[miserabletemp]

Before I bought stumbleupon stumbles I was amazed at the exceptionally high pageviews per visit I was getting from SU. As soon as I dropped real money on it, the PV/user went to roughly the same as everywhere else.

I looked at the "referring sites" (in google analytics) and found that one of the pages was /refer.php which was the advertising page you mention.

I have an unproven feeling that my analytics from SU were somehow artificially inflated or something like that. My own personal experience is that I'm unimpressed with SU.

Others would disagree with me, and hopefully, someone somewhere will be able to convince me otherwise.

[swellular]

Thanks for the insight. Yes, perhaps they inflate the pageviews (somehow) to garner interest and get you to throw down money.

In general, I'm not a fan of paid search since it creates an artificial boost in traffic. It's fine if you're a large company with a big ad budget, but even so, as soon as you turn of the spigit, the water runs dry...