Careful how you use StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a great tool for promoting your website. But you need to be careful how you use it. I’ve seen advice in so many Internet marketing books about StumbleUpon that could get your site banned.
Like all good things some people just have to take advantage of it and ruin it for everyone. Well, it’s happened to StumbleUpon. I their attempt to eradicate abuse and spamming - a.k.a. “gaming the system”, StumbleUpon has implemented some new features to prevent this kind of abuse and preserve the quality of their service. I know a lot of Internet marketers use StumbleUpon to get traffic to their site. I’m sure many of those marketers don’t abuse the system, but many more will get carried away and in their greed will end up doing nothing but promoting their own sites.
Keep in mind that StumbleUpon is making these changes to preserve the quality of their system for legitimate users. Which is a good thing for all of us… if the spamming gets out of hand the quality goes down and before too long the only people using StumbleUpon will be the spammers - not your target market.
Once you get into using StumbleUpon the way it’s meant to be used, it’s fun and a great way to find great information on the things you are interested in. Instead of gaming the system to get a quick boost of traffic, try participating in the system and adding some value.
Here’s a great article that goes into more detail. If you have been using, or considering using StumbleUpon to promote your site I highly recommend you read this.
Careful When Asking For Stumbles
![[Post to Twitter]](http://donnamiller.net/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter3.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Delicious]](http://donnamiller.net/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-delicious.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Ping.fm]](http://donnamiller.net/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-ping.png){kind=icon}
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Comments
I agree David, but I noticed that some forums which had threads dedicated to StumbleUpon exchanges have now closed the threads and banned such behaviour. I think meeting in forums would still be one of the best ways to meet others who want to do this sort of thing, but I’d advise taking the actual planning and exchanging of site URLs to a private venue… maybe private chat or Skype calls for instance. I think StumbleUpon is onto it now and will be searching forums for their name. Maybe I’m just being paranoid 
but better safe than sorry 
A timely article. The best thing to do if you want to promote your site on Stumbleupon is to set up a cooperative of associates and Stumble each other’s sites. You can set up a coop by starting a thread in an IM forum.