What is Stumbling and How you can Use Stumbleupon

In our new Promotional Frenzy thread we are striving to promote each other's shops around the internet for maximum exposure to our shops.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6656811&page=1

One site that is fun to use is www.stumbleupon.com

What is Stumble Upon?

It is basically a social bookmarking site. As you surf the web, or ETSY you can submit something you love to the site. It will store those bookmarks for you as "favorites".  The nice thing is if you are on vacation you can go to any computer and still find your favorite items without having your own computer.  Just log into your stumbleupon account to find them.

Once you have a collection of things bookmarked you can click on their green button "stumble" and the site will show you a list of items/sites that it thinks may interest you.  This way you can find things you wouldn't normally "stumbleupon".

*** IMPORTANT**  This site frowns upon self promotion.  That isn't their goal/vision/purpose.  And they can close your account if they find that is happening.   They will close/disable your account if they believe you are abusing their site, or spamming. 

                                         How to Use Stumbleupon:

The easiest way is to download their toolbar.  Here is the toolbar:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/download.php

You then go to the product page or website you like and want to share.  Once on the page you want to share you can click the little green icon SU.

If that page or item has not been shared to the site yet you will see a screen asking for more input.  The more information you provide the better visibility that item/page will gain.  Keywords, and tags are important to be found.  If you can enter some basic information and click save.

If the page HAS been shared to stumbleupon before then it is a matter of rating the item with a thumbs up or a thumbs down.  Doing this is just as important as sharing new items, because the more ratings an item receives the more visibility it will gain.

***You should be stumbling blogs you like, any website/product you like etc.  Don't just stumble from etsy only, or only stumble a lot in a row because these habits/patterns will likely get your account closed.****

Without the Toolbar:

If you prefer to not use the toolbar they provide then Etsy does have a share feature within its site to make it easier.  Once you are on the page you want to share, about halfway down on the right you will see an orange "share" button.  Click on that and it will expand with a bunch of options.  You can pick which venue you want to share with from there.  Stumbleupon is one of the options, plus tumblr and several others.

When you are logged in, you can click on favorites at the top of the screen to see all the items you have shared.
If you want to find something new, click on the "stumble" button and it will give you a list of items that may interest you.

It is not required to have a huge following on stumbleupon to gain views.  But let's face it, it will be more fun if we are able to network, connect and see things we all like.  So if you want to find other stumblers, click on your username/profile at the top.  You will see on the right "favorites" "followers" "following".  Click following.  Then towards the bottom right side is find other stumblers.  Put in the name of each other to find your friends.

Stumbleupon has wonderful "help" tools to help you as you go.
Here is their guide on how to stumble:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/help/How_do_I_submit_a_site_to_StumbleUpon/


***FINAL NOTE *** This is not an endorsement of stumbleupon or stumblexchange  and I am not responsible for their content.

Another site you might want to look at is:  http://www.stumblexchange.com/
This site helps you exchange your stumbles with other users.  So if you don't have a huge following yet you can use this site to help give a boost.

I hope this helps some.
It is fun, and exciting to see so many new items this way.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/