According to your twitter account, you launched 5 days ago. What did you expect to happen in that timeframe? Did you set yourself any specific goals in terms of, e.g. submitted essays?
Regarding StumpleUpon and the likes: is this where you expect your targeted userbase to be? I'd guess that people on SU are their primarily for entertainment... Maybe it would be better to promote your site elsewhere. Have you thought about getting in touch with some of your university's professors, political debating clubs, Facebook groups etc.?
Before you do this, you should have more content, though. At the moment you only have five essays. As far as I understood, the site is run by you and another undergrad. Why don't you two put up more of your own essays on the site before you expect other people (friends of friends) to do so?
I hope this helps and did not come across too harsh. Good luck with your endeavour!
/edit: why do all the essays have the same icon? Moreover you should really work on your introduction. At the moment you seem to need content, so explain to your potential writers the benefits of putting up their essays on your site.
Stumbleupon can drive good traffic if you have stuff to link to. PDFs don't stumble well (they're probably banned), and homepages don't do well unless they're interesting on their own.
Comments
According to your twitter account, you launched 5 days ago. What did you expect to happen in that timeframe? Did you set yourself any specific goals in terms of, e.g. submitted essays?
Regarding StumpleUpon and the likes: is this where you expect your targeted userbase to be? I'd guess that people on SU are their primarily for entertainment... Maybe it would be better to promote your site elsewhere. Have you thought about getting in touch with some of your university's professors, political debating clubs, Facebook groups etc.?
Before you do this, you should have more content, though. At the moment you only have five essays. As far as I understood, the site is run by you and another undergrad. Why don't you two put up more of your own essays on the site before you expect other people (friends of friends) to do so?
I hope this helps and did not come across too harsh. Good luck with your endeavour!
/edit: why do all the essays have the same icon? Moreover you should really work on your introduction. At the moment you seem to need content, so explain to your potential writers the benefits of putting up their essays on your site.
Stumbleupon can drive good traffic if you have stuff to link to. PDFs don't stumble well (they're probably banned), and homepages don't do well unless they're interesting on their own.
It might be, but how many stumblers are students of International Relations?
Stumleupon is like Reddit. You can pick your topics. There's bound to be an SU category for that somewhere.
edit: http://www.stumbleupon.com/discover/international-relations/
:)