Why you shouldn’t stumble your own posts
October 5th, 2008
What? You’ve just written a post titled Why you should Stumble and Digg your own posts! – you can say.
Yes, it’s true, but it seems things have turned around a bit since then. 2 days ago I was reading a post on michaelaulia.com where Mike mentioned that stumbling your own posts isn’t a great idea after all, because they ban you for that.
Well, I wasn’t convinced. I’ve heard some things previously that they might terminate your account for this, but their TOS doesn’t clearly state it, nor does their FAQ. Although they said that people will be banned who try to cheat the system, or try to promote their service, it’s kinda blurry for me if I should call my blog a service or not, and I definitely don’t think submitting a post might be considered as cheating the whole system.
But I thought it’s time to put a period to this case, so I tried to contact SU directly. Fortunately they have a nice little method handling these kind of support questions, so they offer some additional Q&A before you send a message.
Sadly, they clearly state you aren’t allowed to submit your own site:
“StumbleUpon does not allow personal accounts to be used for the purposes of incentivization or promoting sites. This would be considered a breach of our Terms.
Accounts participating in such practices will be deleted and banned, and the related sites deleted and banned from the system.
The practice of sending PM’s encouraging or inviting other stumblers to rate/review sites in exchange for reciprocal reviews/ratings, monetary, or any other form of reward is strictly forbidden.
The practice of actively soliciting a rating or review for a site is also forbidden. Should you receive a PM, or encounter forum postings that breach this rule, you are encouraged to report this via feedback.”
I still think if they’d just copy and paste this little piece of information in their FAQ, it wouldn’t cause such misunderstandings.
What now?
First of all, my deepest apologies to everyone who I misled with my previous post. You all know it wasn’t my intention, as I discussed my reasons there. I’m sorry though.
I’ve already deleted my own submissions except for maybe two that got a great number of thumbs up, I don’t think two posts will cause any problems…
But hey, it’s not the end of the world! My previous post for Digg is still accurate, so we just need to use a different strategy for Stumbleupon in the light of this new information.
As I was thinking about how to do this to get the most out of it, I realized it can be even more efficient than submitting it yourself. But that’s another story. Stay tuned and I’ll reveal this technique in the Blog for a Living series, hopefully with some real success examples of my own.
Till then, I must recline upon you to stumble my posts, which is not that bad, considering my kind and committed readership 
This post is already submitted, all that’s left for you is one click if you liked it:
Tamal Anwar said,
October 5, 2008 @ 5:37 am
I’m a RSS subscriber of your blog and got attention with this post, well everything was going fine with SU until they made the changes.
I got very much great impressive amount of traffic even if I’m the only one to stumble my post (around 100-200 visits) but it changed dramatically these weeks…
I asked few friends to stumble my post, got many thumbs up and 4 reviews but still the SU magic didn’t happened!
Guess we have to get organic stumbles with the honest way, let others stumble your page :0
Jani said,
October 5, 2008 @ 6:14 am
Yeah, it wasn’t too hard for me, since I submitted only for others to be easier to thumb up.
Then I got about 10-15 stumbles on a best post. But now that you mentioned it, I haven’t got a single on my last submitted one. (though I deleted it quickly).
But the traffic was great, so I’m not sure about it.
Thanks for the insights Tamal!
I wonder what others experienced since then…
Anyone knows if anything happened to SU with the new changes?
Why you should Stumble and Digg your own posts | Blog for a living said,
October 5, 2008 @ 6:22 am
[...] UPDATE: The concept discussed below is still true for Digg, but as it turned out, SU has an other opinion about it. You can read my follow-up on this post here. [...]
mastersofseo said,
October 5, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
hmm that’s rather unfortunate. I suppose the way to counter that, would be to just have alot of stumbleupon friends. And have them submit your posts for you. Or just submit other people’s posts as well. Thanks for the information, keep the posts coming.
Liane Schmidt said,
October 5, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
Great blog and post!
Best wishes.
Sincerely,
-Liane Schmidt.
Michael Aulia said,
October 5, 2008 @ 10:32 pm
Oops..didn’t realize you have written some posts about it before
Well I guess it’s good to know now rather than regret it later
Blog for Beginners said,
October 6, 2008 @ 4:25 am
It’s a love and hate relationship between me and SU. Though it brings it the traffic (and improve my alexa ranking) but it causes problem on my shared hosting as well.
I used to stumble my own article but I have since stopped doing so.
Yan
Jani said,
October 6, 2008 @ 4:45 am
@Mastersofseo: yes, but a button under the posts also can help
don’t forget that your readers can also stumble your posts even if you’re not friends on SU
Furthermore, it’s not really the number of thumbs up that defines the traffic you get (more on this in the series…)
@Liane: thanks, I hope I’ll see you around
@Mike: thanks for your post anyway, you’re right, I’m happy you wrote about it now and not 3 months later after they banned my account…
@Yan: sorry, but I don’t get this one. Problem with shared hosting? you mean they eat up the bandwitch or what?
Jani said,
October 6, 2008 @ 4:49 am
Oh, damn, I’ve just checked if anyone stumbled it yet and I saw I put up a bad code. Again.
that’s the second one this week, I don’t know what’s wrong with me
Blog for Beginners said,
October 6, 2008 @ 4:56 am
When you have something like 30K traffic in a day, it will jam the host server. As a result, your account will usually be suspended and I had mine a couple of times last month. Of course, It happen when I didn’t enable my WP Cache.
Yan
Jani said,
October 6, 2008 @ 5:20 am
Oh, I see. Unfortunately I didn’t have to face such a problem yet, but is it the same on every host? Cause I’ll consider moving to an unlimited plan when I see that my bandwitch is near the end, or in case I’ve any trouble with my current hosting…
Blog for Beginners said,
October 6, 2008 @ 5:28 am
Yes, but the approach is different. My host just suspended my account without any warning while some don’t. Don’t make any decision now, do it when the traffic is eating on your bandwidth.
Let me know if you need assistance on hosting..
Yan
Abhinav Sonkar said,
October 6, 2008 @ 2:54 pm
Hey this was news! I am in the habit of stumbling my posts as it guarantees 100-150 visitors and never faced a problem. But now I will have to stop it!
Nihar said,
October 6, 2008 @ 3:57 pm
Oops, i do stumble my own post as soon as i publish it. I think from now, i have to stop doing it and hope some stumbler does it.
Thanks for the letting me know
Jani said,
October 7, 2008 @ 1:28 am
Hmm, yeah I think the best is to stop it. I don’t think you’ll be ever caught except someone flags you, I just don’t like to do things if it’s against the TOS or simply not ethical.
And fortunately there were some kind stumblers again who stumbled it again, so no problem
It isn’t worth banning your account from such a great site like SU…