If you’re reading this blog, chances are that you, at one point or another, asked someone to Digg or Stumble your site. No big deal, everyone does it.

However, while it’s common practice amongst internet marketers to ask visitors to submit your pages to various social media sites, I found a good example of why you shouldn’t transfer this practice to other niches:

First is an excerpt where the blogger openly asks visitors to stumble his site.

No big deal? Well it was to one user who got pretty pissed!! And he let the world know how he felt…

Let this be a warning for the bloggers who (thankfully) write about something besides making money online – don’t ask your readers to do your work for you!

[All usernames and URLs have been replaced by non-identifying information since I prefer not to make fun of bloggers outside the overcrowded 'make money online' niche.]

However, I always point out examples in the internet marketing niche. So I’ll point you to some experiments by AdTracker who did a marvelous study of Stumble Trolls!

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You’re not cool unless you know everything about StumbleUpon.

Which could be why everyone is writing about it, trying to convince everyone else that they are the StumbleUpon Expert. Pretty much every blog I’ve ever read has their own “This Is How To Use StumbleUpon” kind of guide.

Seriously, here’s a freakin list of the posts I’ve read:

• 10/01/2006: How to increase StumbleUpon traffic?
• 12/12/2006: Interview with Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon Co-Founder
• 1/31/2007: Build Super Links and Traffic With StumbleUpon
• 2/12/2007: Understanding StumbleUpon (Yes, even I posed as a StumbleUpon expert…)
• 2/23/2007: How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide
• 3/1/2007: The Why, How and Who of Marketing in StumbleUpon
• 3/7/2007: A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon: How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website
• 4/2/2007: Building a Large Audience For Your StumbleUpon Account
• 4/4/2007: Advanced Stumbling: How to Make a Stumblable Page
• 5/1/2007: Increase Your Website Traffic and Make More Money With StumbleUpon
• 5/10/2007: Five Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling
• 6/29/2007: How to Use StumbleUpon to Promote
• 7/2/2007: Effective advertising strategy using StumbleUpon
• 7/7/2007: Stumbleupon can get your AdSense Account Banned for Invalid Impressions Fraud
• 7/19/2007: StumbleUpon Optimization: Leveraging Photo Stumbles for More Web Traffic
• 8/9/2007: Don’t Buy Traffic, Use StumbleUpon
• 8/14/2007: How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog
• 8/26/2007: Making A Power Account On StumbleUpon
• 8/29/2007: Analysis: StumbleUpon’s Top 50 Stumblers
• 8/30/2007: The Secret Features of StumbleUpon
• 9/3/2007: Interview with a Top StumbleUpon User
• 9/4/2007: A Definitive StumbleUpon Guide: Driving Traffic To Websites
• 9/7/2007: How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother)
• 9/8/2007: Even More Traffic With StumbleUpon
• 9/9/2007: Ultimate Guide to Using StumbleUpon
• 9/13/2007: Writing for StumbleUpon: High Impact Content “Above the Scroll” in Four Easy Steps
• 9/18/2007: The Unspoken Secrets to Long Lasting Traffic With StumbleUpon
• 9/18/2007: Top 5 StumbleUpon Buzzkills
• 9/19/2007: Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers
• 9/21/2007: Stumbleupon Math Followup
• 9/25/2007: Everything you need to know about promoting your own website on StumbleUpon
• 9/26/2007: Building Your Blog With StumbleUpon
• 9/26/2007: 7 reasons why i thumbed you down on stumbleupon

Looks like a good list…

But you know what sucks? As I’m in the process of organizing my list, this list gets posted. Can you believe that?

And not only did that list rain on my parade, it was a total kick in the nuts because my article wasn’t included!

Argh. I guess I’ll have to let this post sit for a few days before publishing it (so everyone can forget about Cornwall.) Then I’ll add some more links to make this more up-to-date, and when this debuts in October (i.e. today,) people can concentrate solely on it

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Now that StumbleUpon has been acquired by eBay for something like $75 million, I was expecting to see quite a few knock-off websites vying to be the next StumbleUpon. But for some reason, I haven’t seen much of anything. (Which is a surprise when you look at the number of Myspace and Youtube clones.)

But I did stumble upon (pun intended) a site called SiteShuffle.

The SiteShuffle homepage states:

SiteShuffle is the NEW Web application that turns your HOMEPAGE into a WEBSITE PLAYER, and gives you the ability to FF or REW through a LINKLIST of your favorite WEBSITES.

PLUS, get automated RECOMMENDATIONS for other sites, based on your similarity to other users in the SiteShuffle system.

Sounds like fun. And quite similar to StumbleUpon, if you think about the recommendation part. It even has a toolbar and a button, just like SU.

The button is just like any other button, like the ones I have in the sidebar on this blog like “Add to Technorati.” SiteShuffle says it is the only “dark and dangerous” button, but I’m not sure where they came up with that. Must be part of their branding…

As for the toolbar, it looks like you could use SiteShuffle without it, whereas StumbleUpon really requires the toolbar for it to be worthwhile. The SS toolbar will help you add URLs to your shuffle list, but mainly I see it as a way for them to keep SiteShuffle fresh in your mind. I guess the fact that you can see your own list or search for something just from the sites in your list is useful (but not totally necessary, especially if you already have 5 toolbars in your browser.)

The site looked promising enough, at least as far as promoting my site to other people, so I went ahead and signed-up.

I started by adding some of my favorite sites to my list. Now when I get to my SS homepage, I can easily FF or REW through my list (using neat buttons) just like they promised. When I get to one I like, I just click its title or the launch button.

(Click the thumbnail to see a larger version of my homepage.)

And that is what SiteShuffle boils down to. It’s not bad, but it’s not that intuitive.

For example, I still don’t know how to get my recommended sites. I keep searching their site and still can’t figure it out. All it says is “add sites to your list and we’ll give you recommendations based on what other people like.” That would be great if it gave me any recommendations!!

Perhaps no one else has listed webmaster sites like Digitalpoint and DoshDosh? Am I the only internet marketer on there?

SiteShuffle has been around well over a year now and I don’t have a clue what their user base is, but the site has a PR6 right now despite an Alexa rank of about 1,225,000. Perhaps if there were more webmasters, the Alexa rank would be better, because webmasters are more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed. Anyway, back to business…

SiteShuffle does offer an API, which could be a big part of their future success. If people build add-ons or integrate it into their own sites, it will increase SS’s competitive advantage to help ward off future competitors. Kind of like how the Facebook platform is making headlines right now.

Last but not least, the affiliate program. Just what I was hoping for!

Actually, I had no clue how they could work an affiliate program into this type of service, but they did it, and they did it in a very smart way. If someone signs-up through your referral link, your site is automatically added to their SiteShuffle list! Nice and sneaky!

It looks like you don’t even have to be a member of SiteShuffle either. Hell, you could hate SiteShuffle, but display their banner just to market your website!

That’s smart because a) they are making it very simple for you to promote their website, and b) they are providing you an incentive by letting you promote your site at the same time!

Overall I think SiteShuffle is a decent site, although it leans more towards social bookmarking than website sharing (which is what made StumbleUpon so great.) Maybe SiteShuffle is actually a Del.icio.us competitor.

I bet we could call it stum.blicio.us instead!

Now go ahead and sign-up for SiteShuffle by clicking here.

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StumbleUpon is such a nice service. It’s easy to use and it works well for its intended purpose – showing you one cool site after another with the click of a button.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, SU is based on user input. As users surf the web, they click on either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to show what they think of any given site. Because there are thousands of users (I think,) it’s a good bet that you’ll only see good sites when you click on “Stumble!” and automatically get redirected to a new site.

While it’s great for surfers, it’s also great for webmasters with a cool site to show off. Just stumble your own site and then it will be shown to other Stumblers. If the site is indeed cool, it will get passed around the SU community. Because of this, some webmasters have been trying to manipulate StumbleUpon by creating “stumble exchanges.” Now they have gone as far as creating membership sites where members can exchange stumbles easily.

The two sites in question are StumbleXchange and Avuw. First off, I’ll admit that I really like the concept of this. The sites are kind of manipulating SU, but if the sites being promoted are cool, this is just a way to speed up the stumbling process.

However, problems arise when ignorant webmasters put their lame sites into these exchanges. They don’t understand that StumbleUpon is for cool and unique sites! Cheesy MFA sites need not apply. But they do anyway! And with enough of these MFA webmasters, they will start stumbling each other and then the common user will start seeing MFA sites. That won’t be good for SU’s image. Hopefully the SU community will start giving the “thumbs-down” to any of these crappy sites though

Here are some example sites I see on SU:

• http://www.pandora.com
• http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/humor/reject.html
• http://www.dontclick.it
• http://www.cs.tlu.ee/~meelis/catmusic/
• http://artwc.org/Billie2/0118FUNNIES/0118.html

I like seeing those sites. But here are some sites I don’t like seeing:

• http://www.splc-isca.org
• http://www.ffpu.com
• http://www.thedollarfactory.com
• http://www.scriptmadness.com (the worst)

Those are actually sites that people expect you to Stumble (via the exchanges.) Some of them totally suck, and some are OK at best. But sometimes the site will have a decent page and for some reason the webmaster submits the home page! If you have a cool page, submit the cool page!

At first I was happy with the exchanges, but now I’m leaning away from them. At least until people with quality sites join in. Or until people read this and understand the point of StumbleUpon!

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