Stumbled Upon
When you run a blog, you tend to get a steady stream of visitors. Some are regulars, and some come from the search engines. Every once in a while, the numbers surge, usually because a strong site somewhere linked to yours.
I used to get the occasional uptick in visitors from links on MacSurfer, a Mac news source; once as many as 10,000 people came in from that page, so many that I had to temporarily remove some graphics or else exceed my bandwidth limits. I haven’t had a bump so large since then, and haven’t been linked to by a rich source like that for some time.
However, twice in the past few weeks I have a new referrer, a site called “Stumble Upon.” At first I thought it might be another spammer, but it showed up in Google Analytics (spammers usually don’t), and a quick look at the site showed that it was some sort of web-linking/searching community site, probably like Digg. The first spate of links added up to just over a hundred, but today almost 2000 came through the site, going to my recent post on free Mac software.
Have you ever signed up for a service and then completely forgotten you did? That’s what happened to me here. After finding the link surge, I tried to find out more about the site, but had trouble signing up–it told me that my usual sign-in name, “BlogD,” had been taken. At first, I was a bit put-off that someone had taken my moniker–until I realized that the “other” person had my location. Apparently, for some reason, I had created an account with them more than two years ago and had never come back. Says something for the persistence of accounts with them…
Nevertheless, the site does not seem to be very easy to understand, or at least they do not make themselves self-explanatory. Maybe if I read some FAQ somewhere or dug around for instructions, I might be able to figure it out, but without that, the site doesn’t feel very intuitive. And since I don’t have time right now, it’ll have to remain a mystery. But pretty soon, I’m gonna have to look into this whole Digg/Del.icio.us kind of connectivity fad; so far, when I’ve encountered it, I haven’t really understood it (am I an old fogey already? I don’t even have a MySpace site). Probably I could build readership on the site with it, but it’ll take a bit of sitting down and figuring out.
For now, it looks like StumbleUpon may be sending some business my way, though that is based upon just a few spikes of referrals. (Is someone out there plugging my site into it? If so, thanks!) But it is also of note that I found out about it more than two years ago but only now is anything much coming from there.
Hello. I am a regular visitor of your website because I am interested in Japanese culture and technology subjects. But I really don’t know who you are and how many years you live in Japan etc.. There is no mentioning about the creator of the website or any contact information. I may be wrong. I hope you can improve on this.
Take care & Ciao.
Frankie: I’m not sure what you expect, but this site is not really intended to be autobiographical. I say a lot about myself, but this is more a platform for my opinions and ideas as well as quasi-entertainment and an information source on whatever topics I feel like. I have deliberately decided not to make an “About me” page simply because I want the information to be the forefront of the blog, not myself. But if you read enough within the blog, you’ll find most of the information you ask about. For example, within the category “Focus on Japan” (which, from your stated interests, I think you should probably read through in full or at least skim), there are a number of posts detailing my history in Japan. As for contacting me, every comment to the blog is delivered to me as an email, and is moderated; a comment directed to me with a request not to publish it would be equal to a personal email, if you so wish. (However, enough people have asked for a direct way to contact me outside of comments, so maybe I should add that–especially since I have found a way to avoid spammers picking up on the published address….)
I just got to the Harry Potter stuff on your site via StumbleUpon. To explain; StumbleUpon is a browser plugin that allows you to create a profile of topics that interest you. Once you have created your profile, all you need to do is click on the ‘Stumble’ button that was added to your browsers toolbar and a website that relates to your selected interests is displayed.
It is throughly addictive and should be banned from your computer at work, as you will find yourself spending hours and hours of your time visiting websites about all the things that actually interest you.
No more random surfing in the hopes of finding something of interest. With StumbleUpon, every site you visit deals with something of interest to YOU!!
I highly recommend getting the plugin.
Note: I have no relation whatsoever to StumbleUpon or its developers other than that I am an avid user of the product.
Regards.
I’m one of those who plugged that entry into StumbleUpon, subsequent users probably rated it favorably and that’s probably why the traffic increased in a short time.
Well, thank you for that, Justin!