#LuckyLinky Week 61
4th June 2018
A Quick Guide to Adding a Touch of Luxury to Your Bathroom
4th June 2018
So, if you are a blogger then the chances are you are going to be aware of Stumble Upon. Think of it like a a magazine of blogs from around the world that covered any and every subject. You could add your own articles, you could add other people’s articles, stumble them and instantly be able to see views happening over on your blog. It was a brilliant tool. Notice I said was. That’s right because as of, well soon, Stumble Upon will be no more. Apparently the official closing date is the 30th June but for some it has already stopped working. Honestly, this is quite a blow to a lot of bloggers as it was a great form of free advertising, boosting page views and organic reach.
Now, Stumble Upon are actually replacing themselves with a new site called Mix.com. It won’t be the same, it won’t work the same but nevertheless I am here to tell you how the new platform works…

Okay people… so how does Mix.com work. For starters, you do not need to wait for an invitation from Stumble Upon, though they will send some out. However if you go to the main homepage you can just sign up.

**TOP TIP** If you sign up using your soon to be old StumbleUpon account you will your views and page likes with you to Mix from the old platform.

 

You can also start afresh AND if you sign in using your Facebook or Twitter, a list of suggested people to follow will come up who also appear in your followers/following lists on the other platform. Obviously to follow them just hit the little orange plus sign and you’re away. We’ll come back to what benefits this offers shortly.

So, you log in, pick a profile name and you are effectively all set to go.

If you log in with your former Stumble account and still want to find people to follow, then you can search directly for your friends but hitting following and typing their name in the search bar. OR, you can go to the top right hand spy glass icon at any time and look for them there – trust me, it pays to have people to follow!

If you click on Settings in profile, you can change your name, username, profile image, add a bio and as relevant as it is select a gender!

The next and probably most important thing to do before anything else is setting up your categories. SO, click Add Page and up will pop a little side bar where you simply copy and paste the link of a page you want to “Mix.”

((Note you can also get the Mix Chrome Extension to make life a little easier too!)

On the following screen it will give you a suggested list of Categories to put the page link into, to allow them to be grouped into interests and HERE is where you can create your own.

I went through my site and those of friends and pulled a few posts, all from different categories and went through and made a category to cover each topic I was likely to Mix. I think I ended up with about 10 in all – you need to make sure they are relevant and easily searched.

As an example, I did – Parenting, Food and Drink, Product Reviews, Arts and Crafts, Pregnancy, Social Media, Blogging, Travel and Days Out, Fashion, Hobbies, but obviously you can choose one’s relevant to you. I also added some to General when I didn’t really know what to class something as.

When you first sign in, Mix.com will also ask you to choose some topics of interest – you can pick as many as you like and this is what it will use to find articles you may want to see. To view these suggested posts, select “For you” in the middle at the top of the screen and you can view them.

This is where the people you follow are going to love you as well. Whether it’s on a friends profile OR in the For You section, when you see something you like, or something you want to keep, simply click the orange plus symbol on the post of choice and select one of your categories to add it too and BOOM you’ve Mixed something.

That is honestly it. You search. You plus. You choose a category. You add your own link. It’s like Pinterest without the really pretty images.
** A WARNING ** Whilst this is the new platform that the former Stumble Upon are rolling out as a replacement, I’m not really sure it is going to be that great a replacement. The good thing about Stumble Upon was that the page itself loaded our blog posts, so it created and generated the views without us having to leave the page. A LOT of non-blogging people used it to read and entertain themselves and this again boosted out views.
Mix.com won’t do this. Unless they make some seriously fundamental changes, I am not sure Mix is going to be worth it. To actually view an article or page on Mix you have to click the post and this opens a new tab and you actually go directly to the post. I don’t think people are going to like this. I don’t think people will do this. It’s more work and let’s face it, we are getting lazier and lazier online.

I think as a community, we are really going to miss Stumble Upon but let’s see how the new Mix.com goes. Who knows… it might surprise us!

24 Comments

  1. Thanks for this guide. It is really helpful. Maybe send it to Mix.com so they can see what feedback their is and they may just change a few things.

  2. Fran Taylor says:

    Oh I totally messed it up! I didn’t bring anything over. Whoops!

  3. Great guide! I didn’t bring anything over either!

  4. This is so useful – hopefully it will be as good as Stumble Upon!

  5. Ah, I didn’t bring over my stumbleupon either. Shame. #ablogginggoodtime

  6. I didn’t really get the hang of StumbleUpon, but I feel like I should give Mix a go. #ABloggingGoodTime

  7. Modern Gypsy says:

    Great guide! I didn’t bring anything over, but then, I guess this is a good chance to start afresh! đŸ˜‰

  8. Thanks, for sharing this, I need to familiarise myself with it X #ablogginggoodtimr

  9. I downloaded the app for this after reading about it on a group…I haven’t had any info from stumble about closures so I was in the dark about that. Seems quite simple using the app – not sure about the rules in terms of how much you mix other people’s posts #ablogginggoodtime

  10. This is a really useful post, I’ve seen lots about Mix lately but didn’t really know what it was all about! #ABloggingGoodTime

  11. This is really helpful but yeah I don’t know if it’s actually better than Stumble? I suppose of enough people get on board they might have a rethink #ablogginggoodtime

  12. I’ve been a part of Mix for a week now. Still getting used to it but it seems to be okay. The only thing I’m missing that they haven’t set up yet is a share button and what-not. I discovered this in a SU Twitter group. Been doing good so far. Great post on helping people get familiar with the new platform! #ABloggingGoodTime

  13. Thanks for sharing this post !! but honestly, i found mix a little confusing !!

  14. eugene miller says:

    Its sure gonna be hard for Mix to make a better site than we had in Stumble. I would have appreciated an option to keep what I had going with Stumble. Or, at least had an option to keep Stumble. Im a 50 something year old man with a life too full of obligations to re-learn and re-configure web sites that worked perfect for me yesterday. I may not be spending the time on MIX that I had spent on Stumble. Im going to keep my fingers crossed.

  15. This is really helpful for me. Thank for your sharing!

  16. Pia says:

    Hey, Katie, thanks for this awesome guide! I miss stumbleupon as well. The time went by since they closed down and mix is up! Could you see any benefit from it today? In my case, I´m still not sure if I just use it the right way or if it´s totally useless (at least, for bringing up some traffic to my site) I´m still puzzled

    • Mummy in a Tutu says:

      I am getting some traffic from it surprisingly but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as useful as stumbleupon was and I have put little effort into it.

  17. Togrul says:

    Thanks for this article.

    It is really sad to see SU go. And I also agree that it won’t be as success as SU in terms of traffic. I already started adding my permalnks but can’t see any traffic as of yet. Maybe we should wait some.

    Regards

  18. Ash says:

    My blogs views actually doubled with Mix.. I was googling how to use Mix effectively and I came across this blog post.. Thank you for the guide..

  19. shakunthala says:

    Its really helped me a lot.
    I was confused about the mix of how to use.
    now I got an idea.

  20. If you miss StumbleUpon and would like to try an old school Stumbleupon clone instead of Mix, just head over to my link! It currently has over 1000 sites I’ve bookmarked over the years including those I found on StumbleUpon.