Ok, apparently I’m very hard-headed. I can now freely admit that since I have now been given undeniable proof that I was dead wrong about something. I have never been a huge fan of the sites, or systems used to rate blogs, usually referred to as social bookmarking.  I don’t know why, they just always seemed like a lot of b.s. for not a lot of return. Well, I have now taken a different view on this thanks to Stumbleupon.com.

     There are many similar sites out there such as technorati , del.cio.us, or digg. Stumbleupon is similar, in the respect that it allows you to search blogs and websites for relevant content. In that aspect, they, like technorati, are vying for a slice of google’s pie..and a large pie it is. Where stumbleupon.com starts to stray from the beaten path (which is a good thing) is that they also are working in a really good social networking aspect, as well as a system that allows you to rate any blog or webpage on the net, not just ones that have signed up with their service or had their page somehow imbedded in a directory for the site. Pretty cool in my opinion.

 How does this relate to monetizing your blog? 
     A site (or system)  that mixes blogging, with myspace, with general surfing, pretty much hits every demographic of internet user in one form or another. The only thing that would solidly lock the concept into a complete wall to wall demographic ‘blanket’ is the addition of a dedicated video section, complete with an adult directory.  So it stands to reason, that the traffic to a site that holds atleast some interest to almost everyone on the Internet at any given time, will be substantial. When it comes to traffic on the net, its sort of like the old addage about getting a great job - ‘It’s not what you know, its who you know’. In a site like these that are a constant churn of traffic, all it takes is a single mention in the right spot to make a large ripple effect of traffic and ultimately generating income for a blog or website that has the right system’s in place to capitalize on that traffic.

      Here’s an example.

     I was checking on the site’s statistics the other day and noticed a HUGE amount (in relative terms for a small blog like this) of traffic coming from stumbleupon. I had never really paid attention to the site, and was pretty sure I had never signed up on the site, so I started tracking down where the traffic was suddenly coming from. I tracked the source down to one entry, on one site on stumbleupon from a user named Marisa11. Apparently Marisa (I don’t know her real name) surfed across DB and just put in a one line comment into the stumbleupon network. I can’t find it exactly because I don’t know how to navigate the software, but it was something to the effect of ‘well written, good job’ and just that 1 line review resulted in 46% of the paltry monthly traffic on the site at this point, or:

*Unique Visitors - 133
*Average time on the site - 1:44
*Average page visits 1.70

That one line blurb created that response, overthrowing the previous months’ traffic leader, blogexplosion.com. Pretty impressive if you ask me. I’m now putting more input into networking with this site and watch to see the effect.

Marisa11, if you happen to notice an increase in referrer’s from here and surf by this post to investigate, say Hi..and thanks for the review!

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