What is "stumble?"

Both Jae and Chris asked me from my last post what "stumble" is. I was referring to Stumble Upon. Stumble Upon is a great way to get traffic to your blog.

It is also a great way to find new sites. It is also a great time waster. After installing the web bar, just try it by clicking on the link on the far left of the bar to stumble. It will take you to site suggestions based on your interests. If you like a site, you "stumble" it by clicking on the "I like it" button on the bar. The more you tell it what you like or do not like, the more it learns what you like to give you better suggestions.

However, as a blog owner, if someone stumbles you, I can testify that it sends a lot of traffic to your blog. Now, you can get away with stumbling yourself a few times, but the program is smart and will pick up on that, so just don't do it.

Therefore, there are people gathering in various spots on the internet, such as BlogCatalog Groups to exchange stumbles. I have a Digital Scrapbooking Group there you are welcome to join.

Whether or not being stumbled helps to bring regular readers or not, I'm not sure. It gives a false sense of readership for sure, but I suppose if being stumbled brings one new reader, that is a good thing.

If you have stats installed on your blog, you can see who is linking to you. If you are stumbled, this shows up in the stats.

In order to see who stumbled you, you have to first go to your blog page which was stumbled. Click on the little icon that looks like a speaker bubble for "reviews on this page" and it will take you to a stumble page which will reveal who stumbled you.

Since I am on a new laptop, I did not have my bar installed yet when I wrote me post yesterday.

Today I can see that both Mpatry and Karooch stumbled my post of January 29th and caused me traffic! Now, out of internet ettiquette, it is only appropriate that I find one of their posts of interest and stumble them right back.

As I wrote on my post of August 2nd, you can get convenient links at the bottom of each post on your blog by installing Feedflaire through Feedburner. Therefore, anyone can stumble me easily by looking at the bottom of each of my posts.

There is so much more about Stumble Upon than I can blog about. It is a community in which you may add others as your friend, go straight to your friends stumble suggestions to find things of interest to them, join groups of interest, and so much more. I just do not have time to participate much, but I do recommend the site. If you haven't checked it out, you need to go and waste some time there!