It happened to digg, it happened to Netscape, it happened to all the popular social networks: the magic influx of traffic sent by a simple submission to these networks attracted the leeches, the traffic suckers, those people who abused the systems for financial gain.

Popular diggers got paid to submit stories and push them to the first page, Propeller scouts are approached with the same shameless proposals and now StumbleUpon faces these issues. It’s the drama of being a top social network; it’s the curse of being one of the most popular traffic and community builders.

For months social networkers tried to crack the StumbleUpon algorithm. Many have come up with fantastic theories about how votes followed by actual comments can bring a certain number of visitors; social media gurus wrote pages and pages about how to increase Stumble traffic, how to become a “top stumbler” and so on, and so on! Apparently everyone wants to fool or game the system.

I remember reading about so called “stumble cards” created by dubious site owners to attract stumble traffic (statistically photography is what stumblers like best), I saw crappy sites getting an amazing number of stumbles, and no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t find the reason for such “popularity.”

I read about stumble spam – and this was no surprise as all popular social bookmarking sites have to deal with such issues sooner or later. But I’ve never seen anything more horrifying than the “stumble traffic book.”

The site selling the book has one of those already famous ugly designs used by thousands of “make money online” charlatans to sell their ebooks that offer magic answers. I remember the get-rich quick schemes that were so popular a few years ago, including the Rich Jerk scheme, which is still popular. At least this guy bothered to create a selling page with a better design.

The stumble traffic book will not fulfill its promise. This is what one of the authors says to persuade the naïve webtrepreneur to buy the book:

After you get your copy of StumbleUpon Traffic you might even think I’m nuts for giving away all of my most closely guarded traffic secrets!

Created by two, I’d dare say popular figures, I will not bother naming (see the screenshot if you need this information) this book is nothing but another scam to fool people into buying something they could get for free – advice on how to get 500 to 1000 visitors within the first 24 hours after submission. Simply put: the book sells spam. If you didn’t know how to spam a social network (although I bet you have a clue) this is the tutorial you need.

Obviously these two so called internet marketing gurus want us to believe that StumbleUpon traffic is rocket science or maybe a deep buried secret no one else has ever revealed.

There are no secrets to get traffic from Stumble. There is no secret formula. The answers are as simple as they can get: focus on quality, become an active part of the community, gain the respect of the other stumblers and the traffic will follow your lead naturally.

A stumbler already knows that the book is a fraud and that the only way to get real traffic from StumbleUpon is to create a community and submit quality links. But the newbies and those desperate for some traffic - be it irrelevant - those who already are involved in dubious traffic exchange schemes and pay for traffic from god knows where… these people will pay the lousy $ 17 to get the “stumble traffic book.”

$ 17 is not that much, you’ll argue. But when something is not worth it - it’s a rip off! In the end I don’t care what people do with their money, but the problem is that the techniques preached in the book (and I can tell by the language on the landing page of the site that sells it, and also by what I already know about the two authors) will lower the StumbleUpon experience for the rest of us.

StumbleUpon is already invaded by prefabricated news, multiple identities, trolls and stalkers. Do we really need more spam in the network? We don’t, but what can we do to stop the flagellum?

If you really want to learn how to use StumbleUpon, here are a few articles that might help:

• A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon: How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website and Monetize it.
• The Secret to Massive Digg/StumbleUpon Traffic Without Spamming
• Where does StumbleUpon traffic come from - explained
• Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic Than Digg
• StumbleUpon traffic really isn’t all that good
• The StumbleUpon Experiment
• A Definitive StumbleUpon Guide: Driving Traffic To Websites