it spike my traffic (+500 visitors in 2 days). They stuck around too, which was great. But I have not been able to figure out how those 500+ people even found the link on stumbleupon.
Can you shed any light?
Nneka, it was a bit of a mystery to me too. I did a little poking around and here’s the little bit that I know.
It is mostly a browser plugin. When you find a site you like, you mark it with a thumbs up from your browser.
You can also use the “Stumble” button to navigate from one recommended site to the next…kind of a tour of the webs cool sites.
If you get a bunch of referrals and you want to find out who “stumbled” your site and what comments have been left about it use these stucture to have a look.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url.php?url=YOUR-PAGES-FULL-URL
So for my article here, it will be:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url.php?url=http://artofmoney.org/business/strategy/how-to-promote-your-web-site/
Otherwise your referrals all come from the home page and you can’t really tell what the recommendation is.
That’s all I know.
Thanks. That helps. I’m going to poke around some more.
Stumble Upon is uniquely spam-resistant. They got the social boomarking gig right way better than most sites. Why? For the very reason that they make it difficult to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes, while at the same time they make it REALLY easy to stumble upon cool sites and rate them. The result is a sort of channel surfing experience that I haven’t had since Cable TV went from analog (fast channel surfing) to digital (slowwwwww). Anyway, I highly recommend stumble upon as maybe the best time-waster on the Internet right now.
As far as my use of Stumble Upon and other social bookmarking sites… yes, I walk the fine line. First, I try to actually tag stories accurately and categorize them under the proper category. Hopefully, people won’t be discovering HitTail unless they’re subscribed to the blog, search or other related categories. Plus I don’t submit every site that promotes HitTail. There are those that are just worth it. Today for example, there’s a new greasemonkey script that was announced that shows you what tracking code a site is running, and they included HitTail. Cool! I think people interested in Blogs or Search might like to Stumble Upon that.
That’d be me Mike
I have to say i have to start trying hittail myself, but i saw some other guys in Holland use it, that’s why i included it ;).
I’ll be trying HitTail myself now and i’ll be blogging about it soon