Can social bookmarking sites really bring in a ton of traffic or is it a load of hype? Well I tried an experiment on one of my websites that received very little traffic and this is what happened.
Before I tell you what actually happened, you may already know that social bookmarking sites are a proven way of bringing in traffic and StumbleUpon is one of the best for this purpose. I submit pages from some of my sites to StumbleUpon on a regular basis as I know that it will get me traffic but, in general, not very much. I suppose it’s hit and miss in some respects like a lot of website promotion.
Even so, any traffic is welcome, but until the other day I never thought it would work like it did on a site of mine that I rarely updated. Because of this, traffic has dropped off to less than 10 visitors a day on average but it still pays its way – just. As it is a Wordpress site and was looking a little dated I decided to change the theme and, at the same time, added some new Adsense units and other affiliate ads.
After doing all this I have to say I was pretty pleased with the new look and decided to have a little experiment to see if I could boost the traffic.
This was just a little test using something that I learned from a new ebook called Traffic Landslide. This will show you loads of ways to get free traffic to your website. And free traffic is what we all want isn’t it?
Anyway, one of the posts on that site has been there since August 2007 and never got much attention until I finally decided to submit it to StumbleUpon.
So I went ahead and submitted just this one page to StumbleUpon and got on with more pressing things.
Well, just one day later I was checking my Adsense stats and saw that I had over 2000 impressions on this website alone. Now remember this site was getting single digit visitors only. I then decided to check Google Analytics to verify this traffic and was gobsmacked to see I had had 3509 visitors in one day! See the graph below for proof.
And guess where the majority of these came from?
You guessed it. StumbleUpon!
Out of 3509 visitors, 3237 of them came from StumbleUpon which was a staggering result. I think this had a knock-on effect as I also had another 266 visitors from direct sources which is way more than I have ever had in one day for this particular site. Here’s a breakdown of the traffic sources.
This also had an effect on my Adsense earnings that day and my Clickbank stats were also boosted substantially by these new visitors. Hopefully some of that traffic will return again.
So it just goes to show that submitting your web pages to social bookmarking sites can dramatically boost your traffic – and fast! In fact, I am glad that I only did this little test using only StumbleUpon because I reckon it would have brought my server down if I had submitted the page to more social bookmarking sites!
One thing’s for sure. Buying Traffic Landslide reminded me of just how powerful social bookmarking can be for driving traffic. It really lived up to its name in this instance didn’t it?
And Traffic Landslide is not just about how to get traffic using social bookmarking sites but has many more techniques that are proven to work.
You can find more about Traffic Landslide here:
http://digitalzips.com/trafficlandslide/
P.S. I am now going to submit this very post to some social bookmarking sites and feel free to do the same by using the links below. Every little helps you know. 
Update – 12th October 2008:
Well it looks like the traffic is still coming and I am even getting some from Facebook which is social bookmarking in action. All traffic sources sent a total of 3,428 visits of which 3,170 were from StumbleUpon and 251 direct visits plus a few others. This is a total of 6,937 visitors in two days with 6,407 of those coming via StumbleUpon.
I have to say that today it did not monetize very well in Adsense or ClickBank so it can’t have been very targeted traffic. I cant complain though after the first day which made me something in the order of 100 dollars from all sources. Not a fortune but by far the best day this site has ever had.
Update – 13th October 2008:
Traffic to this page is now dropping off but still very good at 1,627 visits with 1473 of those from StumbleUpon. Word seems to be getting around as there is traffic from new sources too.
Update – 14th October 2008:
The bubble has finally burst and traffic has fallen down to 24 visitors for the day but it was interesting while it lasted and made me some money too. Social bookmarking sites do bring in traffic and some of it may stick around if they like what they see. In general, though, I would not rely on them for long-term traffic.
Here’s today’s traffic graph.
Social bookmarking sites are a great source of traffic but traffic in itself is not the be all and end all. It must be highly targeted too and in this case it wasn’t, but it was still a worthwhile exercise. It makes far more sense to have 10 highly targeted visitors per day than thousands of curiosity seekers. Of course, this article only refers to using StumbleUpon for getting traffic and there are lots more Web 2.0 sites that you could use for bringing in visitors to your website.
One of the biggest problems any marketer faces is getting traffic to their website. No matter how good your website or your product, if you do not have traffic coming to your website it is not going to make you money. But what if there was a way for you to bring in visitor after visitor that was quick, easy and very powerful? I’ll leave you with a couple of links to resources that you may find useful if you need more website traffic but don’t know where to start.
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If you want to know how to use Web 2.0 to bring in massive amounts of traffic this is a great 16-part video course that will show you step-by-step which are the best Web 2.0 sites for getting more website traffic and how to do it.
There are many more ways of bringing in consistent targeted traffic and you will find out about the different methods at:
http://digitalzips.com/trafficlandslide/
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
That a BIG WOW for your free traffic achievement. But, how about the result? I want traffic…. TARGETED TRAFFIC ONLY.
Just make another post about the result from those traffic. I’ll happy to read it and you are the real rock on net today.
Be blessed….
Social Networking sites are indeed effective for free traffic. Another highly effective free traffic method is to post in forums.
Have fun. Make money.