Blog for a living

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:

Honesty. I emphasized this word many times in my posts and comments.
When I started this blog, I set the goal to reach financial abundance with this site as soon as possible. But I also made a resolution that I’ll do it without ever cheating or choosing the shorter way if I feel that’s not right.

So I think you could figure out what I think about this whole exchange thing.

I’ve been familiar with this method for years, and I never liked it at all.

But seeing others exchanging stumbles/diggs/technorati faves and such, I started to doubt myself.
Because I saw these guys are actually make more stumbles/diggs than I do and they’re moving higher and higher on the technorati list.
So I started to question if I’m right about it. After all, all that’s holding me back from using such techniques to popularise my site was only my own stupid precept.
Maybe it isn’t useful. Maybe it’s only hindering my blogging career. Maybe I should give it up and toe the line.

But I didn’t do that. And here’s why.

Why it doesn’t make a difference?

Don’t get me wrong, these exchanges make a difference. But not that much. Why? Because of the good old principle: if your content is crap, no matter how much you exchange, people won’t read it.

But still, I believe my content is useful for others and I provide value on my blog, so why shouldn’t I use it?
Then I imagined what would be the consequences if I’d exchange links/stumbles/diggs or my Technorati favs. And this is what convinvced me:

- the more time you spend with these exchanges, the less time you have to produce quality content
- exchanging such things can strongly influence my creditability on social media sites, technorati and even on my blog.
- and lastly, I hate doing boring, repititive robot work. And it definitely belongs to that category.

This is a very important one. If your readers see you’re linking to 200 sites that provide no value at all, maybe doesn’t even relate to your content, what will they think of you? Similarly, if your stumbleupon/digg fans see you’re submitting crappy content, you’ll lose them very quickly. Do you want to sacrifice your fans, friends and your creditability for a few more links/votes? I don’t think so.

Good content, of course.
And one more thing what these exchange gurus have forgotten: all the other, honest promoting techniques that exists. Yes, believe or not, there are other ways to popularise your blog and things you can even enjoy, for example reading and commenting on your favorite blogs. Amazing!

This post is already submitted, all that’s left for you is one click if you liked it: