Lee McIntyre went from overworked high school teacher to full time marketer in just 56 days. He is the founder of Aim Higher Marketing where he shows others how to use honest marketing to build profitable Internet businesses in record time.
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Why I’m No Longer Using Blogrush
By Lee McIntyre | January 7, 2008
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Regular readers will notice that today I removed the Blogrush widget from this blog. I initially installed this widget as a test, and I have to say that the resulting traffic that has flowed my way hasn’t been particularly impressive.
Before I give a brief summary of my results, it’s important to note that the volume of traffic that Blogrush sends to me isn’t just dependent on the quality of the service. Many of my blog titles weren’t particularly eye catching, and I did little to prompt blog visitors to signup for the service underneath me.
With more powerful headlines, and some marketing gusto, I’m quite sure that I could have gotten more out of this widget, and that’s important to note.
However, I feel that I’m pretty typical of many Blogrush users in that I simply added the code to my sidebar, and then moved on to other tasks, without actively thinking about how to get the best out of the service provided.
It appears to me that this is how the majority of Blogrush users use this widget, and so I’m sure that my results are fairly typical of many others out there.
Summary of the Lee McIntyre blog Blogrush test results.
Test period: 9th December 2007 - 6th January 2008
Category: Business Internet Marketing
Credits earned on my traffic: 4,780
Bloggers in my network: 5
Credits earned from my network: 0
Number of blog posts: 15
Number of times my posts were syndicated: 3601
Number of clickthroughs to my blog: 5
Clickthrough rate: 0.14%
I’m aware that my blog headlines could have been more powerful, and that this would have improved the clickthrough rate, but I doubt whether this would have helped to increase this to a level even approaching what I would consider acceptable.
Some people will argue that I gained five visitors for free, but it’s also important to balance this gain against the opportunity cost of the lost blog space. The blogrush widget commands a decent amount of blog real estate, and there are a whole host of other uses for that area which I’m confident could have produced a bigger net benefit than five new subscribers.
The concept behind Blogrush is a nice one, but unless the widget can deliver more traffic on a consistent basis then I feel that it’s only a matter of time before more and more bloggers find a more profitable use for their valuable blog real estate.
Have you used Blogrush on your blog? Have you experienced similar results, or do you have a completely different experience?
Either way, I’d love to hear from you so please post all about your views in the comments below…
Popularity: 35% [?]
Topics: Marketing Lessons |
January 7th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Hi Lee
I’ve also been playing around with the blogrush and like you the results are not doing wonderfully. Again, like you, I have been creating a blog for readers and not search engines etc.
By doing this, we are creating content that is useful to the reader but this wont do any good for blogrush, the titles are what encourages people to click through - just like yours mine are just not intriguing enough.
I’m a firm believer that a blog should be created for readers first - in fact above all else.
Keep up the great work.
Kelly
January 7th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Just a quick message…
I used Blogrush on my blog, but I never managed to see any sort of stats! I guess that was because it had really only been released.
However, they basically removed me because my posts weren’t ‘up too standard’ and because I apparently didn’t have enough posted.
It was a good idea, but as you said…they do need to improve it a bit more fist.
Anyway, I better be off. I can’t be late.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I’ve only had it running for 4 days but here’s my stats anyway:
Test period: 3rd Jan 2008 - 7th January 2008
Category: Business Internet Marketing
Credits earned on my traffic: 177
Bloggers in my network: 0
Credits earned from my network: 0
Number of blog posts: 2
Number of times my posts were syndicated: 93
Number of clickthroughs to my blog: 1
Clickthrough rate: 1.07%
Think I’ll leave mine in place for a while longer & see how the figures pan out.
John Szram
January 7th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I’ve been using it on a few of my blogs. I’ve redone them and have not included blogrush because I just wasn’t seeing traffic either, for what ever reasons.
I would rather use the space for other things as well, there are many widgets and plugins that can be more beneficial I think.
Ironically, I found your blog through a blogrush widget on Pat Boyle’s internet business and blogging blog http://www.patbdoyle.com/
January 7th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I tried Blogrush on my blog and was not happy with it either. It did not send much traffic, so I did not feel that it was worth the space in my sidebar. I also did not like that I could not control who I was linking to. I replaced it with the “What Others Are Saying” plugin. This way, I get to control who I am linking to. I love this plugin, and a lot of the people that I link to with this plugin have also linked to me, so indirectly, I am getting a lot of traffic from it.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Hi Kelly - thanks for the post and always nice to see you stop by.
It’s an interesting point about making titles for readers rather than search engines, and this is something that I practice with this blog.
I have some niche blogs where every post title is based around a low competition high search keyword, but I firmly believe that the best way to get long term trafic is to appeal to your target market with killer content, and not to the search engines.
Thanks for the great post!
Hi Mark - I believe that they implemented these standards as an attempt to improve the quality of the system, and the clickthroughs.
Does anyone have any experience of if the clickthroughs actually increased when this happened?
Hi John - Thanks for the great statistics and I’m sure that our readers will find it extremely useful.
Can you do us a favour and post an update in a few days or weeks?
Hi Jan - I agree about other blogs being more beneficial. The MyBlogLog widget is sending me lots of traffic for example.
Thanks for the post and stop by often!
Hi Pat - that’s a really interesting plugin, and I’ve just seen it in action on your blog.
I’ll give that a try, and thanks for the tip!
Lee McIntyre
January 8th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Howdy Lee, They canned several of my blogs and deleted blogrush off of them…..these were a gardening site and a dog training blog. Both widgets were on top of my sidebar. I attempted to contact them but never received an answer……Oh well their loss, not mine ;-p
Great post amigo,
Al
January 8th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Hi Al
Always a pleasure to have you stop by.
Yes, the blogsphere is full of similar stories, and the bad karma that this brings for them is off the chart.
I think that the quality controls that they implemented was the results of a panic due to the system being gamed so much, but it seems that they could have handled it better.
You have to give John Reese a ton of credit for trying though, and if had pulled it off it would have been a tremendous lead generator for his income.com.
Kudos to him for trying. It would have been easy for him to release Traffic Secrets 2 right off the bat, but I admire the way he thought big with this.
Thanks for the post!
Lee McIntyre
January 8th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I’m going to kill it too… 32 posts, 20829 syndicated since 15th Sept… and only 13 click throughs… that’s err… like 0.00062% Hmmm!
Stephen
January 8th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Hi Stephen
Cripes that’s even worse than mine!
Have you tried the myblogcatlog widget? I’ve found that it leads to more people clicking away from the blog, but it also acts as a powerful community generator too.
I’m analysing the quality of the trafic now and will report back soon.
Thanks for the post!
Lee McIntyre
January 8th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I’m still using the blogrush widget on my blog, but you made a good point when you talked about the opportunity cost.
It’s something I learned from Eben Pagan, and I will reconsider leaving the widget on the blog.
I let it untill now because I learned a lot from John in the beggining (and I still learn from him), but I need to take the right decision for the business regardless of emotion.
I hope you finished your report, you should be really busy because you have a lot of question to answer!
Franck
January 9th, 2008 at 12:12 am
I am just in the process of developing my Blog and all of your info is appreciated.
I can learn a lot just reading the positives and negatives of these ‘plug-ins’.
Keep up the talk because I need a lot of help trying to understand all of this tech stuff.
I am trying to build a Blog on my web site about family housing. My experience is over 50 years of working on houses and now I am unable physically to do the work, so I decided to share in hopes of saving house buyers some expensive headaches.
I will take any advice you can offer to help people.
All of this is new to me. I was just begining to understand emails and now Blogs arrive on the scene.
I have loaded “Word Press” and am researching the ‘plug-ins’.
Thanks all.
Mike
January 9th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Hi Mike - thanks for the comment!
You’re not alone in being confused by all of the tech stuff, and until very recently I had no idea how to make a webpage, let alone run a blog!
The best way to learn is to read a bit and then just go out there and give it a bash.
Goof luck with your project and make sure you visit often in the coming days.
Lee McIntye
January 18th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
What ever happened to linking sites based on content. Everyone is looking for quick magic solutions to traffic even though all the experts say take some time and establish meaningful links. People go for immediate links vs. spending the time to build one link that will pay out over several months or even years.
I’ve been running Arkayne for my linking for a while and my page rank is through the roof. It links my blog with others based on relevance of content. I’m getting actual traffic interested in my blogs and users have complemented me on the links. Its free, the widget is customizable, and there is no special setup, just add the one line widget to your blog. Works better than BlogRush for sure.
For the curious: http://www.arkayne.com