The BlogRush is Over

I respect John Reese as an awesome internet marketer. The incredible surge for BlogRush is a testament to his marketing savvy. But BlogRush is only good for John Reese. Most bloggers won’t get traffic from it. But most importantly, it doesn’t benefit the readers of a blog. So for me the BlogRush is definitely over. I can’t speak for other BlogRush categories, but I can tell what my observations are for the marketing category, which is the category I chose.

Not a Triple Win

Let’s break it down: what were we tempted with for signing up for BlogRush? Traffic, right? Who is that supposed to benefit? Your readers, or you? Your readers don’t care about your traffic. They care that they will continuously get great content from you. The idea was supposed to be that the BlogRush widget would contain headlines that your blog’s readers would find interesting, and so it would be beneficial for them.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. Go to any blog that has a BlogRush widget on it and look at the headlines. Other than the occasional headline from ProBlogger, Dosh Dosh, or ShoeMoney, they’re nearly all garbage or they’re paid links. Which is funny because you’d think you’d be able to tell the paid links from the real headlines but they’re so bad you can’t.

If BlogRush did what it said on the box, it would be wonderful, but it simply fails to live up to its promise. It doesn’t deliver traffic. It doesn’t benefit your blog’s readers. I’m not hating on it and I have nothing but respect for John Reese, but I’m sorry — there’s just no reason good enough for me to keep the BlogRush widget on here. “It will get better in the future” is not a good enough reason for me to use it in the present.

Crap is Crap

Here’s why I think BlogRush isn’t working, and most of the marketing category headlines on it are crap: Nearly all More than enough of the people who have signed up for it are too lazy to do what it takes to build their traffic the correct way. And that means that they’re also too lazy to create quality content that would result in getting clicked in the widget and that would benefit a blog’s readership. This lazy get something for nothing mentality compounds itself and the result is that the headlines that appear in the widget are crap. Given more time, more lazy people will sign up and there will be more… crap! So I don’t see how more time will help anything. There are so very few excellent blogs using BlogRush that it’s basically just a rush of crap.

I was going to give BlogRush a month, but everytime I saw the worthless headlines in it, I cringed. I thought: I can’t do this to my readers!

No Regrets

I don’t regret trying it. In a way, it really was a bit of a rush. Getting caught up in something and feeling that rush is a very interesting experience that tends to alter one’s judgment, like being under the spell of a mob mentality. I’m all for trying new things and seeing if they work. Some things take time to work, but I don’t see how time will benefit BlogRush unless John and crew can evolve it a bit more radically. If they can’t make it provide real win-win value, then the next “rush” will be of people removing the widget from their blogs. Remember, I’m only talking about the marketing category. Right now, there would be no reason for any other category on my blog. It could be that I wasn’t a good fit for BlogRush in the first place.

My assertion that BlogRush does not violate AdSense terms of service still stands, of course, and just because I’m sure about that, that shouldn’t be mistaken for an endorsement of BlogRush. That’s a completely separate issue from what I’m talking about here. If I happen to be wrong and Google clearly comes out against BlogRush and says they will suspend AdSense account owners who use BlogRush, well, that would certainly the deathblow for BlogRush, wouldn’t it? But I still don’t think that’s going to happen.

More BlogRush Backlash

Expect more and more BlogRush backlash posts in the near future, and more prominent bloggers who have placed the widget on their blog to remove it. BlogRush will not die off, but instead it will die down to a lower level of usage by the internet marketing and affiliate sales world, and remain there.

Update: Earlier I said “Nearly all” of the people who signed up for BlogRush were lazy, and I’d like to apologize and reword that into something a little less exaggerated. I don’t believe that nearly all bloggers are lazy, but do believe that enough of them are to have created some of the issues with BlogRush. Thank you, Sheryl, for calling me out on that.

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