I’m on the BlogRush Bandwagon, Are You?
As the article title says, I’ve jumped on the BlogRush bandwagon.
BlogRush is a “Cooperative Syndication Network.” When you add the BlogRush widget to your site (you can see mine under my sponsors section), you get a syndication of the latest blog article titles from related blogs under the same category as your blog. I’ve not had time to watch the video in full which describes exactly how the service works, but the gist of it is that for every page view you blog receives each day, that’s how many times your latest articles are displayed on other sites also using the BlogRush widget. On top of that, if you refer another blog to the network, whatever page views that blog receives each day, your blog article titles will be shown that many more times (since you referred them).
As bloggers, we’re always looking to increase our exposure to the rest of the world and this little widget has potential to bring in a lot of traffic. It was just launched yesterday, so we’ll see where it goes. I’ll try it out for a while and if I end up getting no traffic from it, no harm done as it’s not costing me anything to run the widget and the widget is pretty unobtrusive to the rest of my site’s content.
Try it out yourself and see what you think!
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Yeah, referrals is key. A site like mine which gets about 100 or so page views a day would be okay getting that many extra views on other blogs, but if I refer a site that gets say 5,000 page views a day then that could be huge!
Posted on Mon Sep 17, 2007
Not a bad idea at all. But somehow I quite don’t see it as revolutionary either (considering how much people are talking about it all over the web...)
Anyway, I’m not on the bandwagon because my current project is to cut down on widgets that just clutter my blog unnecessarily.
I might be wrong, but for now I’m still staying away from BlogRush. 
Posted on Tue Sep 18, 2007
Call me nitpicking, but I’d be more far more likely to use something like this if they could figure out a way to let bloggers manipulate the appearance away from the standard look ala “Authentic Jobs"… a few examples of how Authentic Jobs is flexible visually are Veerle’s Blog and 31three.com. Same information but presented in line with the look of these blogs. I see the widget actually appears inside an iframe so maybe this isn’t easily done.
Visual coherence is an issue with many especially designers so I’d like to see BlogRush consider the Authentic Jobs approach. Most bloggers may not care how it looks so it may not be a priority for BlogRush to address this in early stages. One idea is to pass the url of a style sheet to the widget. The idea would be similar to inviting a guest to your house but first express mailing a blue suit to him so he’ll be dressed appropriate to the occasion.
Posted on Tue Sep 18, 2007
Jarkko: I hope you’re wrong 
I’m going to give it a week or so to see if any traffic starts trickling in. If I don’t see anything from it, I’ll remove it. Like I said, in theory it’s a good idea, but they’re already having some growing pains as the stats and such don’t work currently. I’m still waiting to view my stats.
It could be a bust as it has spread so fast around the web and so many people are using it that if it doesn’t perform well soon, people will remove it. It’s great to have an idea like that, but if the application has no substance and it doesn’t do what it says it will do, it’s useless.
Of course, it could turn out to be one of those things where someone like myself would see no traffic at all, but someone like Darren Rowse will see all kinds of traffic since he has the page views to push the service to the limit.
I don’t know, we’ll see.
Sam: Oh yes, I agree. I hate widgets in which you cannot change the visual aspects of. The MyBlogLog widget in my footer was a super pain the neck to style. I finally got it done, but if you ask me (I’m not a coder, so I can’t say for sure) it shouldn’t be that difficult to style.
Yes, I check out Veerle’s Blog and 31three frequently and the the authentic jobs widget is styled nicely into their design.
Posted on Tue Sep 18, 2007
I am still waiting to see some results, and not just hype. I have seen a few people posting results, but they have been massive blogs, I want to see some small guys recommending it.
Posted on Tue Sep 18, 2007
Thomas: I just discovered that I had one visitor to my site today from a BlogRush widget. If that’s the way it’s going to go it will be removed in a couple days. I’m trying my best to give it the benefit of the doubt since it only two days old, but I can’t keep it there taking up space and doing nothing for my site.
I’m still waiting on some smaller bloggers to have some real success also.
Posted on Tue Sep 18, 2007
So many have jumped on! Hopefully the hype comes with successful results!
Posted on Wed Sep 19, 2007
Susan: I’ve officially jumped off the BlogRush bandwagon. It wasn’t doing anything except taking up real estate on the sidebar, so why have it? A lot of top bloggers are now posting stats (John Chow for instance) and they are dismal for the number of impressions he’s got. So, if someone like him cannot benefit from it, a nobody blogger like myself has got no chance.
Posted on Wed Sep 19, 2007
pcguy: Hey, thanks for commenting. I actually removed it today. I just haven’t wrote a follow up article yet. I’ve just been reading that nearly everyone was seeing no results from it. I figured if bloggers like Darren Rowse and John Chow were not seeing results, then how is a small little blogger like myself going to expect to see anything? I’ve got quite a bit of impressions but no clicks yet. I also noticed that the widget on my site started showing quite a few other languages besides English, which does my visitors no good.
Thanks for stopping by.
Posted on Wed Sep 19, 2007
I’m not on BlogRush, or any service like that. I guess I’m just an old fashion networking type of girl. I’d rather link to one or two people who’s content I enjoy, then 15 people who’s content is similar to mine. But that said, for any service as such wouldn’t it take at least a month to see results?
I guess, I question the ‘rush’ no pun intended. But, and I’ve seen this before for other services, so its not a criticism of you Deron, I’ve seen bloggers get super excited about a new service that will drive traffic to their sites. Sign-up and droves, but then post on how disappointed they are in a week or less.
A week or less. That’s not impatience, that’s more like A.D.D on crack. ‘Here’s my change jar, I’m going to save $100 just based on change found in my pocket. Two days later, there’s not even a dollar in there. Throw out the jar.’ I guess I’m being harsh, but I’m not certain if its unnecessarily harsh. Because the responses to me just seem kind of knee-jerked, ‘I want to believe. But no one else really believes. I don’t believe.’
Obviously, anyone can reconsider their decisions at anytime, but I feel, too often, some of these decisions are almost as reflective as someone ‘falling for a pyramid scheme’ (since I just recently commented on your post about those). Instead of financial pyramid schemes, which lots more and more people are adept at handling; these blog ranking schemes/blog popularity schemes seem to come fast and hard and people get overwhelmed by their desire for ‘impressions’ (ad success).
My points, if I actually have one, are:
(1) If you believe it might work, shouldn’t you give it the chance (time and effort) to work, if you can afford to of course. But in this case, the more comments you have, the more white space you have in the sidebar, so what’s the harm?
(2) If you don’t believe or don’t know if you should believe, then research, research, research, before you sign-up? Could it work? How long should I wait for results? Should I shop around? Do I trust the background players? Why do I want it so bad? blah, blah?
I’m not saying your wrong for not giving it a better go, personally, I skimmed the about section, and this line redefined skeptical for me <quote>BlogRush is the brainchild of Internet entrepreneur, John Reese. Mr. Reese is the founder and CEO of Income.com, a soon to be launched social network and media company for entrepreneurs.</quote> Well that and the Orlando, FL. Don’t know why but I’m highly skeptical of income generation schemes out of Florida.
But if every small blogger in the world signed up, then disappeared practically overnight, because some ‘A-List’ blogger said it didn’t work for me; then well yeah, it’ll never work for a small blogger, because they quit before the games began.
As I said, I’m no fan of things like BlogRush or even those blogging networks that so many people belong to; even though I recognize the value of the good ones. Who knows what else I’m saying, except for, if your going to give something a chance, then doesn’t that mean giving it some time?
Posted on Thu Sep 20, 2007
Alnisa: No apology needed for the long comment! I love it.
Yes, you got me. Maybe I should practice what I preach, huh? When I read your comparison of BlogRush to a pyramid scheme, I was like “Doh! She’s right!”. I got excited about something because I loved the idea, but after a couple days of zero results, I removed it. Maybe I should have given it a little more time, as you say, a month maybe? I think deep down maybe I thought it wouldn’t work from the start but I did it anyway just in case it did happen to work. After it didn’t work instantly it was an easy decision to remove the widget.
Maybe that’s it or maybe I’m just covering for the fact that I fell for the online version of a pyramid scheme and how ironic that I just wrote about that very thing. I like to believe it’s the former. 
I believe criticism (even though it wasn’t criticism) makes all of us better if we actually listen to what is said rather than getting defensive. I’m definitely going to watch what I do from here on out with deals like this and if I believe it, use it for more than two days to try and see results. I think I need to go back to basics and just focus on content and not worry about the ‘get rich qui...” errr, I mean, “get traffic quick” schemes.
Posted on Thu Sep 20, 2007
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My name is Deron Sizemore and I am a web designer, web publisher, blogger and serial internet entrepreneur living in Lexington, Kentucky.
Yep!
I have it!
I am very curious on how it is going to work out.
It has a good theory - I think the main key is to get some major referrals.
I hope it does!
Posted on Mon Sep 17, 2007