Is it me or is anyone else sick and tired of paying ec for a stumble and review and finding commentary that is just ridiculous. A brief sentence without any thought or connection to the original post. When I take the time to review I always read the post and leave something relevant in my review. Why are people so lazy that writing more than a sentence seems a hardship?

They're too busy dropping.

This is why I don't pay for Stumbles: it just doesn't pan out.

Other Stumble communities are much better, ie the Firestorm Forum.

You see a lot of stumble reviews that are just:

"From the page : Quote from the page"

and leave it at that. Free stumbles are always better to have.

I simply would not feel right about exchanging stumbles or excepting credit for a stumble if I didn't write a decent review. If people are too buzy dropping cards to do it decently they simply shouldn't stumble. I am so irritated with this.

I've posted a review ~ one that is heartfelt and true to what I know of your blog. I appreciate what you write and your thoughts and ideas. You always provoke thought from me and I appreciate you for it.

If there is an issue with this review, let me know.

I didn't do this for ECs

Interesting thread about stumbling.

I don't pay for Stumbles, but I do exchange Stumbles. I do not review most of the sites I Stumble. I exchange a Stumble for a Stumble and would have little time to work and stuff if I reviewed every site I stumbled. Getting a lot of stumbles increases your traffic and backlinks, and ultimately things like Alexa ratings and position in the search engines through the backlinks. That's reward enough for me. I don't need a bunch of insincere one-liners, which is ultimately what you will get when you try going for reviews.

Without targeting your request for a review, you get what you pay for. If you want meaningful, well written and exciting reviews you should email those whose writing styles in their blogs show that they might deliver. Then you negotiate the mutual compensation. It may be EC's or a like review for one of their posts. When I submit a link in the stumble forum it's no different than when I can stand outside the supermarket and ask : "Am I good looking?". It's a crap shoot. I've never felt that offering 50 cents - the market rate of 50 EC's- is going to get me a more meaningful, sincere response. Once in a while someone in the parking lot or the EC forum delivers a meaningful observation. For that I am grateful and try to return the favor. As the commercial says: "Priceless!".

I have to say that I stumble alot. I haven't been able to hit a thumb down though. I just don't stumble something I don't like.

Thing here is, I do it because I genuinely like the site.

I don't write a review for all of the ones I thumb up. Only the ones I can really give a review on. :)

One thing I dare to ask is ~ if there is a specific review you are looking for, I question that. In other words, is there something you want written for your site specifically ~ I don't think that's what Stumble is about.

IMHO

Anyway, her site is interesting and I've been reading it. So I Stumbled what I believe. ;)

I'm stubmlin' on outta this thread

Does it really matter? If you are paying for stumbles some are bound to be spammy. If you don't want spammy reviews, don't pay for them.

I really don't do much with StumbleUpon. If I'm socially bookmarking a site, I like to use Mento.info which submits it to both del.icio.us and ma.gnolia.com

I am set up on StumbleUpon and at times I've Stumbled sites I like. I've gotten a bit of traffic from StumbleUpon to my site.

However, I've never seen the reviews that people have done of my sites. Is there some easy way to find them?

http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.orient-lodge.com/

This is yours! :)

Thanks. Between that and my access log, I can find others, such as

http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.orient-lodge.com/node/313..

Where is all this paying-for-reviews thing going on to which I have been heretofore blissfully oblivious?

dunno... LOL

Well thanks to those who checked out my site. To me I just believe in leaving a decent review behind. It is something I always do unless I am having a crazy busy day. Two or three sentences doesn't really take that long.

the marketing forum here is full of them. If you want them for free, Firestorm forum does daily exchanges of stumbles, diggs, yahoo buzz, comments, technorati, rss, etc.