Blog for a living

I discovered something interesting. And something that’s a little unfortunate. I haven’t posted yesterday, and of course there was a huge drop in the number of visitors.

But I’ve found that it’s not only because I didn’t post so the SU traffic didn’t come, but also because I haven’t participated in online communities as I did previously. It’s really not a big deal, that means only 10-20 visitors daily, but quite quality traffic, most of them bloggers themselves who spend an average 5 minutes on my blog.

And it scared me a little. It seemed a little like if I’m not doing my daily “job” in such communities, I loose part of my traffic. And while I like hanging around on Blogcatalog for example, I’m not that kinda person who spends time for that if I’m not in that mood. And I definitely don’t want to go through all of them every day. That’s why the title is about carrying your blog on your shoulders.

I realized I should look for opportunities to automatize the traffic as much as possible, so I can focus more on writing posts instead. Then I can still check Blogcatalog or Mybloglog when I feel like doing it.

What about you? How much time do you spend promoting your blog “manually”? I’m curious.

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: