Jason Murphy

All the cool kids are smoking BlogRush these days.

Sep 17, 2007 Affiliate Marketing, Blog General, Business & Marketing, Lookatme, I'm Web 2.0!

Yeah I doped on BlogRush a little earlier today. It was very hard to resist the peer pressure. Seemed like everyone was doing it. I mean this stuff is fresh. Less than two days old! And already they’ve been the buzz of the net. I’ve never seen a product launch this successful–ON A WEEKEND!!

Here’s what others are saying about BlogRush after they’ve had a taste:

Blogrush is at once an ingenious idea and a bit of a throwback to “Web 1.0″ affiliate schemes.
- Mashable at Blogrush: Traffic Generator or Pyramid Scheme?

While we’re skeptical, BlogRush might be “worth a try”. Although traffic exchanges are notorious for driving poor traffic, BlogRush’s targeting means you may get more interested readers, not just passers by.
- Mashable again at BlogRush: 8 Reasons to Be Wary…and Optimistic

So why do I like Blog Rush so much?

Well first of all read my disclaimer. John Reese is one of my best friends in this industry and was a guy who was very instrumental to me as a mentor in launching AuctionAds. John has the financial resources and the technical resources to make this thing fly.

Also several months ago when John was designing Blog Rush I came up with the idea of doing a friend roll. I can tell you this is working really well and I have heard nothing but positive comments about it. The only downfall with my friend roll is that I get nothing in return for giving traffic to my friends. Blog Rush is the answer to people who want reciprocal traffic.
- Shoemoney at How To Get 45k Impressions A Day From Blogrush

Not another fanfare of recycled junk, which is often the case online!
- Direct Response Web Media at Congrats To John Reese!

The base idea behind this isn’t new. This is the Web 2.0 version of a Banner Exchange network. The different being, rather than being stuck with 1 banner to display in a network across thousands of sites, instead your headlines and your site name get displayed on like minded sites. It looks to be quite powerful. Like so many others, I’m testing it out to see how much extra traffic it will bring to the site.
- Geeeek on Why aren’t you Blog Rushing?

Traffic Equals Money

Let’s face it, without traffic it’s pretty hard for a blog to make any money. The more traffic you have, the more money you make. Everyone wants more traffic and we’re always looking for more ways to get it. Internet Marketing kingpin, John Reese, has came up a great way to help your blog get more traffic.

BlogRush is a “Cooperative Syndication network” that rewards its users for their contributions to the network. BlogRush was designed to be incredibly viral and to provide its users with tremendous distribution leverage to receive exposure for their blog content that they could never achieve on their own; at least without a massive advertising budget.
- John Chow on Increase Your Blog Traffic With BlogRush

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”.
- Andy Beal on BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blog Traffic

My initial impressions of the system is that it’s worth exploring.

While I’m not a fan of traffic exchange programs – this one is a little different because it attempts to promote your blog on relevant blogs.
- Darren Rowse on Find New Readers for Your Blog – BlogRush First Impression Review

As I’ve been pondering the new BlogRush traffic building service (which I did a first impression review of earlier) over the last few hours I am increasingly thinking that it has potential to help bloggers find new traffic.

The bones are there for it to work – but how can you leverage it to increase your chances of converting for you and squeeze out some extra traffic for your blog.
- Darren Rowse does a second helping at Tips for Using BlogRush to Generate Traffic for Your Blog

But at the very least, having impressions on some high exposure blogs, such as those mentioned above, equals a free branding opportunity. One would normally have to pay hundreds of dollars to get seen on those sites. To me, this benefit alone is worth trying out BlogRush.
- me at What Is A BlogRush?

Some of the reviews seem to be pulling from the energy of the launch campaign. Others appear to have really taken a look at what BlogRush is promising and what it can currently do. The majority, such as myself, have a general attitude of “ok, I’ll try it this once.” John Reese must be known as the pusher, because I’ve never seen this many bloggers “try something” in such swarms before.

And…yeah…I quoted myself. Seemed appropriate with all the self-promotion that will continue to occur in the next few weeks as bloggers try to scoop up the remaining few who haven’t heard of BlogRush.

But not everyone licking the belly of this toad. Some have thrown up red flags that BlogRush might not appear all it seems to be:

Does BlogRush violate the adsense terms of service? I’m not 100% sure, but my opinion is you are on thin ice using any traffic exchange program on a site with adsense. I for sure don’t want to risk my adsense account for some flavor of the day traffic exchange.
- 45n5 at Warning – BlogRush May Violate The Adsense Terms Of Service

I’m really not a fan of blog widgets. There’s a lot of hype about BlogRush at the moment and I am personally a little doubtful that it’ll actually generate traffic that’s worth the real estate on my blog. Why? Because the click through rate may not be fantastic as it will also depend on where the widget is placed on other blogs.
- DoshDosh on BlogRush Review: Using Widgets to Get Traffic to Your Blog

5. These services typically benefit the first members the most. Those that fail to join early lose out. This leads to disenchantment and eventually the lessening of network effects.

6. Too Easily Abused. Refresh your blog 100 times, and you’ve earned 100 credits. This can be fixed partially by BlogRush by only tracking clickthroughs, not exposures, or some kind of IP tracking. There’s no mention on the site as to whether this is already in place.
- Mashable on BlogRush: 8 Reasons to Be Wary…and Optimistic

It’s still to early to tell if BlogRush is a long term strategy or not. In the meantime, you’re best strategy to capitalize on the traffic is to, of course, join BlogRush, and then write a few blog posts about it and hope that bloggers like me link to you because you had a quotable quote. Just don’t ping me, I’m done talking about BR for a few weeks while the waters calm.