Exclusive First Look: SU.PR – Stumble Upon's New Traffic Builder

I’m so excited about SU.PR, it’s hard to contain.

For the last few weeks, the brilliant team at StumbleUpon and I have collaborated on the creation of a new product designed to do one thing: get you more traffic in less time.

It might just become the hub of your social media empire…

Prior to SU.PR (pronounced “super”), I had to use ping.fm for updating Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn at the same time, bit.ly for basic analytics like click-through, scattered tools for viewing retweets, and nothing allowed me to schedule tweets well.

It was all a serious pain in the ass.

SU.PR fixes all of this and adds much more. In one place, I can now:

– Submit my content to StumbleUpon’s 7.9 million users with each post

– Have my best content showcased in a right-hand sidebar for each page I link to (here’s an example)

– Get suggestions for optimal posting times: get more traffic per post

– Schedule as many tweets or posts as I want, for any time

– See my click-throughs in real-time

– See retweets for each post, including the biggest influencers (ranking coming soon)

– Post to Twitter and Facebook at the same time, with more platforms in the pipeline

– Use my own short URL (i.e. www.fourhourblog.com/ab123) instead of someone else’s branding

The result of it all? More traffic. StumbleUpon has jumped to almost 10% of my total traffic per week, delivering as many as 24,000 unique visitors to a single post in less than 24 hours. In short, SU.PR totally kicks ass. It saves me headache, gets me better results through smarter analytics, and drives significant monetizable traffic.

I’ve provided several screenshots below the text of this post to whet your appetite.

It won’t steal your Google juice either. Use one line of javascript or install a simple WordPress plugin (both available later this week) and you’re set to SEO. From George at StumbleUpon, in more technical terms:

Publishers have the option to create Su.pr URLs that will deliver visitors directly to their site via a 301 redirect, preserving their search rank. Simply upload a configuration file in the website’s root directory and it will turn on the option for all the Su.pr URLs for that domain. Unlike other web toolbars, the StumbleUpon toolbar can be hosted on your own site with a single line of Javascript. The toolbar will be shown to your visitors when they click on a Su.pr link. The toolbar promotes your best content in the sidebar and encourages your visitors to thumb-up your page and get more traffic.

Publishers can also build their brand by creating short URLs in their own domain with Su.pr. Your own custom short URLs (i.e. yourblog.com/asd) build your brand each time they are posted and retweeted. Once you enable the option, anyone who creates a short URL to your content with Su.pr will automatically generate a custom short URL. Simply add a rewrite rule and the same configuration file in your website’s root directory will do the work. We plan to have a beta version of the service available for all PHP based websites next week and more platforms to follow shortly.

Since I offered product specs to meet my wants, I’m loving SU.PR, and I’d like to offer a sneak peek to 50 readers. First come, first served: just use the code “suprtim” (I didn’t select the name!) at http://su.pr to get a free beta account, and take the next generation of social media tools for a spin.

[Update: the 50 went fast, but rumor has it that StumbleUpon might release more pre-public beta codes here]

For those of you who don’t make it in now, don’t worry. It’s worth the wait of a few weeks, and this is just the tip of the iceberg 🙂

The SU.PR dashboard – click here to enlarge

My most popular content promoted alongside each link – click here to enlarge

Indicating ideal posting time – click here to enlarge

Intelligent stats on each post – click here to enlarge

Scheduling posts in advance – click here to enlarge

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with over 500 million downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.

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154 Replies to “Exclusive First Look: SU.PR – Stumble Upon's New Traffic Builder”

  1. Great stuff. I have one piece of advice though. Download Jing at jingproject.com. It would make this video a lot easier to view.

  2. This-is-awesome! I’m in half of the video and I had to write this comment so… checking out more : )

  3. I’ve been pretty sold on bit.ly because of the superior analytics that it provides over other services.

    However, I think you’ve made the case to switch…I’ll be testing.

    Thanks Tim.

    Cheers,

    Ryan

  4. Nice work, Tim (and SU). I am impressed. Thanks for the beta account, too, I’m getting traffic already.

  5. +1 for Jing… It rocks my socks off.

    Cool stuff Tim. Thanks for sharing it with us. Looks like a very streamlined process.

  6. Thank you Tim for this tools.

    As far as this is a beta, look in your replies on twitter i pointed out a little bug in shortening process.

    Take care 🙂

  7. Thanks for the code for a beta account. I’ve been interested in one ever since I noticed you using the service. I’ve been thinking “If it passes the Tim Ferriss test, it must kick ass”

  8. Looks like a great new option for getting your sites out there (though the code is already expired, so I guess I’ll have to wait a few weeks before I know for sure 🙂

    StumbleUpon already brings in a significant amount of traffic to my sites, so I’m anxious to see how this augments that.

  9. Just yesterday I was wondering how to set up this bar on the right that I’ve seen in your links on Twitter. It’s really cool.

    I missed the invite. Shame:(

    Can’t wait to try it out.

  10. Dude- Once again you amaze me. This is an amazing tool with so many applications. This will make a very welcome addition to my muse traffic.

    Thanks,

    Rob

  11. I just got the Feedburner email and checked out the site to find out the invites have already been used.

    How about giving out more invites..

    Service looks cool

    Thanks,

    Mike

  12. Great post. This has so many great features. I am always looking for new ways to publisize my real estate blog. Nearly all of my business leads come from the Internet, so every new tool helps. Thanks!

  13. Collaboration is key… just imagine what can be accomplished with Open Source, Google is adopting this in their new strategy with Google Wave. I applaud you for your work with SU.PR. It does kick-ass and hope to use it.

  14. I jumped on your free trial as soon as I got your post in my inbox, but I was tooo sloooooww…….

    Looks great. Let us know when it’s open to the public.

    Thanks Tim,

    Josh

  15. I will certainly give it a Twhirl! For some reason I tried ping.fm a coupla weeks back + it’s not posting my Cellphone pix to Twitter + Facebook but hopefully SU.PR DU.PR PU.PR SCOO.PR will do da Trick!

    Cheers!! ;)) Peace*

  16. Hi Tim,

    Thanks so much for this tip! And thanks for your AWESOME presentation at the Media Bistro Circus last week which actually inspired me to start my own blog! I invite you to check it out if you ever have any time in your super-busy day! 🙂

  17. Didn’t make the cut for the first 50, but no problem… looking forward to trying this service as it seem to cover all of the ways to implement social media without going to a lot of different services.

  18. Ooohhh… shiny! Can’t WAIT for this to go live! Great concept and specs, Tim!

    A question though: Does anyone else feel that “scheduling” tweets seems to kinda take the human element out of social media? To say it another way: Isn’t the point of social media making computers and communication etc more human. Seems like “scheduling” just makes it robotic again…

    Maybe it’s just me…

  19. This looks absolutely amazing. Seriously, the ping.fm thing is okay, but it does get old sometimes. Not to mention getting your posts out to millions of people right away. I’m looking forward to it.

  20. Miss the invite some how, must have gone quick. Any chance I can grab one more? Anyone? Buller?

  21. Sounds like a great tool, I especially like the suggested posting times as I’ve been trying to work that out on my own little excel sheet with little success.

    My one issue is that I’d love this system to be bridgeable across the other social media platforms like digg, reddit, etc. Right now Reddit is where I get the most social bookmarking traffic and I’d love to implement these tools there as well. Anybody have any idea if a program like that exists, or can su.pr bridge across multiple bookmarking platforms?

  22. I can’t wait to get my hands on this tool. I’ve been following the Su.pr twitter account hoping for an invite. And damn if all your traffic didn’t eat up those 50 accounts before I could get in there.

    If you need another beta tester I’m ready!

  23. I wonder if you’d be so excited to market to me and spam my Stumbles if you knew that (A) I use a strict AdBlock Plus filter and don’t see any of your affiliate ads or that (B) I automatically thumbs-down any sponsored stumbles?

  24. The tool is great. I’m just very curious to see how you are going to handle that on your mini retirements abroad… I’m sure this are exactly the tools that Thoreau thought about while writing Walden.

    1. @James,

      I’ll just ignore the web totally or primarily when I’m on a mini-retirement 🙂

      Best,

      Tim

  25. I’ve noticed the SU.PR links in your tweets, but something goes bad when I’ve tried to follow them — I just get a StumbleUpon log-in page.

  26. I’m hoping that if you have a StumbleUpon account, you get the option to not get that overlay when hitting the page.

    Also, if you’re going to do screencasts from your Mac once in a while, consider Telestream’s Screencast. It’s a lot easier to see what’s on the screen if it’s filmed directly on your computer, and it’ll even capture your webcam while you’re explaining.

  27. Bummer that I messed the early beta trial.

    Over the couple weeks I’ve been checking the SU site to figure out how you were able to get that cool toolbar in your tweets. Should have known that it would only be a matter of time before you shared with all.

    Cheers!

  28. hey tim

    i’d throw myself down a flight of stairs for an invite code. Ryan Graves just phoned me and said that he doesn’t need one after all so if you grabbed one for him please just forward it along to me.

    Your Pal,

    Andy

  29. Wow, this is a really great product, if you didn’t already realize this haha. It has awesome potential and the name is pretty clever. I was actually looking for a FREE product that did this all weekend, and lo and behold it exists, but it’s out for the public yet.

    Somebody above wondered if it took the human out of Social Media–I don’t see it that way. I think that social media is more of a medium/means (hence the name) and not an end. The end is more human, like, say, this blog, whereas twitter is pretty dehumanized but will direct traffic to blogs. It shouldn’t be taken so seriously; Christmas dinners aren’t fading away any time soon.

  30. thanks Tim, looks awesome, i signed up & will await their invite!

    Shaweeeeeeeetness baby!

    Peace bruddah,

    –z–

  31. Uggghhh…this is what happens when I don’t look at your blog first thing in the morning 🙁 I get left out. Following them now on Twitter though.

  32. Hey Tim, I among another bunch couldn’t get the code access in time. When are you giving away more? I’m interested in testing this tool for an upcoming web proyect asap.

    Thanks for the work both you and the SU team, keep it up!

  33. This looks great as a service. I also deal with that struggle for analytics + scheduling.

    The addition of using your own shorturl is also excellent.

    I look forward to this coming out although I missed the 50 first slots probably by quite a lot.

    Thanks for helping build an excellent tool.

  34. Was wondering why you suddenly switched your URL shortening to su.pr (…not sure why I noticed that).

    Anyways, I’m following stumbleupon on Twitter now so hopefully I can get an invite code soon for the service. Looks absolutely brilliant.

  35. Hi Tim,

    I got your book, quote you often and try to read every blog… so please don’t take this the wrong way ..but I have concerns with su.pr

    When I retweet a link I do it because I want to be 100% authentic in wanting to share the information on the page. I feel with su.pr this is some what lost.

    I believe people in my niche will feel – OK thank you for retweeting, but didn’t you really do it to provide links to your own site.

    Obviously I haven’t used su.pr and can only base my thinking on your video and your tweets but at the moment I an uneasy with using it.

    Also I feel scheduling tweets is too automatic, social media is about human interaction via manual means.

    Cheers

    Andy

    1. @Andy and All,

      Thanks for the comments! Let me answer one of the most common questions and concerns (Q/C):

      Q/C: “I feel scheduling tweets is too automatic, social media is about human interaction via manual means.”

      I agree that social media can be real-time, but it doesn’t have to be. First and foremost, I want to add value to lives in social media, and this could be in the form of a joke, a fun status update, or a link. I find things I want to share all the time, and having multiple tabs open, or saving bookmarks to return to, is an inconvenience, so I seldom tweet out 80% of the cool stuff I find. It would be the worst form of self-interruption possible. If the value I add — a link, suggestion, or resource, for example — isn’t time-dependent, scheduling allows me to get more high-quality stuff to my followers. People use social media for different reasons and want different things from it. Most of my readers want how-to from me, not just real-time updates, so I focus on the former.

      Some people do non-stop real-time updates, others just push their RSS feeds for promotion, and combine things as I do above. Since all social media rules are subjective, you need to pick rules that allow you to improve your quality of life and those around you in a way that is congruent with your priorities.

      Hope that helps and good luck!

      Tim

  36. This looks like a great tool.. unfortunately, looks like I missed out on the invite code. Can’t wait to get my hands on this.

    Thanks for the heads up Tim

  37. Pure awesome, I was just about to set up ping.fm but after seeing this I’m sold! Any idea when the next round of invites are going out? Any chance of getting one?

    Thanks for sharing, this really looks amazing.

  38. Once again, you’ve got your finger on the pulse! Checked out the video – looking forward to the tool!

  39. WOW! Very cool! The more we can condense technology, the less stress my daily work life will have! I had no heard about this – thanks for bringing another great idea to the table!

  40. That looks like exactly what I’ve been waiting for! Sick! I can’t wait to give it a go. I really need to get my website back and going so I can promote via Su.pr!

  41. Great post!

    The Ferriss Nation needs a little more help with “muse’s.” Driving traffic is fantastic but with no where to drive it we are putting the cart before the horse. Still enjoy each post.

    Ben

  42. Love the one-stop-shop aspect in this crazy social media world 🙂

    Also trying to catch an invite on twitter, can’t DM @gmc if he is not following me, tried to @ message him…can you send me an invite? <3 🙂

    Great stuff!!

  43. This looks really promising indeed. Everything that will make conversation over the web easier or bundle different services … well I’m in!

  44. Love your work Tim, You are my newest hero. You really must not get much sleep finding all of this new gear to play with.

    Are you a sailor? I think you would enjoy streamlining some sailing skills on one of our Trimarans during one of your 2 week mini retirements….? Come by and have a look next time you’re in Saigon?

    =P

    Take care

  45. Where can I find access to the online bonus chapters of the 4 hour workweek book?

    In the book it says on the website, but I cannot find them anywhere on the website!

    thanks

  46. Don’t mind to have more choices, as long SU.PR could be a better game player. Have been a fan for bit.ly all these times, will Su.pr be persuasive enough? I guess we could only wait and see. Anticipating.

    @wchingya

    social media/blogging

  47. Hi Tim, I just read your post and rushed to use your invitation code. I WAS TOO LATE! Any other invitation code left ;-)?

  48. Can you turn the toolbar off? I like to send and receive links to the actual website rather than a frame that I have to break out of. I don’t mind going through URL shortening service just as long as the destination is correct.

  49. This looks so awesome – wish that I was faster on the draw, looking forward to using this soon, presently I’m using Bit.ly – TweetLater & Seesmic Desktop to manage four accounts.

    Didn’t hear you mention multiple account support – hope that’s in there too.

    ^~~^

  50. This looks exactly like the social media management solution that I was looking for. And your timing couldn’t be better; the Facebook/Twitter tipping point appears to have just happened.

    The only issue I noticed so far is that sometimes pages don’t open properly using mobile Safari on my iPod.

  51. Hooray for combined interfaces! This is awesome. SU.PR seems very intelligent and can’t wait to get in, test it, and review the traffic data. Love the smart features involved in this system, like the best time to post data.

  52. Thank you Tim.

    You are the best ! Love the Book, love the blog.

    su.pr is SUPER !

    This changed my blog. Finally I have some traffic. 🙂

    Obrigado !

    All the best.

    TGF

  53. I went through ALL the codes I could find online because “suprtim” wasn’t working. so i decided to go through them again haha and “suprtim” went to a signup page. i put in my info and it said i already had an account?? i can only assume if you have a stumbleupon account you have a su.pr? because that’s what it seems. or the code just let me login with my stumbleupon email? lol i don’t know, but i’m in 😀

  54. I am playing with it right now, trying to figure it all out 🙂

    This is actually pretty damn crazy

  55. Looking forward to this coming out of beta so I can give it a trial run. Seeing click-throughs and RT’s adds a lot of measurable stats to start managing! And, we can start outsourcing social media content with the scheduling bit…

  56. Wow Super Tim,

    That certainly looks dope. However, I think your video woud have been cleaner and more effective as a proper screencast. Use Screenflow.

    Keep up the inspirational work.

  57. heads up guys….i just meandered over the website…took a complete guess cause i thought i saw on this blog last night that the beta code “suprbeta” would work…and well it did. i’m in…seems like a nice tool to start using…i’m still a few stages behind with niche creation and a stable set of automated principles in front of me before i try to go viral on anything i’m promoting/selling. keep work yall.

  58. Might be old news, but stumbleupon is giving out more accounts today. Follow @stumbleupon for the updates. Today’s invite code is “suprbeta”… if it’s still available.

    Cheers,

    Boris (@livetruly)

  59. Is the WP plugin available yet for the site url?

    Not sure I can manage the other way to install with my lack of coding knowledge.

    Please anyone let me know of the link to the WP plugin if you have it!

  60. Thanks Tim!

    I love the layout. This, in combination with Google Analytics could be a very powerful tool. I’ve only tried to use SU a few times only so far. With every post, I’ve noticed 16 clicks within 5 seconds. Do you think those are Twitter or Facebook programmed bots for whatever reason (SPAM, RSS, etc.)? I wonder if this only happens with my accounts.

    Cheers,

    -Pedro

  61. It looks great except that it framejacks the original website which is a bad thing. That is the same mistake Digg made with the Diggbar.

  62. I really like su.pr. All the stats are great. The only issue I’m having is that my toolbar DOESN’T promote my most popular content underneath where it says “popular links from abbiehuxley”. I only recognize one of the links as something that I’ve actually looked at. I don’t know how the rest of them were chosen to be on the toolbar.

    When I see the toolbar present on Tim’s posts they are in fact links to his most popular content.

    Anybody else have this issue…?

  63. Wow, Tim, you sure have been busy. This looks like an incredibly meaty consulting project and final product. My traffic needs help so I’ll be signing up ASAP. Thanks for the heads up.

    Best,

    Alexandra Levit

    PS – when are you going to China?