I’ve been a StumbleUpon user for a while now and I’ve seen most of these rules violated, by me or someone else. From experience I can give you a little insight as to what you want to look out for when submitting content to stumble.
Image via Wikipedia
Since I wrote Six Things I Hate About StumbleUpon, some of my views have changed.
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Stumble the Page, Not the Image
People who have web comics or put images with cute cats saying something funny, often put it on a web page with a little bit of advertising on the side. The reason is simple, they’re trying to pay for the website that image is on. Don’t deny them the opportunity to show more funny pictures of men in tanks with swords yelling, “Get closer, I want to cut it with my sword”. Stumble the page, not the image.
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Don’t Stumble Your Own Content
This is a confusing situation. Many of the members of Stumbleupon don’t like it when you submit your own content. They say it’s in the terms of service. I can’t help but wonder then, why did stumbleupon create buttons for you to add to your website to ask for thumbs up? Worse yet, why did they create http://su.pr? SuPr is exactly what is says, Stumble Upon Promotions. It’s a website dedicated to PROMOTE your own content on twitter. This service shortens links and adds a stumble bar to the linked website.
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Don’t Spam Your “Friends”
I use friends in a loose sense. Many people only add you to their friends list because they want to promote their own content. They’ll send you stuff from the same website over and over again. Problem is doing that can get labeled as a spammer fairly quickly. Then your account can be ghost banned or fully banned. If you’re going to send stuff to friends, do it sparingly.
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Don’t Beg for Stumbles
Nothing worse than listening to a person beg community users to thumb up content. If you submit your own content, that’s fine. Don’t get greedy and start begging. If you insist, place that little button stumble created (provided in the link above) in your website instead. At least then no one can complain.
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Don’t Stumble Multiple Times
Originally I though bulbstorm.com paid for advertising on stumbleupon, when I stumbled it multiple times. I was wrong. Turns out people would submit affiliate links so it would look like they had adverting. However if you signed up, the account that submitted the affiliate link would get paid. A deplorable marketing scheme.
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Don’t Advertise the Correct Way Either
The stumbleupon community is a group of fickle people. They hate someone who submits the same website multiple time. They hate people who pay for advertising on Stumbleupon even more. Using Bulbstorm as an example again, this site was believed to have paid advertising on stumbleupon. When someone stumbles it multiple times, bulbstorm received backlash from the community.
Tue, Sep 1, 2009, by Pulsargfx
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