Who thinks Blog Rush is a good idea?

[kingjacob]

I just found out about blogrush, its kinda like adgridwork as in it allows you to get free advertising on others blogs except its done alot better than adgridwork. Only blogs are allowed to use it and the "widget" that shows up on your site displays others sites in the form of their latest posts.

You can see it in action on DO (http://digitalorder.org/), I just put it on today so no stats yet. Also the flash movie on their site explains it better, Blog Rush Movie (http://www.blogrush.com/)

Even though they only have one style, I like it because its a simpler version of the friends posts plugin.

[Dan Schulz]

It won't be for everyone, I can tell you that right now. My personal site (when it goes live) will focus primarily on my work as a Web developer, but it'll have an area all to itself for the blog.

I think that if this were to be useful, the blog would have to be the main (or primary) focus of the site, not an addon like my site's blog (or a corporate blog, for example).

[JohnC]

I'm still waiting to see how it fairs on blogs I visit. I originally went with Twitter as a sidebar widget, and nixed it within an hour. Blogrush hasn't yet hit full traffic volume, so there's no telling what'll happen, just like when Twitter'd be a dead panel in many blogs.

Myself...I honestly don't see the need for it, unless I want to make sure I don't miss something from someone I know nothing of whatsoever who could change my life with their Ninja Life Skills Secrets revealed. :)

[ses5909]

I had never heard of it before today.

[SarahG]

Never heard of it until now. Saw this thread and just this instance had an email off someone asking me to join through their link. I'll take a look later when I'm more awake!

Edit: Okay 3rd time. This may be of interest to anyone thinking about using it and also running AdSense - Warning - BlogRush May Violate The Adsense Terms Of Service (http://www.45n5.com/permalink/warning-blogrush-may-violate-the-adsense-terms-of-.html)

[kingjacob]

Never heard of it until now. Saw this thread and just this instance had an email off someone asking me to join through their link. I'll take a look later when I'm more awake!

Edit: Okay 3rd time. This may be of interest to anyone thinking about using it and also running AdSense - Warning - BlogRush May Violate The Adsense Terms Of Service (http://www.45n5.com/permalink/warning-blogrush-may-violate-the-adsense-terms-of-.html)The key word being artificially, all the traffic from blogrush is natural as you only get traffic if someone is interested in your article. Plus its javascript so it doesnt pass on any authority,pr anything. I think he was just linkbaiting with this post.

[SarahG]

Could have been. I've not really read much about it yet I just suddenly had that as the first post in my feedreader :)

[sbpoet]

I put it on Blogging Blog, probably temporarily (please feel free to come in and give me a referral link!) -- I did it because this blog has been quiet for so long, and I'm willing to try this kind of thing to jump start it.

That widget is ugly, though.

[GnomeyNewt]

It seems like it might be a useful way to get traffic if your visitors read your sidebars. I seem to be sidebar blind and don't really click on anything there.

I don't know their features, but I know I wouldn't want my feed on some websites so I wonder if you can block your feed showing up on some sites.

[adalante]

I heard of it but didn't give it a try till today, there's only one style available but it fit well into my blog.

Seems like a pretty good idea but i don't know/doubt if it would bring "big traffic" as claimed.

[kingjacob]

It seems like it might be a useful way to get traffic if your visitors read your sidebars. I seem to be sidebar blind and don't really click on anything there.

I don't know their features, but I know I wouldn't want my feed on some websites so I wonder if you can block your feed showing up on some sites.
There are negative keyword and url filters,
It doesnt matter if your visitors are sidebar blind as long as the visitors of the blogs your posts show up on look at sidebars.

[deronsizemore]

I just added to my blog. I figured it's worth a shot to see if it brings in any visitors. If it doesn't, I can simply remove the javascript code in a few weeks. No harm done if I don't get any traffic.

[Michael Martin]

I think that it's a good idea, and is being done well. They are everywhere at the minute. I wonder if they'll still be everywhere in two weeks time though... :)


My complaint is that the categories are rather vague. "Computers & Internet"??

Great - Lump the metablogs with the tech blogs. They're the same, right? :(

It's just the beginning though. No doubt their contextualising will improve with time. Can't be harsh with them yet. :)

[deronsizemore]

I think that it's a good idea, and is being done well. They are everywhere at the minute. I wonder if they'll still be everywhere in two weeks time though... :)


My complaint is that the categories are rather vague. "Computers & Internet"??

Great - Lump the metablogs with the tech blogs. They're the same, right? :(

It's just the beginning though. No doubt their contextualising will improve with time. Can't be harsh with them yet. :)


Yeah I agree about the categories. Are you for sure how this thing even works? Like as far as the referral system? It may have just been to late last night when I was reading it, but it wasn't sinking in. lol.

[Emma]

Almost every blog in town is talking about Blog Rush right now. I'm all for increased traffic. But the widget is really ugly and looks like more sidebar clutter. Although it's new and supposedly there are improvements coming.

And then there's the 45 n 5 article about blog rush violating AdSense TOS. But that may or may not be linkbait.

I'm not going to mess with it right now. Although I could be missing out on a ground floor opportunity. Emma

[SarahG]

Google are on the fence as per usual. Seems someone got a response from them that pretty much put them on the sidelines but that was to be expected.

Personally I've removed the widget 36 hours after placing it there. I was having doubts when I started to see the actual blog rush admin panel doing barely anything, no stats, nothing, just a letter from the owner. The clincher was today when I saw one of the post titles was pornographic, definitely not for under 18s and certain not for my visitors! Whilst you can filter out certain words I'm not about to spend the evening listing every word used in an adult movie.

[Emma]

Thanks for the info SarahG, I didn't think it was for me either. It's just funny that almost every blog out there has been posting about it.

[deronsizemore]

It's just funny that almost every blog out there has been posting about it.

Guilty. :bigsmile:

I just posted about it to try and get referrals, but that failed.

[SarahG]

Thanks for the info SarahG, I didn't think it was for me either. It's just funny that almost every blog out there has been posting about it.

The guy running the show is well known and respected, a top marketer, so get a few friends (friends being the A List bloggers) to write about your idea and hey presto, it will filter through. Sunday morning I saw a post on here about it, had an email off a fellow blogger asking me to sign up and saw posts on it in my feedreader, all within the space of an hour! That's good hype!

The idea is a good one however I think it would/could take too much to police clearly as I've seen this afternoon. In the TOS it states no gamling sites, pornographic etc. so surely they should have filters in place to stop this rather than making the user have to filter everything including what isn't allowed! Still, it is barely a few days old, maybe down the line it'll be a bit more improved.

[kingjacob]

The stats are finally up on their dashboardand I have recieved 4 clicks from 78 impressions so thats not a terrible ctr for being free,

Sarah what category did you place your blog in?

[rodaniel]

I agree that the categories need to be expanded a bit.

My bigger issue is that the widget was obviously designed for a sidebar and I have no sidebar. I'm holding out some hope for a more horizontally-oriented widget that I could place in or above my page footer...

[Jeremy]

darren just made this post today about it, and it looks like across the board the CTR is quite pathetic. Granted it is still relatively new, it isn't all that surprising. I bet it would improve a bit over time, but unless you are one of the top people who can get a ton of referrals to generate a huge number of impressions, you could get better results doing something else

What are your BlogRush Statistics Like? (http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/09/19/what-are-your-blogrush-statistics-like/)

[starfeeder]

I can't remember where I first saw it, but then I saw it popup on johnchow.com, problogger, yaro's blog, and on and on... I signed up from shoemoney's blog because he was offering some referral bonus thingy...

testing it out, but so far results are 0, but giving it some time to prove it's worth.

[kingjacob]

I think they need to work out an issue with serving because everyone has a huge surplus of credits.

[goldfries]

trying it out. luckily it matches my blog color. :D

[deronsizemore]

As the days pass, I'm becoming more convinced that blogrush is junk. John Chow just posted his stats and he's already got a TON of referrals, a TON of credits, a TON of impressions, and only 91 clicks. If he's only seeing those kind of poor stats, I'm going to see zero from it.

[kingjacob]

I agree, right now everyone even me, has a huge surplus of credits, because they just cant serve the impressions they are handing out. It makes it worse when blogs like problogger get millions of impressions in the rotation and yet they arent craeting any impressions themselves because its all referal credit,

[SarahG]

Sarah what category did you place your blog in?

I opted for Computers and Internet. It was between that and Business as it's a blog on making money online.

[rodaniel]

Okay, okay, I have some of the same concerns as others here do, but I couldn't resist this screenshot...

[davemcnally]

I watched the video first and have to admit I was a little drawn in. But then I read the rest of this thread which has been enough on it's own to put me off. At least for now anyway.

[goldfries]

Current Credit Balance: 130
Credits Earned Today: 312
From Your Traffic: 312
IMPRESSIONS TODAY 182

hrmm..........

oh btw - it's a 1 DAY traffic.

[JohnC]

It's twitter on fast forward, forced on to valuable real estate.

This would be better served as an AIR app like Tweetr, in my opinion. It's got great potential for cross networking blah blah blah...but if it went AIR app, it could include a logging feature so you could go through a text/html file locally. Kind of like a scavenger Google Reader.

[SarahG]

According to my stats I had no clicks in the last 30 days yet I had 2 according to WordPress.com stats!

[lilmissjenny]

I have it on my blog, but I have read a lot of bad press about it, so I'm thinking of taking it down. It hasn't helped my hits or stats at all so I don't really see the point in continuing to use it.

[sbpoet]

I took mine down, because I think it's unlikely to be useful on such a small-traffic blog.

[ses5909]

I've been watching all of this and it's been interesting to see so many big name bloggers promote the product and then when it wasn't able to deliver (which can happen to any product or website) they start trashing them because they feel their credibility is hurt. I don't think it's BlogRush's fault that some of these bloggers chose to review and promote a product they hadn't tried out. It's just kind of unfortunate to see some people really slamming them when a week ago they were singing their praises.

I'm not talking about the people who blogged about the service (not giving a positive or negative review) and then came and posted about their findings...just the ones who raved about it without ever having tried it out and who IMO, came out looking worse than BlogRush. The concept of BlogRush is great, it just needs to deliver on execution!

[malique]

seriously i dont see the hype or need for this. someone enlighten me ?

[ses5909]

The concept is to help drive traffic to your site which wouldn't have been there otherwise. So obviously that is a good benefit...it just didn't quite workout so well.

[splitbrain]

I just joined them today after reading this thread and what I read on problogger (http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/09/20/how-not-throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water-earned-me-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars/).

I think the concept is quite nice and I just want to try it myself before jumping to conclusions. What annoys me is the fact that they only have this one widget take it or leave it.

A much cooler idea would be to use RSS to deliver the links for display. There are hundreds of well established tools to process RSS feeds and blog users would have much more control on how the thing looks. Just my $0.02.

[goldfries]

It's too soon to judge it. I'm not removing for now as I like to see how it works.

IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
TODAY 325 1
LAST 7 DAYS 2,284 4
LAST 30 DAYS 2,284 4

BLOGGERS (referrals) : 2

:D

so far.....

[SarahG]

A much cooler idea would be to use RSS to deliver the links for display. There are hundreds of well established tools to process RSS feeds and blog users would have much more control on how the thing looks. Just my $0.02.

It does use RSS hence why you submit your feed to them, however for a site to be able to deliver to another site you can only do this via JavaScript or API, and JavaScript is much easier to give out.

Personally I dropped the BR widget once I saw X rated links displaying on my site, and instead have now got my own plugin that does the same thing but only shows posts from the site feeds I've added. No JavaScript necessary :D

[goldfries]

Personally I dropped the BR widget once I saw X rated links displaying on my site, and instead have now got my own plugin that does the same thing but only shows posts from the site feeds I've added. No JavaScript necessary :D

now how did that X rated stuff appear? :) Ahh well, that's what they're fixing now.

I'm willing to give BlogRush further testing as I find it harmless.

Anyway I saw StuffbySarah appeared on BR once. I didn't click. :P

Oh btw here's an attachment of what I saw the other day at a friend's blog - DOUBLE ENTRY!! (please, not xxx).

[kingjacob]

I have a feeling there is going to be alot less spam, xxx, non-english, gaimers on blogrush cause John just sent out an email and it basically said if you try to gaime blogrush he will personally hunt you down and crucify you. Im not a lawyer but can John actually do anything legally against those who game blogrush? I dont think so.

Also i found a nice replacement to blogrush, blogsoc, it still has bugs but it looks alot nicer in my opinion.(example (http://digitalorder.org))

[rodaniel]

You've gotta at least respect John's intent, even if not the actual execution. He certainly seems to making some tremendous efforts to continually and rapidly improve his offering. Quite a brave thing to launch something like BlogRush and open your work up the the degree of scrutiny that it's received.

[SarahG]

Manual checks will be a good idea and I think I read in the same email that kingjacob mentioned that they'd do spot checks on blogs too. Thing is, a manual check on a blog is fine, but you need to check every post. Afterall I could write any post title on my blog post ;)

now how did that X rated stuff appear?

I just loaded the page! :)

[Gamesfurk]

trying it out. luckily it matches my blog color. :D

Goldfries,do you still watch Pocoyo:blush:

[rodaniel]

Y'know, as much as I've wanted to give this the benefit of the doubt, I'm a bit miffed that I've only garnered a measly 15 hits from BlogRush in 2 weeks - and that's for both blogs! There's still far too little randomization in the widget's list box...

[kingjacob]

Yah, I dropped it for feedXplorer by blogsoc.com, one cause its better than blogrush design wise and two I really want to see blogsoc take off.

[Gamesfurk]

Blog Rush sucks Eggs:naughty: :naughty:
And i hate the Ads of this EggsuckerxD

[rodaniel]

So here we are about 6-7 weeks into this thing... Are you folks seeing any appreciable benefit from BlogRush? For me, the numbers still stink - my 2 blogs have pulled in fewer than 10 hits this month. Anyone else faring any better?

The widget's RSS randomization is still way out of whack - it keeps showing far too many of the same posts over and over.

[ghing]

I have a blog rush widget on my dvd blog.. but I am planning to remove it.. it didn't give my site that much traffic.. I have that widget almost a month but nothing happens.. I only get 1-3 visitors on that widget but most of the time I didn't get any traffic from it...

[ses5909]

I never tried it. It just smelled funny to me and when you can't control who you link to...I wasn't too keen on that part.