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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Technorati Tags: blogrush
that is true – there will be a lot of backlashes about BR since CTR was way too low for everyone – even the big guys!
Filipino bloggers have started BlogRush-remove, just check this link: http://www.yugatech.com/blog/blogosphere/rushing-for-blogrush/ (where I found your blog, a commenter posted you there).
As for me, I have my doubts since landing on it. Then “more” doubts after watching the video. And more not-so-good views as time goes-by, and this is just my 2nd day at it.
The more I read about reactions to BlogRush, the more my suspicions are confirmed, but, I want to have my own experience and decision, so I’ll give it a few more days… regardless, if it works or not, it is not for me, will remove it anyway. It isn’t something worth keeping in the long-run.
But, BlogRush is cool, though you confirmed one of my suspicions – more crap.
Michael,
I absolutely respect your views on this more than you can know. I actually waited to get feedback from other fellow bloggers using BlogRush before I stepped foot into letting it grace my blog page. Im glad that I did. I have heard nothing but complaints from the majority of individuals who have used it.
Your Crap negotes more crap couldnt more right on. Thank you for writing your honest opinion on the subject and for posting quality content of your own. I respect you big time!
Keep up the good work, even if that means getting traffic through grassroot methods. Usually the kind of traffic you get through these hard working methods are the kind that stick around anyway.
I have to agree with everything you said. I was very dissapointed with it from the start. I hoped it would improve but the more I used it the more I saw it’s flaws.
I’m still trying it out. Right now it has generated about 1% of my traffic. But that’s only after a couple of days. I would suspect, and I think you might agree, that this will drop even lower as more people write negatively about it.
[...] have been several less-than-positive reviews of the service. The main complaints seem to [...]
I think there has been an awful lot of knee jerk reaction to the teething problems John and his team have experienced. Sure, there are some spammy headlines. Sure, the CTR is low. Sure, expectation levels were set too high. However I genuinely believe that JR will make this work. He’s spent too long build his rep to let BlogRush fail.
Mike, you might very well be right. I certainly have no wish to see John fail. But everything that you bring up is exactly why there’s no BlogRush widget on my blog for now.
Brian, I think I would agree with that. I think there’s good reason to agree with that. If John over-promised and under-delivered, whose fault is that?
Bunk, thanks very much!
[...] The BlogRush is Over – Michael Martine – “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.” [...]
But how “much” traffic did you get actually?
According to Google Analytics, 7 referrals from widget.blogrush.com. From when I had it on: 1,544 impressions and 4 clicks, according to BlogRush.
My pleasure – what are bloggy friends for, if not to keep each other on our respective toes?
Pirouetting off stage right ….
Right on the money, especially about the ‘bloggers’ that couldn’t be bothered about good content. I’m sick of being served up sugar candy when I want something to get my teeth into.
By it’s very nature, being a multi level thing, blog rush was only ever going to benefit John Reese and a few others at the very top of the pile!
And as you say, it was never going to benefit the readers…
[...] “If BlogRush did what it said on the box, it would be wonderful, but it simply fails to live up to its promise,” said Michael Martine. [...]
I’m not quite ready to give up on it yet – but that’s mainly due to the fact that it has driven more traffic to my site than I was getting before.
I’m very new to the whole marketing game, and even newer to blogging – but while I don’t feel my content is crap I do know that I am still cutting my teeth with blogging and have a lot to learn in regards to it.
That being said and my blog being pretty new to the world and perhaps nothing special to anyone but myself, my traffic numbers have increased significantly since I started using BlogRush. Granted, I was only ever getting traffic in the double figures per day anyway, but some days my traffic has more than doubled what it was before I put the BR widget on, and that’s exciting for this blogging neophyte.
I understand for you seasoned professionals it might not be worth it and it might even hurt your blogs – but for some of us little guys who only have a handful of subscribers, it might actually help out in the beginning. I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, I can only go by my own results – and they are saying to keep using BlogRush, at least for the immediate future, and see how the improvements go.
That’s great that it works for you, Peter. John Reese of BlogRush is introducing some significant changes in response to the negative feedback, and I see no reason to not give him the benefit of the doubt. I may give it another try and see how it goes.
Micheal, I think the concept of BlogRush is good. I’m lazy to exchange link and blog post, so blogrush will do the trick for me.
But the things is BlogRush need to do some tuning. It’s will only work if …
Well, I leave it for john to figure out.
[...] the opposite stand on an issue from the [...]
[...] “If BlogRush did what it said on the box, it would be wonderful, but it simply fails to live up to its promise,” said Michael Martine. [...]
Looks like blogrush died. Feed Distiller also provides an on subject widget for bloggers, you might want to use that instead.