Last week, I mentioned StumbleUpon in a post. I subsequently realized that many of you may not know what Stumble Upon is — or if are, you may not be aware of its advertising capabilities.
StumbleUpon is a free service that helps users discover websites (and videos and blogs) that have been recommended by others who have similar interests. After you specify your interests, StumbleUpon shows you a series of websites that others with similar interests have ranked well. As you indicate which you like and don’t like, StumbleUpon fine-tunes its offerings so they become increasingly relevant.
It’s like channel surfing the web, but only with channels that friends who know you well have suggested.
There are more than 500 interest categories and subcategories, and some 6.5 million users.
What some people don’t realize is that a portion of the websites offered – every 20 or 30 pages or so – are from paid advertisers. Advertisers pay $0.05 per targeted visitor to have their full web page displayed. In addition to targeting by personal interest, you can also specify geographic location, age or gender. You may also specify a maximum daily spending limit.
Reports are available showing the number of visitors to your web page, the percentage that liked it, the percentage that didn’t like it, and user reviews.
More details are available here.
Another route is to use StumbleUpon as a social networking tool to build your business, but that’s a topic for another day.
StumbleUpon’s growing popularity is just one more indication of how important helpful, content-rich websites and blogs are in building online businesses today.
