A while ago, I was trying to introduce a few friends to StumbleUpon and I realized something. I was just as confused with the interface of the site as each and every one of my friends were. It is hard to learn how to use all of the different functions (it may not be the case for some of you), and sometimes, my friends would complain that they don't know where to even begin. Obviously, if you’ve been using this for over a week, then you probably won’t find this very helpful. If you are just beginning however, you may find this useful.



Okay, so first of all, ALWAYS have the tool bar downloaded. Make an account as well. Head on over to your preferences and select "my interests". From here you will see a bunch of categories that cover just about anything you can think of. Put a check mark in the subjects you would be interested in reading about.

Now that you’ve got your interests set up, you can learn how the site actually works. Open up a new tab, because you wouldn’t want to leave my blog, and click the ‘Stumble!’ button on your tool bar. This will automatically forward you to a site. The page will almost always be something directly related to one of your interests you selected. So if you selected sports, adult humor, and video games as your only interests, you will always receive pages submitted under one of those three interests. You can find interesting content in most categories quite easily.



Most of you probably already know how the people who use this get views. Now that you know where the views come from, it will make a little bit more sense. Obviously, if you signed up for this because of my blog you are looking to use it for a bit of artificial as well as direct traffic. Just to keep you guys on the right track, I do not approve of spamming StumbleUpon. I am all for adding quality content, so if you think your posts are of quality, then go ahead and submit.



The obvious question is: how does it work? Like all bookmarking sites, the content that is more widely enjoyed by the community is shared with more users. There are two ways in which you can affect an article. Positively, by giving it a thumbs up, or negatively by giving it a thumbs down. You could also not rate it if you prefer. If you recieve more thumbs ups on your content, then it is telling StumbleUpon that your blog content has great quality! In return, it will send more users to that particular post or link. Then if you’d like to take it a step further you could also write a review, good or bad. To test this out, why not go to my home page. Give it a thumbs up and write a good review. :)

Alright, so now you have learned how to rate sites. The last major concept of StumbleUpon would be, of course, submitting your very own content. This doesn't take very much time and it is quite easy to do. Simply go to the post you’d like to submit. Give it a thumbs up. If nobody has yet to submit the site, a pop up will show up. Simply fill in the information and click submit. You should start to receive traffic shortly. The more people who give it a good rating, the more traffic it will bring. Different categories have different success levels. Try submitting blog content into several relevant categories as you go to see which is the best for your blog.



I hope this has helped many of you new Stumblers! If you think I have missed something crucial, then please comment and tell me! Help is definitely appreciated. Questions, comments, and concerns are all welcome. :)

P.S. There's this one technology blog that I hope you guys will check out; if you need some tech tips, news, reviews, etc. then click here.

-Aud

