BlogRush's Traffic Jam

In mid-September, John Reese, internet marketing wizard, released BlogRush. BlogRush is a cooperative syndication widget. It's over there, in the right sidebar. It offers 5 headlines from other blogs with posts on similar topics as mine.

The basic premise is simple. I install the widget and tell BlogRush the general category into which my blog posts fall (Philosophy? Health? Fashion?) Every time a page in my blog is viewed, BlogRush puts one of my post headlines into its rotation and promotes it on another blogger's site.

Each time a reader from Very Random clicks through a headline in the widget, I get a bonus syndication credit in the blogosphere, and the other blogger has added some traffic. BlogRush redeems the credit by adding another headline from my blog to their playlist. Since BlogRush is divided by topic categories, all traffic it generates should be relevant.

There's also an Amway-style slant with BlogRush. Let's say another blogger liked the idea and installed BlogRush on his blog via a link here. Whenever his blog was viewed, he would get a credit and I would get a credit, too. Once his reader clicks through a headline, we would each earn one bonus syndication credit. And so it goes. More referrals in my network means more displays for my headlines.

The best part? BlogRush does all the work. That's ideal for the way I use my blog. I don't have to solicit new friends, work around no-follows, consider flow states or field reports. According to those who have done the math, the algorithm used at BlogRush favors smaller sites.

I'm realistic about BlogRush. My site receives an average of 75 unique visitors (first-time visitor) each week. I'm fairly pleased with that - Very Random is not The Huffington Post!

In the first week, my headlines were displayed 167 times, and 5 new readers came via the widget. Three percent click-thru is considered average performance when it comes to CTRs. (If the reason I kept a blog was to increase click-thrus, I'd put the posts in the sidebar and the sidebar info in the main section!)

Less than 24 hours after the release of BlogRush, some Probloggers (people who make their living by blogging) went ballistic about it. "It's a pyramid scheme" some posts cried, followed by the "Ponzi", "Leaking Readers" and "Violates Terms of Service" camps. Writers with 10,000-plus daily visitors to their site were complaining about delays in getting displays! (How/Where would you look for blogs that might have your headline in the widget?)

Every new technology brings out the hackers, and BlogRush was no exception. Programmers were spoofing impressions on their blogs to amass credits; making the headline widget "invisible", and using it on splogs. Some users went so far as to create new blogs with no posts and kept reloading the page to build syndication credits. I manually blocked some adult content sites from my widget. (I don't want to get a "Not Safe For Work" label!)

So BlogRush became more like blog-stall and moved to a full manual review of its members' blogs. In a broadcast email, John Reese explained that "If a blog does not meet our guidelines and criteria, IT WILL BE REJECTED from the network and not allowed to join ...They will have no access to any BlogRush services...BlogRush needs to only have members that have quality blog content."

There's no information on the criteria they'll use to assess "quality". I've been kicked out of places, sure, but never because I failed to meet quality standards. That would be quite a blow.


Tags: [BlogRush]   [John Reese]
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Incidentally, I get Stumble-d-Upon about 60 times per month.