BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blog Traffic
Sunday, September 16th, 2007;
-- Andy Beal |
If someone has told me that I should try out a service that provides traffic to a blog, based on you showing the RSS feeds of other blogs, and earning syndication credits for each new person I refer, I would have dismissed it as some kind of blog multi-level-marketing pyramid scheme.
However, enough bloggers have pinged me about BlogRush–including Mrs Beal and Bonnie–so I thought I’d check it out.
How does BlogRush work?
BlogRush users earn “syndication credits” (the right to have their blog post titles shown inside a widget on another related blog) based on their own traffic (loads of the widget) as well as the traffic of other users they refer to BlogRush. Users can automatically refer others to BlogRush via special links on the widget, as well as through the promotion of a special referral URL they are given.
BlogRush is a “Cooperative Syndication Network” that rewards its users for their contributions to the network — from the impressions they provide of the BlogRush Widget to the referral of other users through 10 ‘generations’ of activity and the impressions of the widget that they provide. BlogRush was designed to be incredibly viral and to provide its users with tremendous distribution leverage to receive exposure for their blog content (onto related content blogs) that they could never achieve on their own; at least without a massive advertising budget.
It at least sounds like something worth testing so I have added to MP. While it’s always nice to earn additional traffic, you can trust that if the widget spews nothing but spam, it will be removed faster than you can say “BlogRush”.
UPDATE: Two days in, still no traffic.
UPDATE 2: My video thoughts of BlogRush.
UPDATE 3: Starting to get traffic numbers. Would you be impressed with a 0.0017% click thru rate?
Disclosure: Suffice to say, all links to BlogRush are referral links. 
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September 16th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
I sat down to write about BlogRush 3 different times over the past week but each time I stopped as I felt I was being to harsh.
It just goes to show you, old ideas (traffic exchanges)can always be re-worked and marketed.
I’m going to make my prediction now. BlogRush will be like a shooting star but in the end it will fade away into nothingness.
There are two reasons for this. One is spammers and system scammers.
September 16th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Oops, hit submit on accident.
Anyways, to continue.
The spammers are going to come hard and fast for free traffic. BlogRush can say or do anything they want, but it will become a spam, splog, worthless blog playground. Many inflating impressions using multiple techniques.
This will lead to sites showing up on your blog that you do not want to be linking to. Yes BR lets you block websites, but who wants to spend all day policing their widget?
Again, don’t get me wrong.. This thing will be a monster at least for a short time. Just look at who is launching the service. In the end though, it will suffer the same fate as every other traffic exchange that ever was.
September 16th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
@Jeremy - I can’t say that I can disagree with you. I half expect it to burn bright, but go supernova very quickly.
September 16th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
[…] BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blog Traffic […]
September 16th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
John Reese has invested a lot in Blog Rush and anyone who knows his past knows this is not some fly by night widget. I have talked to him a lot about how this will work and he has many people onboard who have built some very successful tools that can react to pretty much anything spammers throw at them. Also since it is all javascript and not straight links its much less attractive to spammers.
September 16th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
[…] BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blo..Miscellaneous Ramblings - 9/16/2007Updating StuffFun letterYue’s Bored On A Friday NightIn Moderation: Strategies for Buil.. […]
September 16th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
@Jeremy - I hope they are able to make it viable for the long term. I know you’re a friend of John’s, so I’m confident you can help him avoid the abusers.
September 16th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
BlogRush will always be a spam widget. Niche sites with not much content other than as adsense bait are the fodder that keeps internet marketers like Reese in business.
I have been quite jaded by marketing hype by people like John Reese and others, and I think if he wants to start redeeming himself, he could start with something that meets a minimal threshold for the average blogger who isn’t a John Reese fanboy.
September 16th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
@AJ - thanks for your insight. I have to admit that I had never heard of John Reese, until this weekend - I’m sure he’s never heard of me either.
I guess that does afford me the luxury of being able to test BlogRush without any preconceived ideas.
September 16th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Thanks for the nod (and link), Andy. I admit to being a John Reese fan. Unlike Jeremy, I’m not a friend of John’s, but I’ve been following his online activities ever since hearing him speak at a seminar in early 2003. I can’t imagine why AJ thinks John needs to “redeem” himself. He seems to be lumping John in with all the IM’ers he doesn’t like. He’s free to have that opinion, of course (many IM’ers deserve such skepticism). But I can’t think of an Internet Marketer LESS likely to create something spammy, or negative in any way, than John Reese. He always overdelivers. That doesn’t mean his widget can’t be abused, but I’m confident he’s done significantly MORE than “due diligence” to ensure his BlogRush delivers instead of bombs.
September 16th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
BlogRush is good…if your blog already gets lots of traffic, if thats not the case don’t expect a high volume of it coming to your blog through BlogRush.
On the other hands there is something so strange going on with BlogRush… all the publicity around the service seems so…artificial…I don’t know as paid advertising, and that does not help at all. I think we will start reading real reviews when small blogs start writing about it, right now just big player and suspiciously all saying the exact same thing…
September 16th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
@Zuggu - well you can be assured that we’re not involved in any paid promotion - or even doing any “favors” - with anyone at BlogRush.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
@andy: I really didn’t wanted to make it feel as if I were talking about you guys, its just how I feel after reading all the reviews about BlogRush out there.
And on the other hand I am not saying that writing a paid review is a bad thing, but if thats the case on some blogs, I think that ethic bloggers should let their readers know about it.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
@Zuggu - I didn’t think you were pointing fingers our way, but thought it important to clarify.
I’m sure there are some “seed” bloggers for the launch - it happens a lot these days.
One thing I have noticed is the number of bloggers hiding the fact that they are using a referral link. Why the redirect links? It seems they’re hoping that being sneaky will get more clicks than coming clean. Me, I’m all about transparency.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
@Andy: thats right, and thats why I think there may be something going on that ‘the rest of us’ doesn’t know… but as I said, I think we will need to wait until the ‘common’ blogger starts using the service to read about the true benefit it can bring to ‘normal’ blogs out there.
September 16th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
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September 17th, 2007 at 1:09 am
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September 17th, 2007 at 2:42 am
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September 17th, 2007 at 3:21 am
[…] BEAL : BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blog Traffic […]
September 17th, 2007 at 3:50 am
[…] spews nothing but spam, it will be removed faster than you can say “BlogRush”. - Andy Beal on BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blog Traffic My initial impressions of the system is that it’s worth […]
September 17th, 2007 at 4:22 am
[…] BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blog Traffic […]
September 17th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Thanks for the link/post, I’m off to give it a try.
As someone above said, the fact the the widget is Javascript based will make it less attractive to spammers. Doesn’t mean that people won’t submit splogs to it though. The nice thing is that you’re still in control of your blog, so if you don’t like what’s going on, it’s no hassle to remove it!
September 17th, 2007 at 5:09 am
[…] across an interesting post on Marketing Pilgrim this morning talking about a new blog syndication network called Blogrush. It […]
September 17th, 2007 at 6:13 am
ich würde mich freuen wenn du dich in meine Freundesliste einträgst.
Meine Freunde
September 17th, 2007 at 7:00 am
[…] to drive more traffic to your blog but as simply everyone is not just talking about it but actually doing it, I thought I’d better add BlogRush to this […]
September 17th, 2007 at 7:08 am
I really going to try this service.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:18 am
Looks interesting enough… although I think I’ll wait a bit before implementing it on my blog…
September 17th, 2007 at 9:07 am
[…] like the idea and has already started using it on his blog. Andy Beal of marketing pilgrim thinks blogrush is something worth testing and has installed it on his […]
September 17th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I have the widget up and running for 24 hours now. Haven’t seen any results yet, i’ll keep it for one more week, if it doesn’t bring any real traffic i’ll remove it.
September 17th, 2007 at 10:52 am
There are some blogs also talking about this widget becoming a blindness widget like what happens with AdSense, etc… I think there is a good probability of that happening if they don’t offer some kind of customization soon.
September 17th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
[…] seems guaranteed a certain level of success thanks to early write-ups by ShoeMoney, John Chow, Andy Beal and […]
September 17th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
All major blogs are writing about BlogRush it looks like it is in Bloggers hands so if it will be bad to its bloggers they will let it go down faster than it went up.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I have also signed-up to try and gather some referrals, should this thing be around in a few months…
but I will also be doing a post in a couple of days explaining exactly why this will not be a success.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
[…] good spokespeople who are helping promote the product. I’ve read from Jeremy Schoemaker, Andy Beal, Maki, John Chow, Sean at Mashable, and Darren Rowse, among […]
September 17th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
[…] - Why You Shouldn’t Rush into BlogRush? Blogozine - BlogRush: Increase Your Blog Traffic Marketing Pilgrim - BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blog Traffic Get Free Traffic with BlogRush, But Watch Out, Google AdSense Publishers Google Tutor - 5min = 182 […]
September 17th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
[…] BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Traffic Exchange - Andy Beal gives a brief overview of BlogRush. It’s not really a review but I like his quote “While it’s always nice to earn additional traffic, you can trust that if the widget spews nothing but spam, it will be removed faster than you can say “BlogRush”.” […]
September 18th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Andy, man, http://www.blogbucks.com is way better.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:09 am
[…] work? The jury is still out as it is still new but I have to say that a load of the bigger name bloggers are promoting it and I am seeing it spread all the way down into the ranks of the smaller blogs […]
September 18th, 2007 at 10:11 am
@Jim - why do I get the feeling I’ll regret adding my email addy to that form?
September 18th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
[…] at the top of the pyramid. Blogrush is just such a scheme . Sure, the early adopters (Shoemoney, Andy Beal, John Chow, Problogger, etc etc) will benefit from the scheme as it has it’s initial […]
September 19th, 2007 at 12:45 am
I have been using the blogrush widget after I launch my blog 2 days ago and my traffic soaring high. I couldn’t imagine how this little plugin do the work. I’m a 2 day old blogger and my site now having 200 unique visitors. Most of the traffic are coming from from blogrush widget. Part of it are coming from http://technorati.com I have no idea.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:29 am
… you forgot to mention that your blog is about blogrush, your domain name is blogrash.com and you seem to love blogrush
September 19th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Here’s a fun challenge for you all. If we don’t provide you with a better click-through rate than BlogRush, we’ll paypal you $10.
We’ve been working on some fun software that is already beating BlogRush on click-through stats (by a lot). I’d like to take advantage of this meme, put some money on the table, earn some valuable feedback, and have some fun.
Details on our blog. Let the games begin?
September 20th, 2007 at 1:53 am
BlogRush … what can I say? I keep reading the hype but seeing the facts: BlogRush often displays spammy links I’d never voluntarily allow on my site in any form, and often links to pages that mysteriously don’t even have a BlogRush widget on them.
Personally, I use two widgets: MyBlogLog and Romlet - these help me see who is visiting and linking in and also help me boost traffic, but they only reward - with links - actual visits or traffic referrers.
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:19 am
Andy, I am disappointed in the traffic that I have received so far too, but, hopefully, this baby will snowball over time. Hang in there.
September 24th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Including the 16th, today is the 9th day that the comments started coming in and no one is reporting any major increase in traffic. What is happening? Even the first predicted early take off and then demise does not seem to be happening!
September 26th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
[…] developed by internet marketing giant John Reese, and is getting positive reviews from Shoemoney, Andy Beal and John Chow. BlogRush works by showing headlines from 5 other blogs in the same general field as […]
October 15th, 2007 at 9:04 am
I recently developed a free wordpress plugin called “BlogRush Click Maximizer”. By using it you can vastly improve your Click Through Rate.
This allows you to control what you want to display in BlogRush. You can even write alternate - short and catchy title just for BlogRush.
You will have total control of what appears over the BlogRush Network.
Check it out here:
http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/bcm/
October 17th, 2007 at 8:31 am
[…] to drive more traffic to your blog but as simply everyone is not just talking about it but actually doing it, I thought I’d better add BlogRush to this […]
October 17th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Well there certainly are new ways to online marketing nowadays. There are free traffic sites really work if you know how to work them. Thanks for this, I’ll check it out.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:37 pm
BlogRush accepted a lot of members and got them to promote their service. And how did BlogRush repay them? They deactivated their blogs and removed them from the system.
They did this to over 10,000 people just this weekend.
I can see sites not accepting a submision. But don’t accept someone’s submission, get them to promote your site, and then turn around and screw them over.
I would recommend using a legitimate blog submission service. You might just find that you put BlogRush on your blog and promote it, and when they are done using you, they will screw you over too.
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:52 am
[…] to drive more traffic to your blog but as simply everyone is not just talking about it but actually doing it, I thought I’d better add BlogRush to this […]
February 20th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I am new in blogging field and i need tips and helps in gaining traffic for my blog so please give me advice and tips.waiting for your reply.