The High Authority Social Network’s Drama

Posted by Mihaela Lica as Featured

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.”

StumbleUpon Scam.

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:

15 Responses

Laura

February 21st, 2008 at 5:24 am
1

Great reporting Mig!

Scams like this succeed only because there are those bloggers and webmasters who won’t take the time to learn how social networking really works.
David Airey

February 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am
2

Focus on quality, become an active part of the community…

Absolutely. Focus on your content and the traffic will sort itself out. There’s no ‘quick fix’.

Thanks for your recent email, Mig, which I reply to in a few minutes.
SOB Business Cafe 02-22-08 - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You are only a stranger once.

February 22nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
3

[...] The High Authority Social Network’s Drama [...]
Bull3t

February 22nd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
4

Cheers for the link! It is a shame that all of the Social Networking sites have their fair share of this type of behaviour, though.
Edward Beckett

February 24th, 2008 at 12:53 am
5

MIG .. I did a post on Omniture Analytics a few days ago …

A friend … sent me a message later that same evening asking me how my Stumble Upon Traffic was for that post …

“Magically”, I had nearly 50 hits in a matter of six hours …

The post wasn’t even cached yet …
Mihaela Lica

February 24th, 2008 at 1:19 am
6

@Laura: you are right - and there is no way we can stop these people from trying to fool the naive web users. But we can try to educate at least our visitors not to waste their money on crap like this. 17 USD would make a nice donation for a charity…

@David: thanks for the fast follow up, David!

@Bull3t - you made many good points in your entry, and it was my pleasure to include your link.

@Edward: are you talking about 50 hits from Stumble? That’s not much for 6 hours - but better than nothing
Alina Popescu

February 26th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
7

Hi Mig, this is an amazing piece as more and more people are lured into these magical solution books. You’d think they’d get old after a while, but if the Nigerian letter still makes victims, this is also understandable.

P.S. sorry for commenting so late. My bloglines reader went nuts and show nothing from you for days I used other means (the old fashion url type in my browser) to get here and see the great pieces you’ve posted.
Mihaela Lica

February 26th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
8

No worries, Alina. It’s true I am lazy at posting these days - I am a little bit tired and had some health problems as well. I am better now and will try to post more often.
Sueblimely

February 26th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
9

There will always be people who think they can get by without effort, those who believe in get rich quick rich schemes and new bloggers who get sucked in for a while. They are probably the ones who go through life thinking it is not fair and that someone else is to blame for their misfortunes.

What I don’t understand is how people can believe in those awfully designed sites, that to me shout out “SCAM”
Mihaela Lica

February 26th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
10

Yes,Sue. They scream the same word to me too. But ugliness sells, apparently.
I work with a girl who buys ebooks from such charlatans. Of course spam works, it’s proved. But there is always an ethical question to be answered, isn’t it?
K Stone

February 28th, 2008 at 2:58 am
11

Thanks for bringing this to light. So hard to believe. Quality is the name of the game.
Soli

February 28th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
12

I think this goes to show that there is no extent people cannot go just to get traffic to their websites, even if has to be through somewhat illegal means.
Bull3t

April 16th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
13

Thanks for the link. A nice follow up post as well. StumbleUpon only seems to bring in visitors that stay on your site for a mere few seconds, or if you are lucky, minutes.
Mihaela Lica

April 16th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
14

It actually does more than that for me - but of course it all depends on the community you build around (people really interested in your niche) and what you have to say.

I guess I am one of the lucky few?
Gilberto Galea

June 8th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
15

Not only your strategic based on social networks. May be there’re more way to make traffic that your site. But the people that thing only at easy money try to find get rich schemas only with different names, but the same principles.
I thing that the drama is an excuse for the bad content sites, that only say that the traffic suck or don’t keep their goals, but they don’t see that their sites didn’t work and should never happen nothing good.
Thanks by your point of view.