Welcome Stumblers- If Stumbleupon Spam is ruining your stumble experience, there’s a very simple way to take care of it. If we all do this, it will simply go away!

1. Give it the red thumbs down of doom, and be sure to select “Report Spam“.

2. Click on the user name in the toolbar- that’s who submitted this junk. Check out their submitted links. If it’s just someone who happened to thumb a piece of junk article, let it go. If every link goes to the same web page, and all the comments on the pages are identical- bingo spammer. In the right side of the screen, click “Flag this stumbler“. Then I find this person to a “spammer“.

Usually a single report or two won’t hurt them. However if as a community we all start to flag this crap, in the same way good sites float to the top, the bad sites will be eliminated. In the worse cases, the spammer’s Stumbleupon account is locked, and their sites and permanently banned from the database. Thank you and happy stumbling.

See also Stumbleupon’s Spam Page

For the Internet Marketers

Odd for an internet marketer to post this huh? Not really. We use the internet just like everyone else, and this junk gives ethical internet marketers a bad name. Here’s why you don’t want to spam Stumbleupon.

1. It irritates customers- to the point when you’re going to have a counter productive effect on your link building and product selling efforts.

2. Stumbleupon’s traffic is primarily recreational. Think about it, your average Stumbleupon user is looking for cool and interesting sites. While you may think so, your keyword matched “Black Mold Removal” site isn’t what 99% of people are looking for. If you wanted to remove black mold, would you go to Stumbleupon? No, you’d hit a search engine. Learn to rank and compete there, or consider PPC. For the most part, recreational traffic doesn’t convert. If it does convert, it’s way below 2%, so you have to get a ton of traffic to break even. Odds are you’ll catch too many thumbs down to ever make it.

3. Server Load- Okay, let’s say you have 10 of your buddies thumb up a post and the traffic rushes in. Congratulations, traffic rush, in violation of Stumbleupon’s policies (Your account, their account, and all sites submitted could be banned). Unless you’ve built your server to handle this (and if you know how to do this, you probably don’t need this kind of advice article), you’re going to slow down, and possible lock up your site. Your typical Stumble spammer is on shared/free hosting and the sites are hardly optimized. So you have traffic but no active site. No conversions. But even if you manage to stay up- reread rule #3. It’s not going to convert.

4. Risk of permanent ban – If you make enough people angry, or someone is savvy enough, you’re going to lose your stumbleupon account. And have your site banned. Is it worth it?

Okay, hopefully I convinced you not to dump junk into the Stumbleupon database. So what can you submit?

Ethical Internet Marketing

1. Cool and interesting sites. Hey, we all find them, that’s what Stumble is for.

2. If you want to use it to get site visibility- take a tip from the the online schools. They put together interesting infographics with pictures and cool facts. We call this link bait- cool stuff that people actually want to see.

3. Speak like a native- or hire someone who does. If I build a German site, I hire a German speaker to write the copy. I can’t tell you how many times I come across some site where some genius mauls English like it’s been through a garbage disposal. Some of it could be spun content (a mistake in any context- trust me Google will find you), or some of it is just someone who isn’t a native speaker trying their best. Find someone who writes well, and hire them, or trade work. If your first sentence is gobblygook, the reader stops reading right there.

4. Awesome Deals – I’ve seen a million kitchen cabinet sites- but hey, you’re offering $500 off on installation with a web special? Cool. Yes, I’ve seen internet hosting again and again, but three months free? Yes, I’d tell my friend about that- and that’s what Stumbleupon is for. Make it worth the stumbler’s time and you might be surprised at the results.

5. Okay, this one is going to hurt. Instead of looking for the latest trick or gimmick- create an authority site in your niche. Provide real, valuable content and the users will come- you don’t have to waste your time keyword optimizing “lawn chairs – blue”. Spend all the time and money you used to use looking for the greatest cash machine on a couple of high value sites, with real, valuable content. Read books, interview experts and really contribute to the field. Then it won’t matter if you catch a thumbs down on stumble or if Google changes their algorithm this week. Your site will still be there. Yes you can rank by turn and burn for now- but do you want to build disposable sites forever? Or build a real business with recurring income?

6. Put it in the right category – Believe it or not, you can lose a TON of readers by posting in the wrong place. If I have a stumble interest in “Cigars” and you pop up a site about kitchen blenders, odds are you are not getting a sale, much less a thumbs up!

7. If you’ve just got to market- use the paid ads with Stumbleupon. I think you’re going to be disappointed with the results, but at least you’re supporting one of the coolest social platforms out there.

For the New Spammers

If you’re that guy who just works his butt off and can’t rank- stop spamming. You can make more money writing legitimate content than grinding away every day building these spam websites. Subcontract out, or start up your own legitimate website and advertise in the services offered sections of webmaster forums- there’s always a voracious demand for content. If English isn’t your first language- then offer to write in your native tongue! Pro Tip: ranking in a foreign language is easier!

Blackhat Spammers

– Well there’s nothing I can say to convince you, because you can successfully game the system (for now) and make money. Stumbleupon links probably don’t interest you too much, because you very well understand monetizing traffic and traffic hijacking pros/cons. The simple fact is you’re probably darn good at your job, because the amount of work required separates the amateurs from the pros pretty quickly.

But let me ask you this. With all the time and effort you spend doing this- you could have built a legitimate empire of white hat sites that make a steady income. And you could be on a beach with a drink in your hand, instead of wringing the last little bit of mileage out of the SEO tip de jour.

Black hat tactics are always a game of cat and mouse. And as brilliant as you are, the search engines employ hundreds of talented engineers whose only job is to close your loopholes. Not to mention the fact that your black hat competition is more than happy to run and report your tactics. If you’re really that smart (and some of black hats I’ve met certainly are)- then why are you working so hard?