I’ve honestly been meaning to write a post about StumbleUpon for a long time. It’s been sitting on my “To Do” list for months, and for some reason or another, it always seems to get pushed down the list. Oddly enough, however, it’s probably one of the more important posts I’ll make this year.

Did you know that StumbleUpon drives the most unique visitors to the Corner every month? We get visitors from over 1,500 different websites each month, but StumbleUpon sends a LOT more than anyone else. I’m talking like 15,000 to 20,000 new visitors each month. I’m not a huge stat-checker, but when I saw this trend a while back, I was pretty surprised. For those who don’t know what StumbleUpon is, it’s a simple, yet unique tool that allows its’ users to find awesome sites around the Internet. Basically, you install a toolbar (it sits at the top of your browser… oh, and it’s totally free, by the way), and you can “stumble” through random sites that fit your interests.

Say (just for arguments’ sake) you like photography. You hit the stumble button, and it takes you to other, popular, photography-related pages. If you like the page you “stumble upon” (obviously where the name comes from), you give it a thumbs up . If you don’t like it, you give it a thumbs down . You can also do stuff like leave a review or comments . The more pages you stumble, the more StumbleUpon figures out what kind of stuff you like and don’t like, and it shows you more sites about the stuff you like. Conveniently, StumbleUpon has put together an intro video for you here.

“OK, Tim, that seems pretty cool, but I don’t really get why it’s such a big deal,” you think to yourself while you’re reading

“Yeah, hold on – I’m getting there,” I respond. Keep reading.

So as I mentioned before, more people find the Corner through StumbleUpon than via any other site (including Google!) on a monthly basis. Imagine how many people we could introduce to the Corner, show off our photographs, tutorials and articles, etc if a bunch of us submit all that stuff that’s on PhotographyCorner to StumbleUpon! A couple of weeks ago I stumbled one of our SmugMug Corners and dozens of people gave it thumbs up, sending more than 2,500 “stumblers” to that page in the past month alone. Not only is it a great way to send more people to the Corner, but it’s also an awesome way to get more people to see your photography.

Imagine this: You’re browsing through the Corner Galleries, and you come across this FANTASTIC photograph. You leave a comment, but before you check out the next photograph, you hit the “thumbs up” button on your StumbleUpon toolbar. If you’re the first person to “stumble” that page, you get prompted to write a short review (something as simple as “awesome photo of a giraffe” is usually good enough). Now, other people that are stumbling along that like photography might also get to “stumble” to that page in the Corner Galleries. Pretty sweet, eh?

Now, I could probably write dozens of blog posts on the other various aspects of StumbleUpon, but I think you get the gist of it. Here’s a basic StumbleUpon Guide that explains it better than I ever could. If you really want to know more, there’s also a great article here that goes through “How to Use StumbleUpon Like a Pro.”

The bottom line is this: StumbleUpon is a great way to a) find other cool sites and photographs online and b) help other people find cool articles, tutorials, blog posts, photographs, contests, etc on PhotographyCorner. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up for a (free) account, download the toolbar, and get stumbling!