The Open Source Marketer

Which is better, BlogRush visitor traffic or StumbleUpon? This is a good question and one that has several possible answers. Let’s look at the traffic types for both visitor sources and then compare them both to get a better understanding.

BlogRush was launched over the weekend and I signed up as soon as I heard it was open. Immediately I started seeing visitor traffic to my blog, OpenSourceMarketer.com. The result was a sharp increase in mailing list subscribers, RSS subscribers, and blog comments. In fact, I am continuing to get visitors from the BlogRush widget on the blogs, though it has slowed down just a bit. Some of the slow down might be due to the overwhelming response that BlogRush has received. I bet John Reese didn’t anticipate such a great response, even though he founded the project.

BlogRush has enjoyed great success so far because it is context sensitive so it display blog posts from other blogs that are relevant to the content on the page. That means if your blog is part of BlogRush then your blog posts will show up next to relevant keywords on another blog. Ultimately that means that if someone is looking for information on a specific topic and they are searching blogs for that information then a link to your blog posts are going to show up near those relevant keywords. This is how Google runs their entire Adsense program so you know this is a proven method of getting readers to click on links.
BlogRush also has a viral marketing element to it that helps to make the thing attractive for everyone. Your blog posts get displayed on other blogs once for every time your widget is displayed on your blog. That is a good method of making sure that active blogs are being rewarded for attracting readers. And, when you refer someone to BlogRush and they create a free account, you get partial credit for their signup. This process goes ten people deep so the more people you tell the more your blog posts will be shown.

Now, let’s look at StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is basically a system for sharing user contributed links and reviews of content. Any StumbleUpon user can bookmark, or stumble, a page on the Internet. They can write a short review and categorize that content. Stumbles shows up on the user’s profile page and is included as part of the great StumbleUpon community.

StumbleUpon users can also randomly stumble through content that is included in the StumbleUpon index of content. When someone stumbles through content it is usually by a specific category or media type, such as news, movies, random pages, and the like. Because the act of stumbling is so random and effortless, StumbleUpon users don’t really have to do anything but click a button. This potentially puts them one click away from your content. This is where it gets hairy.

You see, if they don’t have to put any real thought or effort into the process then it will be just as easy for StumbleUpon users to click away from your blog. We will look at how you can make something positive out of this traffic in another aritcle, but for today just note that big StumbleUpon numbers is not a guarantee of success. Honestly, when I submit my articles to StumbleUpon I always get traffic within a few minutes. Sometimes my blog articles get a few hundred unique hits, sometimes my blog articles get one or two hits.

The initial rush of StumbleUpon traffic doesn’t usually last more than thirty minutes or so and then the excitement dies down. However, the articles still continue to get hits over the long term. Even today I am getting traffic from StumbleUpon for articles that were submitted weeks ago. StumbleUpon can pull the traffic, but you still need to consider the value of that traffic.

So, which is better, BlogRush visitor traffic or StumbleUpon visitor traffic? Honestly, they are both good for two reasons

1. The required actions to get the traffic are minimal. For the effort on your part, the return in terms of raw traffic is fantastic. So, really unless you have another activity that brings you better quality traffic, you have every reason to use these tools to gain blog traffic.




2. Even blog traffic on its own isn’t enough to bring great rewards. You have to give the visitor a reason to stick around and read your content. Then your content has to convince the reader to stick around, subscribe to your RSS feed, subscribe to your mailing list, click a link, or whatever. Traffic won’t make a blog successful on its own.

Ultimately, if you are looking for ways to get eyeballs on your blog, then both of these tools offer a free, low touch method of attracting visitors. Whether those visitors turn into blog readers is really another discussion all together. If you are considering ways to monetize your blog while using these tools, you might consider impression based advertising. While impression based revenue has been typically low for some time, you can still make a few dollars you didn’t have before. It really depends on what you are already doing and how many sites you are doing it on.

The important point is to focus on creating good quality content, get traffic to that content, try to convert those visitors into readers, offer those readers an opportunity to take some beneficial action, and repeat. BlogRush and StumbleUpon are only tools in this process and they can not take the place of having a good plan. So use them both and enjoy the traffic.

Working the plan,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com