Today I had an epiphany and realized why it’s difficult for people with low traffic sites to get traffic from stumble upon even when they craft high-quality blog posts.
The sad truth is that high-traffic websites have an unfair advantage.
How it works
Let’s say you have an amazing blog post on how to cure unicorn baldness. And you have just written a blog post that is going to make the unicorn community stand up and take notice. No unicorn will ever have to hide in shame because of his hair loss.
Like any good blogger you publish this post and wait for the traffic to come. The trouble is very few people know about your Unicorn Herbal Remedies website.
Nevertheless, you have high hopes of getting lots of traffic because your content is fantastic and has the potential to change the world (or at least the unicorn world).
You expect everyone that sees your blog post will give it a thumbs up on stumble upon, which will send you traffic. And every one of these visitors will give it a thumbs up, sending even more traffic.
This snowball effect works very well for high-traffic websites but frequently falls flat on its face for low traffic websites. To understand why we need to do a little math.
A Little Math
Even if you have fantastic content, the vast majority of your visitors will not give you a thumbs up on stumble upon. The number of people that will give you a thumbs up is actually quite low. I don’t know the exact figures but let’s just pretend it’s 1%.
So if you have 10 visitors to your website and each one has a 1% chance of giving your blog post a thumbs up then there is a 90% chance that none of your visitors will give you a thumbs up.
If you have 50 visitors you still have a 60% chance that no one will give you a thumbs up.
If you’re 100 visitors then your odds increase; you have a 73% chance that at least one visitor will give you a thumbs up.
And let’s pretend that each thumbs up sends 100 new visitors from stumble upon your website. And most likely at least 1 of these 100 visitors will give you a thumbs up sending you another 100 visitors.
Furthermore, it’s possible that the visitors that stumble upon sends to you have a higher chance of giving you a thumbs up, maybe 2%. This would result in even more people giving you a thumbs up which results in more traffic and more thumbs up and more traffic.
But this entire snowball effect is dependent on you getting 100 visitors to your website before you get any traffic from stumble upon.
If you look at popular websites like ProBlogger this is exactly how they get traffic from stumble upon.
What to do about it
The most obvious thing to do is get more traffic. But that’s probably not very helpful.
What you need to do is keep producing quality blog posts and build a relationship with the visitors that you have.
Make it easy and encourage them to subscribe to your RSS and follow you on twitter.
Invite them to ask questions and respond to their comments.
In a nutshell if you build a community then the traffic will come. Once you have traffic it’s far easier to get people to give you a thumbs up on stumble upon and begin the snowball effect of traffic.
Just remember that sites like ProBlogger were once brand-new and had no traffic. The way ProBlogger got to be so popular was by building a community.
Of course getting more people to stumble your website wouldn’t hurt. 
You can get a free stumble from me if you want.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is great info, I never knew the % of people who give a thumbs up is so low, so the more traffic you have the higher chance you get of people giving a thumbs up.
Hi Nick,
I am usually quite good with numbers, but I don't understand the mathmatical model behind your calculations.
- 10 visitors – 90% not acting
-50 visitors- 60% not acting
100 visitors – 73% not acting
Assuming the 1% conversion rate I understand 1 Stumps up for 100 visitors, but not the rejection rates you mentioned in your post.
Thanks for elaborating a little more.
If you’re 100 visitors then your odds increase; you have a 73% chance that at least one visitor will give you a thumbs up.
This means that you have a 27% chance of no one stumbling your site. Does this make sense?