The power of stumbleupon recap
A lot of webpublishers that are new to web publishing would see any traffic to one of their web sites as great regardless of quality. What I and many before me have to come to find is that the quality of traffic is key for any web site that is selling a product. If you are not selling tangible goods you are still selling advertisements to your visitors so in essence either way you look at it you are selling something that you audience has to be interested in.
If you are selling tangible goods or information that takes over 5 seconds to digest you just well could be wasting your time using stumbleupon as a promotional method. Users of stumbleupon use stumbleupon not when they can’t find what they are looking for but when they have ran out of things to look for.
With this in mind the best web sites to promote via stumbleupon are entertainment web sites. Web sites that can engage the visitor and keep them entertained will have a much better of keeping the visitor firstly and in time converting that visitor into a advert click or new registration (dependant on your model). Small widget sites such as that provide something quick and cool and end with an advert click are perfect.
The point is people are always going to revert their favorite search engine to find information that really matters to them, after which they may use stumbleupon to kill some time.
I tried the allcreative link exchange system amongst other things to see the promotional power of stumbleupon for a niche site that I have just started. The results were pretty poor. The site received around 200 unique visitors per day for a few days from stumbleupon and is still receiving them now in dribs and draps but with zero conversions (adverts or affiliates). This is down to the fact that the niche appeals to a large audience but needs visitors that are more targeted in order to complete conversions. The majority of stumbleupon users will not be sat with their credit card at the ready waiting to stumble over the web site that sells what they are looking for.
Just to sum up what has been said. If you have an entertainment web site that is light hearted and engaging then stumbleupon could be an absolute winner for you but if you have a site that is more involved you could well struggle to keep a stumbleupon visitor and struggle even further to get them to convert to sale.