This article will not show you how to get the magical thousands of hits from StumbleUpon. It will, however, show you an unusual way to improve your daily hits, pages per visit, time per visit and subscribers (in short; how to increase website traffic), while performing a public service.
Improving these statistics will increase the value of your ad space, raise your RealRank and increase the sale value of your blog.
History
Two weeks ago I posted this article in response to a personal attack I witnessed on StumbleUpon. The article received several "Thumb Downs" and negative reviews on StumbleUpon from friends of the original offender. While studying the analytics of that post's traffic, I noticed some interesting facts I had never heard anyone talk about before.
The Observation
The traffic stats revealed the post was receiving very few direct referrals from SU but was receiving quite a bit of indirect SU traffic. This indirect traffic was coming from Stumblers checking out the negative reviews by members they were fans of or from the negative reviewers using the "Send To" feature to spread the article.
Every negative review would send a wave of new traffic, some of which would leave negative reviews and/or send it to their friends who would come leave a negative review, etc., etc.
The viral nature of social media wasn't really surprising, even in a negative context. What was surprising was these were "quality" visitors. They were staying longer than normal, viewing more pages than normal and subscribing to my feed. They were boosting my stats!
The Experiment
I could not bring this to you without first discovering if it was just a one time thing or if it could be repeated. In order to try to duplicate the results I wrote a follow-up article and linked to it at the bottom of the original article. It worked better than I had expected it might.
The Result
Right off the bat, a troll helped me out by "Thumbing Up" the article and burying it in The "AIDS" category. This made my job considerably easier because I didn't have to filter out any regular StumbleUpon traffic.
Just as I had expected, the negative reviews started coming and with them, the steadily increasing traffic. The more vicious and personal the attack, the more traffic it sent.
The Numbers
For comparison purposes, I have included the numbers for a different post that was receiving traffic from StumbleUpon at the same time.
Article 1 - This is the article with no negative reviews on SU. It is included for comparison.
Article 2 - This is the original article which drew the negative attention to begin with.
Article 3 - This is the experiment article which was written to attempt to duplicate the results of article 2.
| Thumbs Up | + Rev | - Rev | Direct Hits | Indirect Hits | Pages Per Visit | Time Per Visit |
| 1 | 32 | 8 | 0 | 270 | 8 | 1.6 | 1:43 |
| 2 | 17 | 8 | 9 | 22 | 311* | 2.1 | 2:01 |
| 3 | 5 | 1 | 16 | 0 | 221 | 2.3 | 2:41 |
* This post was linked to on two different forums.
As you see, Article 1 received the most direct referral traffic from SU while Articles 2 & 3 received almost none but still got some very respectable numbers.
The chart also shows the negative referral traffic to be "quality" as well with higher page views and time on site.
While it is not indicated on the chart, seven of the readers referred by the negative reviewers subscribed to my feed.
It should also be pointed out, at the time these numbers were put together, Article 1 was 8 days old, Article 2 was 15 days old and Article 3 was only 6 days old. While Article one is not getting much SU traffic anymore, Articles 2 & 3 are still getting steady traffic.
How
Writing a post to attract the attention of the trolls is really easy and covered extensively in this article. Basically, you simply take on an air of righteous indignation and condemn the trolls and their personal attacks. Declaring that they don't belong on StumbleUpon will push them over the edge and they will have to attack.
Once they attack, just sit back and watch your stats go up.
Why
The experiment post concluded with the question "Why?" with no answer. This answer is simple; It's something that needs to be done and it has positive results for you.
Positives
Everyone's first inclination is to think being attacked online is a negative thing. This article is simply pointing out some positive things that can result from these attacks. Aside from the boost to your stats, here are a few positives of this tactic.
- You receive very few comments on your actual blog. It pretty much all takes place on SU.
- SU traffic is usually a few days late. If you post regularly, the drama, if any, takes place off the front page and away from your regular readers.
- You are pointing out a legitimate issue that has no place on SU. If you reap a benefit from it, good for you!
Disclaimer
Long time readers know I don't care about traffic here, at least not traffic just for the sake of traffic. I don't have ads and I don't sell anything. I just bring things to your attention for you to use or not.
While I don't necessarily recommend the use of manipulative tactics like these, I feel this is legitimate information I have not heard anyone else point out.
Be forewarned, you are playing with fire and must have a thick skin before attempting this. Prepare yourself for the onslaught of verbal attacks. You will be maligned and your words will be twisted and taken out of context so the trolls can feign offence and play the victim. You should also be prepared to delete a few comments.
If, however, you want to use the StumbleTrolls to boost your stats, the process is easy, just walk up and thump one on the nose.
If you enjoyed your read, grab my feed!
On November 4th I won a little 
My grandmother had a bird feeder that was the envy of all her friends. Well, not the feeder but the birds it attracted.
Her friends all tried, at one time or another, to put up feeders and attract my grandmother's birds to their yards but with no luck. They would always get the fanciest feeder at the store but still, no luck.
This post will give a brief explanation of the origins of the holiday we in the U.S. call Thanksgiving, while pointing out a detail of the story many Americans are unaware of.
