Use StumbleTrolls to Boost Your Stats

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.

1. You receive very few comments on your actual blog. It pretty much all takes place on SU.
2. 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.
3. 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!