Welcome to Day #1 of the StumbleUpon challenge.

This is a process that helped even a beginner at StumbleUpon like myself get amazing and fast results. By following this guide to getting more StumbleUpon traffic, you too can experience the thrill and joy of having your content viewed by thousands of people within a few days - for free.

And in the process, you also get to help spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness and help save a child’s life!

So let’s get started getting more StumbleUpon traffic - quickly, and for free.

Jump In - Start Stumbling!

It’s as easy - or difficult - as that. While you could read and research about StumbleUpon for a year, that will NOT bring you more traffic. What will, however, is if you just jump in and do things on StumbleUpon.

So, first click here to join StumbleUpon if you are not already a member.

Just register, download and install the toolbar, and come back to read the rest.

Done?

Welcome from a fellow SU member

Want to be my ‘StumbleUpon friend’? Click here and add me to your friends list - just click on the ‘Add him as a friend’ button at the right top corner.

Finished? Great.

Now let’s customize and personalize your StumbleUpon page to fit with your goals. In the beginning, StumbleUpon can be confusing. Here are some tips to get going:

1. Click on the STUMBLEUPON icon on the left corner of your toolbar. You’ll be asked to pick some preferences, depending upon your interests.

Select one or a few categories you want to focus on. Make them relevant to your main site or blog to which you will be driving visitors.

Based on your choice, the service will present targeted websites for you to stumble and review. As each page loads in your browser, you can rate it - by either giving it a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’… and move on to the next.

2. You can continue to surf the Web the usual way - except that now, when you come across a site that impresses you, you can just click on the ‘thumbs up’ icon on your SU toolbar - and it gets added as your ‘discovery’ to the StumbleUpon database (if it isn’t already in it).

There’s a benefit to being the first person to stumble a site or article or page. If you ‘discover’ a cool site that no one has stumbled before, then as more and more people notice the site and vote for it on StumbleUpon, your link will drive more traffic to your site.

How? The review page of any site in the SU database carries the name, profile photo and link of the ‘discoverer’ - which means WIDE exposure across the network for you. What’s more, if it gets popular enough to hit the ‘Buzz’ page, you could become visible to MILLIONS of people every day - for as long as the site remains on the buzz page!

This is the biggest incentive to actively stumble useful resources that help many other users.

Many people will notice you, and some will want to be part of your network, and will join your fan base or become your ‘StumbleUpon friend’, giving you increasing influence and leverage when it comes to creating buzz around sites you discover in the future - including your own!

3. Start with people. At the top of your StumbleUpon page, there is a tab titled ‘PEOPLE’. Click it. You’ll get a random list of members. Click on their profile photo or icon to go to their StumbleUpon page. There you’ll see a list of the sites they have stumbled. Start exploring, rating and reviewing.

4. Or pick a tag to go. On the right sidebar is a ‘tag cloud’ - a list of words on popular topics, based on the choices you gave indicating your preferences.

Clicking on each tag will take you to a page listing people who are also interested in the subject, and sites stumbled by other users. You can visit each and rate them. If you prefer video and multimedia, there’s a section devoted to it, again linked from the navigation bar at the top of the page.

5. Make friends. That’s another way to get started. You may find someone you already know on StumbleUpon. Visit their profile page. Click the ‘Add Them As A Friend’ button to be their fan. If they choose to, they can in turn pick you to be a ‘mutual friend’.

And in this way, you can even approach people you don’t know yet, but want to. Steadily, such growth enlarges and enriches your network. Remember this - StumbleUpon is not merely a ‘traffic tool’ - it’s a SOCIAL network!

There’s a lot more you can learn about StumbleUpon. Here is an amazing resource that lists great articles about different elements of SU. Reading them all may be too forbidding and time consuming, but take a look and go through as many as you can. It will give you a better idea of the service.

65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles

The “CHD Social Media Challenge” is a project to spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness. There are 4 mini-tutorials and 1 firesale making up the ‘challenge’. You can join in and help too - click here to see how.