Free traffic is the best traffic you may possibly ever receive for your blog. No matter if you’re a new blog, a popular blog, or John Chow, you would definitely love free traffic when you see it in your blog statistics 
. There are so many types of free traffic related sites such as blog directories, forums, and even Entrecard. Most of these don’t even take much work to gain the traffic and it’s especially great for for bloggers that are quite lazy. Apart from those sites that provide free traffic to bloggers, the next step up would be social bookmarking networks.
Social bookmarking networks have been around for quite a while now and you can say it started when blogs started. However, this past year, I’ve actually watched a lot of new bookmarking networks pop up and all of them are getting quite the commotion since blogs are starting at 1,000x the pace of bookmarking networks.
These networks are basically necessities of blog owners these days. When you bookmark a specific post, your submission may be public to many visitors looking for some juicy news. The newer type of bookmarking networks allow visitors and members to vote on the specific bookmark. The more votes on the specific bookmarked item, the more publicity it would gain. Think about the new sites as a copy of Digg. Digg uses the voting system to base their most popular submitted articles, videos, and even pictures.
Digg is actually the biggest bookmarking network that provides the highest potential of free traffic if your blog post gets to the front page. I’m not trying to say you won’t get to the front page, but if you do, you better hope your servers could handle the flood of traffic . It’s just very difficult to get to the front page since there are a lot of haters and the community is pretty much pure bloggers. So where do you turn next?
The next best bet is to use StumbleUpon. They’re actually quite famous because of their infamous thumbs up and thumbs down method of voting on your favorite URLs. It’s so popular that bloggers are becoming addicted to this service because certain stumbles could give your blog post hundreds to thousands of visitors within a few minutes or a few hours. Of course it’s not as good as Digg, but almost every other post that is stumbled on StumbleUpon receives a burst in free traffic.
As I mentioned, free traffic is good, but being addicted to free traffic from StumbleUpon may not be something that you would like after I discuss the consequences. I’ve personally used many different strategies to take advantage of the free traffic from SU, but no one knows the true alogrithm of SU.
Submitting your own posts into SU’s system proves that you have some sort of addiction to the possible free traffic. Although I submit my own posts too, it’s actually a bit against SU’s rules if you do so. You’re suppose to have your readers, visitors, or friends to discover your post and submit it. Depending on how your account’s ranking is in SU’s system, submitting your own posts may give you a huge burst of free traffic or may not. If you do get the traffic, don’t get greedy and start submitting more and more of your own posts. SU will catch on and eventually, you won’t get this traffic.
You’ll eventually realize that without StumbleUpon’s traffic, your daily visitor statistics would be much lower than if you had the traffic. This is a good thing and also a bad thing. The good thing is you would be able to see how your realistic traffic is, while the bad thing is your rankings would start to drop. Experimenting with the SU system was very fun for me because i saw all these different results from it depending on what day it is and what I’m doing. It’s just amazing though seeing how many bloggers do the same as me 
Caroline Middlebrook is very educated in how StumbleUpon works. She has made a few posts about SU’s system, but she recently wrote her own course on SU called StumbleRush. I believe that what she discusses about StumbleUpon allows bloggers to realize a bit more of how the system is. To tell you the truth, no one knows how the system works even if it is being cheated, but bloggers are getting closer to the answer…I can only tell you that 
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My point of this discussing to let some of you realize that having an addiction to anything has a possible downfall, but having an addiction to StumbleUpon can cause problems for you if you’re a blogger. SU has a lot of bots and fake traffic, but it’s traffic nevertheless. If you become greedy to it, you would see a problem being brought up through your blog.
How much do you use StumbleUpon?
Bonus Contest Entry - Add me as a friend on StumbleUpon and you will receive +1 entry ticket. I apologize, but if you’re already a friend of mine on SU, you are disqualified from this bonus entry.
I don’t use StumbleUpon at all. In fact, I don’t use any social networking or bookmarking sites for that matter. I just started my blog this month, but before my blog, I dunno, I guess I just never saw a use for it. I guess I’m not one of those people looking to have a million friends.
Although, lately after reading quite a few blogs I do realize that a lot of the bloggers get some good amounts of traffic through social networking/bookmarking. So once I do get some worthy content on my blog, I will start using these services.
My last blog post is..AMR #5 - A Lengthy Process
….and then there’s me, i use it to keep a *free journal* that family and friends can plug into without a lot of hassel…so i ask of those out there in the v-world…don’t mess it up for me, please
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I am very careful about what I stumble of my own, I only do it if I have dropped a post at an earlier time stamp that I want to get some traffic, i.e. when I’m chasing organic traffic, not front page new stuff. I would say about 20% of my posts never get to my front page
My last blog post is..New Apple Store for Sydney
I didn’t really realize about SU’s front page, but it is very smart to stumble older posts and spread them out
-Mike
I just dont like stumbleupon.. The traffic i get from there is never of good quality and also i see a lot of difference in traffic quality from stumbleupon and digg.
My last blog post is..Digg Confessions and How to hit to the Digg homepage
I do use SU and digg occasionally..I used blogging zoom also but I don’t really see the effect on my traffic…btw, just added you, Mike as a friend in SU…Hope to get the extra ticket…
My last blog post is..My Post Is Being Downloaded!
Social bookmarking for me is important..Co’z most of the bloggers now are joining some community to get traffic from there blogs..aside from the traffic of your blog you can earn friends also..btw mike I add you to my stumbleupon my username there is showbizchika..:-)
My last blog post is..ABADDON(THE LORD OF AVERNUS)
I tried stumble Upon like a month ago and i saw my chart like zooooom up that day. It was 10 times my normal traffic. The funny thing is that last week I posted 2 articles to digg and 2 articles to stumble upon and my servers got overloaded and my servers crashed! lol!
Stumble Upon has been great for me and my sites. I haven’t had as much success with Digg though. We are now SU friends
I’m vera5d there 
My last blog post is..Confessions of a Freebie Junkie
I added you as a friend to my StumbleUpon. I’d love to learn more about it, so I’m going to have to take the time to play with it for a while.
My last blog post is..An evening home alone…
To be honest with you, I get confused with all the social bookmarking sites. I think in the near future, I’m going to try and tackle one social bookmarking site a day and learn about them and get profiles set up.
I have started tinkering with SU a bit, but I’m real far from pro.
My last blog post is..How to Add A Custom Favicon
Excellent post Mike! I started out on SU a few weeks ago and noticed that stumbling my own posts (even after discovery) received negative results. I couldn’t get a post off the ground whenever I stumbled my own content. The key to SU is a group of solid friends that will discover and thumbs up your content on a regular basis.
My numbers on recent posts have been huge from SU. One of my recent posts received over 800 views in the first few hours of being discovered. At one point I had 313 visitors on the site all at the same time (thank you hosting for holding up). I think if newer users can maintain their willpower and resist stumbling their own content they will reap the rewards and see huge numbers too.
My last blog post is..MMA Fans Rejoice - CBS to Air EliteXC
Wow, I’ve never really used Stumble Upon and haven’t really put much effort into it, but I will definitely give a look into it now that you’ve pointed it out to me!
My last blog post is..Giving away my LCD monitor
And I just added you as a friend on it! hitzatak is the name
My last blog post is..Giving away my LCD monitor
I use both StumbleUpon and Digg. They give me free traffic but it is not much visible.
Hmmm i use stumble. digg, propeller an many other social bookmarking website. I truly believe that these sites help bloggers a lot since many other bloggers use the site with the same purpose of driving traffic to their website. This sites had been a regular “niche” of bloggers to improve their ranks in alexa or google which helps them a lot in their earning capacity.
My last blog post is..Win $350 and more from DiggItLive dot COM
Thankfully,I haven’t started using SU to satisfy my traffic desires!!.
I have been making my own submissions to Digg but with not more than 5-10 referrers!.That’s way too low!.
But yes!.The concentration should be on gaining readers through giving out good content.As time passes,your readers could do the work for you like submitting the post to SU or any other social bookmarking site!!.
My last blog post is..Contact me
never really get that much traffic from SU so far…
My last blog post is..This is Madness!
SU may not give you awesome traffic…but it’s successfully occupied my girlfriend for an entire evening on accident. Whoops!!
added in stumble upon as louisliem
My last blog post is..Revenue Venue is the New Crooked Cash?
you should see me on your fan list: cahkontes
My last blog post is..Guest Post dari Garry Conn dan iPod Nano Lagi!
STUMBLED!
SU is the best social media site, not only for traffic but for finding new websites.
Good post.
Oh, Thanks! Really amazing. Big ups!
My last blog post is..Don’t Look this Version! )))