A common question I see on TWCL forums is “How well does Stumble Upon work?” After many threads and innumerable responses to the question, here is my take:

Stumble Upon works well if you’ve got connections, but then again, that is how it works at ANY networking site.  If you don’t have anyone to network WITH, no one finds what you want to share (in this case, your site). So the first step of getting SU to work for your webcomic is to “subscribe” to other people. Members on TWCL will want to get in on this thread, but since the thread is old, you may want to shrug off the complaints of others and start your own.  People are far less likely to subscribe to you [even if you subscribe to them first] from old threads.  You will of course, be immediately directed to this pre-existing thread by multiple users complaining about bad forum etiquette, but I will leave the decision of whether or not to create a new thread up to you. I don’t know if any have been started at Comic Genesis, Webcomics.com, or Drunk Duck.

How SU works: Subscribing to others, and having others subscribe to you is incredibly important on Stumble Upon because it increases the automatic popularity of whatever webpage you stumble.  (A “stumble” by the way, is what it’s called when you tell SU that you like a site. It is a good thing! Contrary to the traditional definition).  Whenever you stumble a page (I highly recommend the FireFox add-on Stumble Upon Toolbar), it appears on the “what’s new” page of everyone subscribed to you. If even ONE of those subscribed you does a follow-up stumble, the page then appears on all of the “what’s new” pages of everyone subscribed to THEM, and so on and so forth. It’s a very…viral…process.

Other than subscribing to others and being subscribed to, the more you rate and review sites through SU, the more weight all your ratings get. So, basically, the more you use SU, the more it does for you.

One of the best features SU has for webcomickers is the ability to “send” a page to friends.  For example, if I had a comic page I was really proud of, I would send the page to friends, and ask for a stumble and/or review. This is a feature to use RARELY.  Do not ask for stumbles from your friends at every update. It is highly annoying. Everytime you ask for a stumble, be aware that internet etiquette demands you be willing to RETURN that stumble and review if you are asked.

What to Expect: The viral spread of SU “thumbed up” pages means you can get a lot of visits in a very short time. It can be a major force to increase the pageviews of your site (for example, if you are paid by CPM, this can be a VERY good thing), but the visits you will get will rarely result in new readers.  Webcomickers have to face it that webcomic readers are few and far in-between; they are a small audience, more of a clique than we’d like to admit.  You may get a lot of visitors for a day or three from a single stumble through SU, but you will also have a very low average pageview/visitor number.  The majority of people who go to your site from a stumble will have no idea what a webcomic is, will check out your site for a second, and then leave (this an article I’m getting ready to write: the problem of advertising to “webcomic-ignorant” audience).  Gag-a-day comics definitely have a leg up on story-based comics when networking this way.  If a page in the middle of a story-line is stumbled, no new visitor will know what is going on. A gag-a-day comic might make people explore for more laughs.

Those of you interested in using SU on your own site, check out AddThis and of course, the SU buttons.

EDIT: JGray of Mysteries of Arcana and 2nd Shift also mentioned via Twitter that SU can also be a tool to increase Project Wonderful bids. Some may find it “unethical” since SU traffic is rather…unsubstantial…but hey! It’s out there for you, and he’s right. PW doesn’t differentiate between what kind of visitors you get, just that you’re getting them.

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Another short article today, something veteran SU users might turn their noses up at, but then again, this studio blog is about basics.  ;)

Next up, an article near and dear to my heart: having your comic OFF the main page, and how to do it RIGHT.