The biggest flaw I have found, other than the awkward chat room, is that if a user claims a stumble and did not stumble the site, you have lost a point and must click "+ Point" to get it back, or contact admin, but I have also heard that sometimes people stumble sites and for some reason it is "invisible" you have to check their SU Profile to see if they really did stumble or not. You can always just assume they did and give the point. Another flaw is you might stumble something and never be awarded the point, if that person has become inactive. Still this is no big concern as it didn't cost you anything to stumble their site, and having more sites on your blog is a great way to get more fans.

You can find StumbleUpon Exhchange here.

You can get extra points by inviting friends to join, but to be fair I did not include my profile here for that purpose. If you sign up, I do not get any points.

Most writers already know about social bookmarking and adding their work to search engines but this is often not enough. Have you ever thought about article writing to give long term exposure to you articles?

This sounds totally crazy but building links to your articles, websites, or blogs, will give you long term readers from many different parts of the internet.

It's a very simple process. You write article for sites that provide free content for ezines and other kinds of website. Your article, which you provide free of charge, is offered to ezine owners all over the internet. In return for permission to publish your article they undertake to include your contact details (if you wish) and a back link to your article, or website.

To make it simple to understand how it works let me explain how it works for me. First of all I write an article for Triond, or for my own website, and then I write articles that link to the same theme. Don't make the mistake of thinking that these are linking articles with just a few words altered, because they are not. If you do this ezine owners won't publish your articles, even for free. You need to think about what you have already written and write a couple of similar articles which sound very different but contain linked information.

When you have written these, and it shouldn't take long because you have already done the research for the main article and it's fresh in your head, add you article URL to the bottom. Make sure that proof read and spell check carefully.

Write yourself a little bit of blurb all about you and your writing. Keep it to a couple of sentences. This will be your author resource write up (you will need this later).

Next, go to one or two of the free article sites listed here.

Join up to these sites and upload you articles (only use the ones you wrote to link to your main article.) This is where your author resource box comes in. You will need to paste the 'blurb' that you wrote about yourself into the box provided after you upload your article.

Each one of these gives you one permanent link to your article/website.

The rest is a matter of mathematics. An ezine owner who may have thousands of readers publishes your article (with your link) and because your article is interesting, they want to click on your link and read more about the subject. Other ezine, blog and site owners want to publish your material and you end up with hundreds of links (hopefully) which are followed by thousands of new readers.

This is not easy. It is time consuming but it provides long term traffic that will continue to come for years. It's not just a way of getting thousands of hits now and getting no more. If you utilise this method you will benefit in the long term. This will add to your earnings each and every month.

Take one article at a time and do this with it and slowly but surely see your reads increase.

The question is, how much traffic do you need? The answer depends on the kind of website or online presence you have. People with personal pages and blogs for non commercial purposes may be contented with their friends and family visiting their site. But for online marketers and business bloggers, they rely on a huge amount of traffic in order to get visitors, leads, prospects, customers, and revenue from their websites.

Regardless of your reasons for generating traffic, here are some success secrets on how you can turn your site into a well visited, winning site.

1. Know Your Audience

   And I mean, know them very much! If you don't know your audience, you will not be able to decide on what particular promotional approach to use. For example, your website is about weight loss, then you should research on the popular topics that appeal to weight loss enthusiasts. Then, make that information available on your site! This will ensure that future visitors of your site will enjoy your content and come back for more.

2. Know The Movement Of Your Target Crowd

   You should discover where your target crowd frequently goes. What sites do they regularly visit? For example, your website is about network marketing and your target crowd consists of people who are interested in earning extra money. Then you should discover the top forums, blogs, social networking sites, chatrooms that these people visit! Create a user buzz in your category of interest by contributing articles, participating in discussions, and exchanging links in those key sites.

3. Know The Popular Keywords in Your Field Of Interest

   This might take some time to discover, but it will do you good for the long term traffic. Take a look at sites and forums with a similar topic to your site. Which articles and posts get more views than the others? What words and phrases do they have in common? As you gain more knowledge and expertise in your particular niche (or topic) online, you will be aware of the popular keywords that generate user interest and attract the search engines faster. For example, in the personal development niche, one of the most popular keywords are "success secrets". So if you have a site that's related to self-help or personal development, make sure you include those words in your keyword list. Then use that phrase repeatedly in the content of your website. This will attract more web users, and yes, search engines. More traffic.

4. Use MySpace and Social Networking Sites To Your Advantage

   This step is really easy. Sign up to Myspace for free. Create an attractive profile, then post your website links and some of your sample articles there. Then, invite more Myspace friends. As you go along building your friends list, people also see your website link too! That could also generate more traffic! There are many ways you can generate a horde of traffic through social networking sites, and I will discuss that in future articles.

How did I do this you may ask? On a free blog site (that does not publicise your blogs for you) I put up 20 blogs of similar length and in a similar subject field. I then entered these blogs into different social bookmarking sites and monitored the results. This is far from the perfect experiment but the results were such that I was able to draw up some clear winners out of around 20 bookmarking sites.

Shoutwire

Out of the 20 sites I tested shoutwire came 4th. Not only is it good for getting traffic but it's easy to sign up to, easy to submit new things to and easy to receive comments on making it a very handy site to have as a favourite. One tip to bear in mind with shoutwire is that it doesn't let you choose specific tags so try and be as accurate as possible with categorisation

Digg

Digg came a close third and was equally as easy to use as shoutwire. Not only this but digg does allow you to customise tags so there is a much broader use of tagging available. Definitely one worth favouriting

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon at first didn't appeal to me as it forced me to download a toolbar which generally I am against. However I found that by hiding my toolbar whenever not using stumble upon it actually speeds up the process of favouriting your sites as there is no need to log in or type URL's. However this is another site that does not allow custom tags, possibly why it is in second place

Del.icio.us

This site won not only on page views but on practicality as well. It has the ease of use of stumble upon combined with custom tags leading to a very high page view count for very little hassle. Every blogger should have this toolbar installed even if it's hidden most of the time.

Now it is important to bear in mind that these results were only found for 1 category of blog however I am confident that the results can be generally replicated for many different categories, why not give it a try!

It can be used to discover the most popular keywords and to compare people, things, places, etc. It is fun to put the names of writers into the search boxes and calculate how many times they show up in Google Search.

The site is very simple to use. I conducted an experiment , or ‘battle' as the site calls it and put in the names of some well known Triond writers to see who the winner was in terms of mentions on Google.

Louie Jerome: Louis Jerome 208, 000

Judy Sheldon: Judy Sheldon 403, 000

Liane Schmidt: Liane Schmidt 410, 000

These figures change from day to day. If you want more publicity for an article, or a website, using this site will reveal how much more work you need to do to increase your profile on Google. The best part is that you can compare yourself with others and see the results of your own marketing work as the figures climb.

You can also use the Mega Battles link to list a number of keywords as in the list of writers above and compare them.

A comparison, or Battle, as Google calls it, between two article ideas revealed that health articles are far more popular than humor on the internet.

Health 2,160,000,000 search results
Humor 328,000,000 search results

This is great fun if you ‘Battle' with friends, ideas, or concepts and find out which are the most popular but it is also a very useful marketing tool.

Be Concise and Clear

Remember - the average internet viewer doesn't want to look up words or figure out what you're trying to say in your writing. It is your job to make things clear for your reader. Writing huge, long paragraphs does not make someone want to start reading your article. It simply looks menacing. Paragraphs should definitely be no longer than nine lines long - any longer means a loss of interest by a viewer. Keep in mind these few tips when writing your next article for any website, whether it be Triond or any other publisher.

1. Using lists is a very effective way of keeping a readers attention. It allows them to easily see facts and it is by far the simplest way of presenting information.
2. Be concise! Describe your topic briefly and simply, and only include key details. You might have learned that you should elaborate on your writings greatly. This is not true for internet writing - you want the most information in the smallest amount of space possible.
3. Have a good hook. Your first sentence is the first impression of your piece of writing on a viewer. If it isn't catchy, interesting, or vital, then you've lost a viewer.

Include Pictures

You've all heard the saying: “a picture's worth a thousand words.” This is completely true and then some in internet writing. A picture instantly makes an article more attractive and adds a lot overall. You want to include a few pictures, but not too many. Make sure that you don't snuff out your content with one picture per word.

Choose Popular Topics

No matter how amazing or engaging your article is, if you write about how you ate a sandwich, it most likely won't attract many views. It is hard for many writers to figure out popular topics, but from personal experience and from research, I've found that the following are excellent topics (in order from most to least popular):

1. News: Current events and interesting tidbits attract many, many readers
2. Business: Financial matters and real estate are excellent topics
3. Health: Writing health and fitness tips draws multiple viewers
4. Humor: Satire, jokes, and funny facts are quite popular - especially for a Stumbleupon user

Put Yourself in the Reader's Position

This should be pretty obvious, but many don't think about it. Imagine you're the one that wants to find an article. What do you look for? If you use StumbleUpon, which categories do you often browse? What articles do you Digg? A little research on how good articles are written can be very beneficial in finding an effective writing style.

Submit to Bookmarking Sites

It amazes me that some people write articles and don't even bother to submit them to Digg, del.ici.ous, StumbleUpon and other various social bookmarking sites. These sites can generate enormous amounts of hits, and it is very hassle-free to submit your article. All you really need is a short description and a list of tags.

Steps to Writing a Great Article

1. Find a popular topic.
2. Do some research. If you find another article that is popular on that topic, see what made it popular.
3. Make your article as user-friendly as possible.
4. Publish your article.
5. Submit your article to Digg, StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites.
6. Wait for the hits to come rolling in.

Pop-ups

I cannot think of anything more annoying than having a pop-up (especially a sneaky one that is not easily closed) right in the middle of something I am trying to read. Anyways, a pop-up can be counterproductive to your website as it may simply lead a visitor to a new website.

Long web pages

Avoid using a long, continuous page to relay information. Instead, use links and short pages. A long page gets tiring and overwhelming whereas links to shorter pages allow for easier navigation to a specific topic or sub-topic. Long pages also tend to make the site look amateurish – like you did not know how to create a new page.

Too many graphics

Graphics are nice when appropriately used. But excessive graphics tend to slow down the loading of the page and this annoys people. Stick to simple, related graphics.

Under construction links

Avoid putting in links to pages that remain under construction. If you have not finished a page, leave the link out until that page is ready to be published. It’s annoying and leaves the visitor feeling the site is incomplete – they are less likely to return.

Plug-ins

People get concerned when they are asked to download a plug-in to install before they can view your site. The extra work is annoying and, if the plug-in involves a program that is obscure, chances are they will pass by your site and onto the next.

Lack of Content

Having minimal content not only hinders the ability of search engines to find your site, thereby reducing your hits but also annoys visitors who view your site in hopes for a clear idea of what the purpose of the site is. Content based sites always seem to rank high in search engines too.

Music

Automatic music is generally annoying because it is not expected. So someone surfing the web at work may not want the rest of the office to know what they are doing – music or loud sounds is a sure giveaway. Anyways, web surfing is often done while working or listening to music already – interfering with that is aggravating.

By turning your head to these things when designing (or redesigning) your site, you can help keep your visitors happy and returning for those much coveted hits!