Written on September 19th, 2007 at 08:09 am by Darren Rowse
What are your BlogRush Statistics Like?
It seems that BlogRush (the traffic generating tool released earlier in the week which I gave a first impression review of here) has updated the member dashboard to give publishers statistics on how things are performing.
I’d be interested to collect some data from readers on how it is going for everyone.
My own results have some good and bad things about them.
On the positive side I’ve referred quite a few bloggers to the program which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of credits. I’ve earned a lot more credits so far than they seem to have been able to serve.
On the negative side - while my headlines have been shown around 70,000 times I’ve only had 35 clicks on them. That is an extremely low Click Through Rate of 0.05%! I didn’t expect it to be high but thought it might have got somewhere in the 1% range (which would have brought in 700 clicks from the 70,000 - but this is pretty disappointing.
I know it is still very early days and they’ll find ways to improve things but it’s not a great start in terms of driving actual traffic so far.
Now that could have something to do with my headlines (although I try to write engaging ones) - however I suspect it also has something to do with the positioning that a lot of bloggers are using for the widget. I’ve seen a lot of widgets low on pages where I suspect they’ll rarely be seen by readers - let alone clicked.
It’s easy to look at these results and give up on BlogRush - I personally think it’s too early to jump ship or write it off completely. This is just a few days into launch and the only way is up in terms of performance. I suspect that the BlogRush developers will test and tweak their design and add new categories to make links in the widget more relevant to content on blogs.
I’m going to try to improve the CTR by trying a few of the techniques in my Tips for Using BlogRush post - particularly experimenting with different categories.
PS: I’m looking forward to seeing more detailed reports (still under construction) as I can’t wait to see how my different blogs have performed as compared to one another. Having this information will help bloggers improve their own CTR as they test different categories and watch to see how they convert differently.
132 Responses to “What are your BlogRush Statistics Like?”
Starfeeder
September 19th, 2007 8:37 am
hmm my stats today:
Current Credit Balance: 193, 0 clicks
it is kinda low on my sidebar however, right under my affiliate links module.
iantrepreneur
September 19th, 2007 8:39 am
same ehre darren - I have up to 2 tiers I have a pretty good referrals - but clicks is very low and I think my analytics and this widget is a little false - I am still testing and checking to see how this is working out
but CTR looks low - and yes you are right lots of blogs have the widget on the lower part of their blog
McGrath Dot Ca
September 19th, 2007 8:40 am
Current Credit Balance: 102, 5 impr, 0 clicks, no blogger under me
doug m
September 19th, 2007 8:41 am
i don’t even want to report how low they are :), although it is low on my site as it doesn’t fit into my design that well.
Laura
September 19th, 2007 8:50 am
I just posted on this today. I haven’t seen a lot of traffic from it.
I’ll go back out to the dashboard, though. I haven’t seen it since they put the statistics up. (At least the stat weren’t there earlier today.)
Patches and Hacks
September 19th, 2007 8:51 am
I got one click from 135 impressions. I think this has a lot to do with the position of the widget and the headlines.
The items are so poorly targeted at the moment. I think it would be good if you could not only block keywords but also specify keywords that you prefer. Maybe that would make the results better targeted.
Eric
September 19th, 2007 8:52 am
I’ve picked up a couple referred and have 638 impressions and 0 click thru; on a new site.
Was wondering how well the click thru rate would be, also if there would end up being lots of spam
Starfeeder
September 19th, 2007 8:54 am
Ok I just re-read my stats, starting to get this… over the last 7 days I earned 354 credits… checked again just now and I’m down to 188 credits. Which means my blog posts got seen about 166 times so far.
But ya still 0 clicks
Willy
September 19th, 2007 8:54 am
I’m not using BlogRush, and I don’t think it would really suit me anyways. My thought is that maybe instead of going impression for impression, why don’t they go click for click instead? If you serve 10 clicks, you get 10 clicks. That would eliminate the incentive for free riders to put the widget in a spot that would typically get a poor click-through-rate.
Brennan
September 19th, 2007 9:04 am
Low…very low. Not a single click, but several hundred impressions if I’m reading it correctly.
Veronique
September 19th, 2007 9:09 am
I’ve only had it up a day now & I’m underwhelmed. Part of the problem for me is that my blog doesn’t easily fit into any one category (I write about children’s crafts and activities). I’ve experimented with several categories & the content that gets served is pretty much not relevant at all to my readers. I imagine the reverse is true of my posts on the categories I’m served with.
My next experiment will be to tweak the keyword filtering to at least knock out the stuff that’s obviously a bad fit.
Still, it’s fun to try a new tool and I can see how this could work well for folks who have more mainstream content to share.
AlfaFox.info
September 19th, 2007 9:12 am
I have the feeling that the credit-promise of BlogRush is not tenable, because of mathematical reasons. Its seems to be a pyramit scheme that will brake down for late adopters. I am no mathematician and too lazy. Can sombody calculate it?
AlfaFox.info
September 19th, 2007 9:19 am
For early adopters who already have some traffic BlogRush should generate some additional traffic. For late comers and smaller blogs it could be better to boycott it.
Jon Kelly
September 19th, 2007 9:22 am
Wow. 0.05% CTR, that is abysmal. Assuming 50 cents per click value (I’m being generous) that’s a 25 cent eCPM. Ouch. At what point can we declare this thing dead in the water?
AlfaFox.info
September 19th, 2007 9:22 am
If you are small and lat BlogRush will cost you real estate and you will lose some traffic and win almost nothing. Thats my feeling, at least.
Jixx
September 19th, 2007 9:25 am
Current Credit Balance: 24
Credits Earned Today: 5
From Your Traffic: 5
From Your Referral Network: 0
And that sad part is, I believe those are all from me checking on my comments…
Although I just started my blog last weekend, so I’m not really expecting heavy traffic… haha…
Adam McKerlie
September 19th, 2007 9:29 am
I was going through my referrals and have come across a few referrals from the Blog Rush widget, yet on the statistics it says I have 0 clicks. I dont think they match up 1:1
Sly from Slyvisions.com
September 19th, 2007 9:43 am
Current Credit Balance: 3,289
Total Clicks: 0
What’s up with that? I am still yet to get a click. I haven’t even seen my link come up on the widget even once!
Zuggu.com
September 19th, 2007 9:57 am
Lets assume it, if a no one launches a product like this he/she would be demolished… this is not the case because of the background of the creator …
Andy Beal
September 19th, 2007 10:00 am
I just shared my awful stats on Marketing Pilgrim.
Andrew Ferguson
September 19th, 2007 10:00 am
Current Credit Balance: 4,312
Impressions Since Launch: 2,808
Clicks: 0
However, I have seen at least 2 blogrush referrals in my wordpress stats. The BR stats aren’t perfectly accurate, but I think the clickthrough rate kind of speaks for itself.
I think part of the reason is that blog widgets don’t get placed in high traffic areas of a website. They’re generally below the fold, in a sidebar, mixed in with a stack of other junk. After all, that’s where I put mine!
Ian
September 19th, 2007 10:05 am
Slightly off topic: How did you guys keep Blogrush from showing a list of multi-level marketing sites and other stuff?
bob cobb
September 19th, 2007 10:06 am
Complete garbage, and its already gone for me. NOONE is putting the widget in a high traffic area, including me, so the CTR is obviously gonna be terrible. I’d rather run an ad or something than that widget, I think an ad will have just about as much benefit to the user.
loldogs
September 19th, 2007 10:08 am
Not very impressive.
Credits:
Current Credit Balance: 574
Credits Earned Today: 352
From Your Traffic: 352
From Your Referral Network: 0
Credits Earned Last 7 Days: 1,026
From Your Traffic: 1,026
From Your Referral Network: 0
Credits Earned Last 30 Days: 1,026
From Your Traffic: 1,026
From Your Referral Network: 0
Syndication:
IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
TODAY 286 2
LAST 7 DAYS 449 3
LAST 30 DAYS 449 3
Note: My suggestion to the Blogrush folks would be to allow the users to edit the widget size, shape, colors, etc.
Edward Dowd
September 19th, 2007 10:11 am
Hey,
I wrote an article posting my own stats (with images). My click though ratio is less than .01
http://theblogbeat.com/blogrush-the-results-are-in/
Patrick Burt
September 19th, 2007 10:13 am
These… comments certainly aren’t encouraging. On the plus side, I sat and watched the whole promotional movie, very well made. :)
Brian Purkiss
September 19th, 2007 10:23 am
My blog is really small - so it shows in my statistics.
Impressions: 63
Referrals: 0
Clicks: 0
Not a single click through.
Pretty disappointing.
I agree with loldogs, we should be able to customize our widget.
Ian McKenzie
September 19th, 2007 10:25 am
I pulled the widget. They seemed to be having technical issues yesterday. Every time they had a problem and the widget wouldn’t display, it blanked out the rest of my sidebar. I’ve got established income-generating items there, I can’t afford to have an inconsistent new service messy with that.
Eggo
September 19th, 2007 10:52 am
98 impressions
0 clicks
That’s only 3 days worth of info on an unpopulated blog. Though I agree with some of the other comments that this will be limited to early adapters and larger blogs.
Jay @ Dumb Little Man
September 19th, 2007 10:53 am
I tried this on Dumb Little Man and I quickly removed it after seeing spam for ‘fake handbags”. I just can’t subject readers to that.
On Diethhack, a smaller blog that I own, I was more patient and while the spam factor was surprisingly much lower in that niche, I just don’t see any value in keeping this up. Diethack had 4K page views today and I still don’t see the value.
I anticipate removing it at some point over the next few days and replacing it with my old homegrown “related topic” feed that shares posts from other blogs.
I hate to be a downer, but I don’t like it. I’d rather handpick the blogs that I send readers to. Maybe I am paranoid about credibility…
- Jay
Debra Hamel
September 19th, 2007 10:58 am
Stats: 666 impressions, 2 clicks.
Debo Hobo
September 19th, 2007 10:59 am
Where is your widget? I am not seeing where you are collecting stats from.
Mike
September 19th, 2007 11:19 am
Debo Hobo,
I was going to ask the same thing but I’m guessing he probably has it on one of his other blogs.
Tyler
September 19th, 2007 11:19 am
I have 8 bloggers under me and I’m showing over 17,000 impressions with 3 total clicks…
I’m giving it another week or so and if things don’t improve it’s gone! The headlines are not nearly topic specific enough and I don’t see the benefit to my readers.
Plus, I think the whole thing is a little strange. It’s not really ground breaking stuff, just marketed well.
Which makes me think that it’s most useful for John to gather all of the analytics and study them for his own use.
Jacob
September 19th, 2007 11:53 am
Yikes. 196 impressions, 0 clicks.
wallstreetfighter
September 19th, 2007 11:55 am
2400 impressions today 4 clicks. This is most likely going to get worse I have a feeling.
KingJacob
September 19th, 2007 11:57 am
I got 78 impressions and 4 clicks, sadly I dont have thousands of bloggers referred under me so …..meh!
kevin
September 19th, 2007 12:06 pm
3,063 impressions
3 views
Scott
September 19th, 2007 12:09 pm
I’m not to confident in the numbers Blogrush is showing in their dashboard. They say I have 0 clicks so far, however I see referalls from widget.blogrush.com in my site analytics package.
Either blogrush is slow to update or its not accurate.
James
September 19th, 2007 12:21 pm
Since everyone is positioning all their widgets in the worst possible place why expect anyone to click on it. I remembering banner exchange programs where people put them bellow their pages. I think the same thing is happening.
Iantrepreneur
September 19th, 2007 12:24 pm
I got my stats darren I did a little Google Apps thingy too - to show everyone - I got a higher CTR than you darren that cant be - but you have tons more traffic than me :)
My Stats:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWdbCDgZ_kj0LIVEnq6lkDQ
Patrick Britton
September 19th, 2007 12:25 pm
My stats show 400 impressions and 1 click.
Ryan Dlugosz
September 19th, 2007 12:29 pm
HOPING FOR RESULTS IN A NON-BLOGGING CATEGORY…
Does that count as a “compelling 7-word title”? :)
Anyway, I’m not all that surprised to hear that your CTR is really low… I’d imagine that a lot of the early adopters are just focused on getting this widget online and building referrals - and I’d bet that since the majority of users will be bloggers who blog about blogs you’re not likely to get a lot of clicks.
My hope is that the usage in some non-blogging categories (e.g., Photography in my case) will lead to more clicks due to a more targeted readership interested in related articles; not just in referral links.
geeeek
September 19th, 2007 12:31 pm
I am also finding that my BlogRush stats are off. I have a couple referrals showing in my WP stats as being from BlogRush, but am also seeing 0 clicks.
The countdown has begun for removing BlogRush. While I’m happy to be an early adopter, I’m not seeing the value as of yet.
jhay
September 19th, 2007 12:35 pm
I removed the BlogRush widget. I read somewhere that it could potentialy violate the Google AdSense TOS.
I’m really not sure, but before things cleared up, I’m putting the use of the widget on hold.
BloggingProfits
September 19th, 2007 12:38 pm
101 impressions 0 clicks. Will shoot myself tonight.
Malignition.com
September 19th, 2007 12:40 pm
Hey Darren,
My CTR is incredibly low too, 0 clicks and several thousand impressions. Hopefully we’ll see improvement in the coming weeks.
Leon
September 19th, 2007 12:53 pm
I think the CTR is so low because most bloggers place the widget too far down in their sidebars. There should be a lesson on BlogRush optimization. Thanks for the info Darren. If a big time blogger like you has such a low CTR, then there’s little hope for small fishes like myself.
Tim Dierkes
September 19th, 2007 1:05 pm
So far I’ve got 11 clicks against 12,951 impressions with 64K credits remaining and 27 bloggers in my referral network. I could see how this could compound upon itself and eventually snag me 100 clicks a day or something. But yeah it’s not built with the small blog in mind.
Supernegro.com
September 19th, 2007 1:16 pm
Blogrush says that I have 112 total impressions and a doughnut for click-thrus. That said, I think that Blogrush is slow at updating as my traffic has jumped a bit in the two days that I’ve been using the widget. Or it could just be a conincidence.
A Blog about Nothing
September 19th, 2007 1:17 pm
Impressions - 4,416
Clicks - 4
I think the CTR will get better as they allow us to customize it and hopefully give us more choices of widgets as far as shape and size go.
According to Google Analytics I’ve had 3 visits from widget.blogrush.com and average time on site was 21 seconds with a bounce rate of 66.67%.
Average time on site is 1min 35seconds with a bounce rate of 35.79% The differences in the stats are a little disheartening. I’m honestly not sure why Blog Rush is more advantageous than something like Stumble Upon where I average 1min 27 seconds on site with a bounce rate of 31.85%. At least with stumble upon people are making their decision based on the content of the site not on the headlines.
Meg
September 19th, 2007 1:19 pm
Credits Earned Last 7 Days: 20,458
From Your Traffic: 18,984
From Your Referral Network: 1,474
Current Credit Balance 15,364
IMPRESSIONS 5,094
CLICKS 1
(nb back end stats & analytics are reporting 2 clicks). Have to work on more engaging titles, I think.
bigdadgib
September 19th, 2007 1:35 pm
blogrush said copy and paste to wordpress widget but my wordpress.com account will not let me use javascript
bummer
Spanish Fry
September 19th, 2007 1:44 pm
I have had 1,551 impressions and 2 clicks. It’s a pretty awful percentage when you think about it. I like the idea and dare I say the look of the widget but I’m not sure it’s going to get the results that were predicted.
Jenny
September 19th, 2007 2:08 pm
My site is down right now but I have it on my blog. I’ve heard so much bad press though that I think I am going to remove the widget.
Small Potato
September 19th, 2007 2:22 pm
Like I’ve said on my own blog, Blog Rush is a useless banner-exchange system with a twist. Instead of banners, you exchange headlines or post titles.
As long as bloggers continue to be selfish (installing Blog Rush as the bottom of their pages) and as long as it’s not a requirement to place Blog Rush at a prominent position, you will get no significant traffic from this new service.
And it’s the worst kind of traffic exchange because Blog Rush puts your headline up against four other headlines, makes your opinion less important on your blog because now any site could get linked from your blog, and Blog Rush links back to itself.
Blog Rush was built to benefit BlogRush.com, not you. You’ve all been WAMBOOZLED!
Karthik
September 19th, 2007 3:11 pm
I’m not sure how bloggers are going to keep the widget above the fold unless they have two sidebars. Their RSS subscriptions and Recent Posts will probably fill the fold (mine does!)
So is this a lot more hype than it actually is? Lets give Time a chance to tell.
tallfreak
September 19th, 2007 3:29 pm
I’ve gotten about 20 hits from blogrush and I don’t even have the widget installed. It was too big to fit in my sidebar. They really need to make it customizable so all blogs can use it. Fortunately I referred a lot of people to it so I have a lot of credits. I guess the credits work even if you don’t have the widget installed. :) I think my blog name makes people curious so they click on it. lol
Andy Merrett
September 19th, 2007 3:33 pm
On the other hand, Small Potato, I’ve found BlogRush is as good for the blogger as the visitor.
I think it’s too early to completely write off the system, so I don’t particularly consider myself “wamboozled” (bamboozled?). I’ve discovered four or five new blogs in my niche already via the widget. Yes, I could’ve found them in other ways, but it was BR that helped.
Marko Novak
September 19th, 2007 3:37 pm
My current credit balance is 30,695 and I referred 4 bloggers. This is for Novak’s Blog
Neil
September 19th, 2007 3:44 pm
Figures are very ordinary at the moment … but will stick with it and see where it goes.
Michael
September 19th, 2007 3:46 pm
I was considering BlogRush but after seeing these stats and many other peoples stats, it just isn’t worth my time.
Teng-Yan Loke
September 19th, 2007 4:04 pm
Stats on http://malaysiacrimewatch.lokety.com and http://glob.lokety.com:
Credit: 404
Impression: 129
Click: 0
The links on my widget are quite relevant, so I think it’s important to select the most appropriate blog category.
I hope BR will be able to expand on multiple categories and look and feel customization of the widget.
Koen
September 19th, 2007 4:16 pm
Current Credit Balance: 257
Credits Earned Today: 322
From Your Traffic: 19
From Your Referral Network: 303
So that means 303-257=46 page views. So far, wordpress has registered 3 clicks through the blogrush widget. 6% clickthrough rate…. Hmm…. seems pretty high, anyone confirms I didn’t miscalculate something please ;)
They all come to this post title “How can I say no?”
Koen
September 19th, 2007 4:21 pm
Well, it seems that I miscalculated the impressions XD and didn’t see the thing beneath it. 303 views. So it’s not much either. Hopefully it will change.
gaman
September 19th, 2007 4:38 pm
I discovered a bug in that I’ve seen a blogger own headline appeared in his own widget. So I suggest you add your own blog domain into the URL filters list
Brian Auer
September 19th, 2007 5:14 pm
10,000 credits earned (8500 from me).
3600 impressions.
2 referrals (without even asking).
1 click.
.00028% CTR.
The 1 click thing is interesting because my stats show that I’ve had 8 visits from the BlogRush widget. This would increase my CTR to .0022%. Still not very good.
Candice
September 19th, 2007 5:21 pm
I’ve had 186 impressions, and 2 click-throughs. So, about 1% CTR. Which is pretty good, as far as I’m concerned (especially considering the results above).
Regarding the person above who mentioned that they didn’t have the widget installed, but were still receiving credits and impressions…. I think that’s something that really needs to be fixed. I don’t think it’s really fair that people are getting their headlines displayed without giving anything back.
Candice
September 19th, 2007 5:24 pm
Meant to include above that I’ve seen quite a few pages show up that don’t have the widget installed. I’d almost say that it’s been as many as half of the blogs I’ve clicked through to.
Eli
September 19th, 2007 5:40 pm
After reading some of the above comments I’ve decided to pull the BlogRush widget until I read some pleasant reviews about the service.
eyeflare.com
September 19th, 2007 8:00 pm
Same here, atrocious results and b*ggers up my loading quite often. Pulling it, this thing’s dead.
Sean McGoldrick
September 19th, 2007 8:04 pm
Credits Earned: 144
Impressions: 51
Clicks: 0
Much like I was expecting really. I don’t see this bringing a lot of traffic but as I have only a small amount of traffic every bit of exposure helps.
muratos
September 19th, 2007 8:31 pm
i have made almost 1500 impressions over some blogs in total, but only got 4 clicks. no referrals yet.
Andy Beard
September 19th, 2007 9:08 pm
Forget the stats inside Blogrush, that doesn’t account for the overflow, only on earned credits.
Look at your Google Analytics, or MBL stats or whatever other live stats you use.
Referral credits are not being used yet
I suppose I need to write yet anther post to clarify how things seem to be allocated.
Nick's Marketing Tips
September 19th, 2007 10:22 pm
My stats:
IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
TODAY 148 0
LAST 7 DAYS 269 0
LAST 30 DAYS 269 0
So if I got click right now, I would have a ctr of 0.25%
Dr.Mani
September 19th, 2007 10:56 pm
TODAY 160 0
LAST 7 DAYS 802 3
LAST 30 DAYS 802 3
Bontb
September 19th, 2007 11:21 pm
Joined 2 days ago:
My stats look low as well here is the review:
IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
TODAY 2561 3
LAST 7 DAYS 6219 9
LAST 30 DAYS 6219 9
6 referrals
I think this is poor as well, ill give another 10 days and see how it works, if not that thing is gone!
Thanks for sharing your !
My post about blogrush:
BlogRush New Tool To Maximize Your Blog Traffic
Jen / domestika
September 19th, 2007 11:34 pm
The very low CTR is not impressive.
But I like what Andy Beard said about BlogRush being a “discovery tool” and am trying to view it that way… at least while the bumps get worked out.
That’s one hideously butt-ugly widget, though… I sure wish BlogRush would make it so that the styles could be tweaked. A theme-appropriate appearance would help persuade me to keep the widget on my sidebar long enough to give it a fair trial…
Dave
September 19th, 2007 11:40 pm
I pulled the widget Monday. Not sure if its Adsense freindly yet with conflicting info out there. Another thing is, with the size of my blog, it would take forever to get to a point where mine would be showing up regularly enough to have it be worth it for me right now. Maybe when my blog grows up.
geomark
September 20th, 2007 12:04 am
1700 credits, 450 impressions, 0 clicks. I’m sure the low CTR is because people are putting the widget where it won’t be seen, some even putting it inside a and hiding it. Too bad it can be so easily abused and defeated. I have it in a prominent location but I’m going to probably drop it.
Matt Savage
September 20th, 2007 12:25 am
I’m getting a 7.8% CTR over the past three days!
I’m not sure what is wrong with all you pro-bloggers out there because I seem to be getting WAY better results than anyone commenting here. Either that or I’m calculating it wrong. Check it out.
617 total credits
258 credit balance
= 332 impressions served
According to statcounter I received 26 click throughs from the BlogRush widget.
26/332 = .0783 = 7.8% CTR
Maybe I’m not calculating this correctly but if I am it seems pretty damn good to me. My widget is in the “lifestyle” category and the post that has been receiving all the clicks is titled, “How I Got a Date From Facebook“
Mark Goodyear
September 20th, 2007 12:38 am
I’ve used a similar widget called The Good Blogs for sometime now. It has had a similarly disappointing click through rate for me as well, but at least that widget allows the promise of customization.
Has anyone yet developed a widget that allows you to build YOUR OWN network of specific RSS feeds you want to show up in your sidebar? Or is that too obvious?
David
September 20th, 2007 12:56 am
I definitely think the low CTR has to do with their system not updating accurately yet. Everyone might be better off checking under their stats for external links to get a more accurate portrayal on how well BlogRush has been helping them. This thing is in the very beginning stages too and John Reese knows what he’s doing so I would wait it out a bit before deleting it.
Andy Beard
September 20th, 2007 12:56 am
@Mark Goodyear - you can just share items from Google Reader in a widget on your blog, but unless the other blogs also share your items equally, it doesn’t give you any traffic in return.
I used the Goodblogs for a while and then removed it. It was too complicated and hard to track how effective it was, but in general the traffic gain was less than Blogrush by a long way.
The quality of content displayed wasn’t necessarily any better.
Mark Goodyear
September 20th, 2007 1:01 am
Thanks for the response, Andy. I guess it’s time to switch from Bloglines to Google…
Andy Beard
September 20th, 2007 1:26 am
Mark, that is just one way of doing it.
There are lots of ways to import RSS feeds into a blog sidebar, and lots of ways an OPML file can be shared.
If you do the research, there are literally 10s, maybe hundreds of widgets that can share feeds, scripts that can share feeds, plugins for using blogrolls to share latest posts etc.
You could also plug your OPML into a site like Megite.com to let it choose what are the hot topics in your niche that most people are linking to, and then add the feed from Megite to your sidebar.
But those all just give traffic to someone… potentially
I have also tracked traffic from being a top commenter on Marketing Pilgrim, listed sitewide - that gave almost no traffic.
redwall_hp
September 20th, 2007 3:21 am
I’m getting something like 293 impressions, 1 click so far. I’ve been busy the last few days though, and haven’t written as much as usual.
Starfeeder
September 20th, 2007 3:32 am
today:
IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
248 0
Steven Bradley
September 20th, 2007 3:41 am
The last time I looked I’d earned about 750+ credits and about 400 impressions all resulting in 0 clicks.
Like you I was expecting a low click through, but I was thinking more in the 1%-2% range. I do agree it’s way too early to make and definitive statements. I’m sure BlogRush will need some time to better target the ads and I’d imagine that it’s so new many people don’t realize they’re supposed to click on those links.
Blog opinion
September 20th, 2007 3:45 am
If so then blogrush wouldn’t increase your blog traffic. I used their widget . You can’t changes its size even. I was unable to add it to blog template .
Matthew Sherborne
September 20th, 2007 3:50 am
I’ve tried the Blog Rush widget for two days and here’s the results:
Impressions - 404
clicks - 0
Waiting in queue - 467
No clicks yet…
Millionster
September 20th, 2007 4:34 am
I think the blog widget looks like an ad. =)
Since they don’t let you customize the skin or anything it really isnt all that nice to have on a well designed blog that has it’s own template.
I bet you readers are glazing right over it.
HMTKSteve
September 20th, 2007 4:47 am
Perhaps I missed something but I do not see the widget on your site.
David Risley
September 20th, 2007 5:38 am
I was showing BlogRush on PCMech.com. Gave them about 25,000 impressions. They gave me about 2,200. Resulted in 2 clicks. Two words: Screw that.
I think one of the big problems here is that the “rush” is only among bloggers trying to get traffic. End users just don’t care. It’s one-sided, and as I said on webbyonline.com, it’s structured like a pyramid scheme.
Lyle
September 20th, 2007 5:42 am
1154 impressions, 1 click
too early to tell but reminds me of the pyramid scheme.
Everton
September 20th, 2007 6:35 am
3,000 imps from referrals and 2 clicks…definitely not addign the widget to my site
redwall_hp
September 20th, 2007 6:39 am
They’ve just sent out an email defending their program. I’ve posted a couple of excerpts if you’re interested.
http://www.webmaster-source.com/2007/09/19/blogrush-defends-their-program/
mblair
September 20th, 2007 6:47 am
I think 1% is a really unrealistic expectation for BlogRush. They could have it start whistling the “Star Spangled Banner” when the page loads and you aren’t going to get that. Since there are 5 headlines shown at any given time that would be a 5% click through on the widget as a whole.
My stab at it is that somewhere in the 0.3% to 0.4% would have to be considered a success.
Also, I think that BlogRush is more likely going to bring in new potential readers rather than current readers. With a blog as widely read as ProBlogger within its niche, many of the people that are seeing the headline on the widget are probably already subscribers or frequent visitors to the site and may have already been exposed to the post.
Of course, there are things that could improve it – the widget is to “heavy” looking and needs to be customizable. More like AdSense. It also needs the ability for bloggers to be able to select the posts from their feed that they want to promote so that people begin to learn that there is great content lurking in the BlogRush widget, as opposed to what someone had for breakfast.
Robert Tatum
September 20th, 2007 7:04 am
Blog Rush has sent visitors to my blog, but they need to improve their user interface. I tried to retrieve my stats the other night, and I could not retrieve them.
Danny @ Blogs for Money
September 20th, 2007 7:35 am
I found a nice trick to get 4.5 times more traffic through BlogRush. I posted an article about it on my blog (it’s really quite simple!)
http://blogsformoney.com/post/Clever-Trick-Getting-45-Times-More-Traffic-From-BlogRush.aspx
Michal Levy
September 20th, 2007 8:01 am
I only have a credit balance of 27, the rest is all ZERO.
I guess my site has not showed up in anyone’s widgets because of the category I chose (Parenting).
I also found the topics extremely unrelated, and now I switched to Health & Medicine, and it’s a bit better.
My blog is about pregnancy and childbirth, I am not sure in what category that belongs!
Israel
September 20th, 2007 8:02 am
i think they need to introduce different sizes for the widget, colors as well. maye be even diff styles.
Jordan Mitchell
September 20th, 2007 8:16 am
Here’s a fun challenge for you all. If we don’t provide you with a better click-through rate than BlogRush, we’ll paypal you $10.
We’ve been working on some fun software that is already beating BlogRush on click-through stats (by a lot). I’d like to take advantage of this meme, put some money on the table, earn some valuable feedback, and have some fun.
Details on our blog at http://blog.othersonline.com/2007/09/the-others-onli.html. Let the games begin?
holli jo
September 20th, 2007 8:37 am
Okay, my blog is in it’s beginning stages, so I don’t get a lot of hits yet. But checking today’s stats, I’ve had 30 visitors to my site today, and 4 of them came from a BlogRush widget. Which is quite a few, comparitively.
However, has anyone had trouble with sleezy and inappropriate content in the widget on your site? Mine has been featuring some stuff I am appalled at. My site is family friendly; I’m thinking of taking the BlogRush widget OFF.
revenue robot
September 20th, 2007 10:16 am
I recently added the BlogRush to my site… (yesterday) i can’t wait to see what the statistics are… if the traffic isn’t what they say it is then i’m freeing up the space on my site for more ads…
Starfeeder
September 20th, 2007 10:50 am
I just read an email from BlogRush, he goes into detail explaining how most of us could be getting low CTRs. Fraud was one of the reasons cited…
and I just saw on mint that I got a visit from a blog rush widget! But my stats on blogrush still show Zero :”(
mblair
September 20th, 2007 12:52 pm
I’ve solved one of the BlogRush problems I mentioned above — the ability to select what posts I want to include in my feed. I have free download and instructions here for anybody that is trying to do the same:
http://www.smoblog.com/custom-rss-blogrush/
Nothing I can do about the ugly widget problem though :-)
Candie
September 20th, 2007 3:46 pm
I dunno, guys. I wouldn’t click on any of your headlines, either. Clicking through to some of your sites, the headlines seem to be almost TOO “optimized”. When I see a bunch of them together in the Blogrush widget, they look like spam, and when I click through to the articles, they’re not much better. Plus, they’re typically about something so specific that it does not apply to me. I think that’s something that’s going to hurt “niche” sites using Blogrush, unless they can also find a way to make the widget display headlines that are similarly specific. Your sites might work well with Google searches, but to a random person not looking for anything in particular… your sites are going to bore the hell out of them. When I see a blog post so heavily crafted to attract hits… it doesn’t come off much better than all the male enhancement messages in my inbox. You’re using the same tactics, you know.
I have a personal site that I’ve been switching up between humour and personal categories, and I’m still seeing better than 1% CTR. My stats on the Blogrush page itself are also incorrect, though… I’ve just been counting instances of widget.blogrush.com in my stats.
John Reese
September 20th, 2007 6:59 pm
HEY EVERYONE… John Reese from BlogRush here.
Thanks for all the great feedback. We’re working really hard to make some “must needed” improvements due to some unforseen issues we’ve encountered. Fraud has really hurt us in the early going and is dilluting the CTRs across the entire network. We’re moving to a 100% Manual Review Process and this will not only eliminate most of the cheaters but will also eliminate all the low-quality blogs in the network.
Hans Chee
September 20th, 2007 7:22 pm
I wonder if anyone’s referral network has filled to the 10th level?
For me I’ve registered directly under the company (from JR’s blog) and that means all the referral credits (9th levels above me) now belongs to the company. Similarly, 8 levels of my first line goes to the company too, and 7 levels of my 2nd line goes up…etc.
If my case is common, which is very probable since a large number of us got in NOT from a 2nd tier referral, then there’ll be a huge pool of credits being use for serving public feeds or paid feeds…
i.e. the company will have tons of un-used credits which could otherwise be serving member’s feeds instead. Thus there’s not enough impressions to go around to show everyone’s feeds and we have more credits than we can spend.
Re: the “abuses” that the company cited in their latest update; I’m just surprise why no measures to prevent them have be pre-empt prior to the release. Some of the exploits seems obvious.
mblair
September 20th, 2007 7:33 pm
Great spirit John — nice to see that you are working so hard to make improvements. Manual review should help a lot. It would be great to see something that could incentiveize mega-popular blogs like this one to keep running their widget even after they’ve racked up zillions of syndication credits.
Siani
September 20th, 2007 8:13 pm
I installed Blogrush on my personal blog a few hours ago. 144 page impressions, no clicks. Also, even though it says I’ve gained 100 credits, my credit balance is showing as minus 45, I just don’t understand that. So far, it’s done nothing for me. I’ll give it a couple of weeks, and if I get no extra traffic from it, their ugly-looking widget will be removed.
shery
September 20th, 2007 9:27 pm
LAST 7 DAYS IMPRESSIONS:495 CLICKS:1
Credits Earned Last 7 Days: 666
Danny @ Blogs for Money
September 21st, 2007 4:47 am
LAST 30 DAYS IMPRESSIONS: 2,667 CLICKS: 1
At least you’re beating my CTR!
That said, I’ve seen at least 2-3 referrals in my stats, so I suspect it’s not counting right :-(
If you want more visitors, you can be your own 10th generation referral and earn 4.5 times more visitors!
http://blogsformoney.com/post/Clever-Trick-Getting-45-Times-More-Traffic-From-BlogRush.aspx
:D
sandossu
September 21st, 2007 5:57 am
16 referrals, 36,000 credits, 10,000 impressions and just 4 clicks.
That’s useless
nicole
September 21st, 2007 10:26 am
No referrals and really, I just signed up for Blogrush but it’s encouraging that people are seeing some increase in traffic.
Stu McLaren
September 21st, 2007 2:10 pm
I find it interesting to also see where everyone’s credits are coming from.
Many people are generating the majority of their credits from their own traffic. For me, most of them have come from my referral network.
I give a full screen shot of my stats on my latest blog post:
http://myideaguy.com/blog/is-blogrush-working/
I only see it getting better as they refine the system more and more.
That’s my two cents.
Take care.
Stu
Siani
September 21st, 2007 7:46 pm
I received an email from Blogrush last night to say that CTRs are so low because spam bloggers have been cheating the system and stealing traffic from legitimate users. This information also appears on the Blogrush website. They have promised to remove the cheats, and are now introducing a manual sign-up process, to prevent future abuse and make the system fairer for genuine users. At least they seem to be making a genuine effort to help legitimate users.
Andy Beard
September 21st, 2007 8:36 pm
@Stu McLaren
I will respond here because you force people to register to comment :(
You are not reporting accurate click stats because the Blogrush stats do not (or didn’t) account for the bonus impressions which are most of the traffic on the network currently.
There are some weird things in the Blogrush stats that just don’t add up currently.
For instance I have had a sudden burst of 5000 credits allocated to traffic in the last 24 hrs, but I have no way of telling where those came from.
Clicks in the interface only
You really need to track referrers using other forms of tracking such as MyBlogLog or Google Analytics.
I went into the reasons why, and demonstrated the difference in this post about Blogrush Testing and Tracking
As you will see, there is a huge difference between the traffic small blogs receive, and
Some Useless Info
September 22nd, 2007 12:52 pm
Results are poor just like everyone else. A click through rate of around 1.8 - 2%.
Here’s my report on the BlogRush experience:
http://www.someuseless.info/internet-marketing/blogrush-poor-performance/
Some Useless Info
September 22nd, 2007 12:53 pm
oops…that should be 0.18 - 0.2% ….sorry.
Krista White
September 23rd, 2007 2:21 am
DON’T TRUST THE BLOGRUSH STATS! I’m getting a 0.7% click rate, but I don’t have a single click showing on my BlogRush dashboard, so before any of you go and chuck the idea, check your own stats.
For me, any new visitors are good, I’m very new, and very small. Even better, they’ve all come from really relevant sites. I haven’t seen any spammy or inappropriate content in the widget, but my niche doesn’t have a lot of that anyway.
Honestly, tuck it down somewhere where you aren’t making money anyway, and then whatever traffic it brings will be better than nothing.
Shane
September 23rd, 2007 11:49 am
I removed it due to it really clashing with the minimalistic design of my site. Also, I only had 10 credits, and at one point it was in the negatives…
Valentin
September 24th, 2007 3:34 pm
Darren,
Fora such experimented guy like you I was especting you won`t “rush” .. i`m dissapointed that, despite your internetmarketing knowledge (and not only), you still belive pyramidal and traffic exchange would work.
mlm died in `80`s … despite lot of people keep promoting it even crossing the scam limits ..
“I know it is still very early days..” - and so will stay…
Is a widget, widgets slow down big time site loading.
Is ugly and despite color schemes and eventual resize, it will be ALLWAYS a widget.
Is to big - everybody will put it lower - bottom, who wants to get rid of PAID position on top to put that ?
ntz ntz ntz …
Starfeeder
September 25th, 2007 6:41 am
I’m curious, does anyone know how to see/contact who they have referred? The past week I went from 0 referrals to 11 and they are giving me thousands and thousands of impressions (still have a horrible CTR: 5, but hey at least I have clicks now lol)
Valentin, I agree with some of your points, but to me this really isn’t a pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme involves lying to people and either losing your money to stealing other peoples money. This is purely based on traffic and traffic alone, BlogRush makes their money from 1 ad in the 9 listings… but hey most of us run ads on our blogs.
I agree on the part that the javascript widget lags the site a bit, on my site it seems to jitter. Micheal and ProBlogDesign.com even reviewed my site and noted that as one of the drawbacks to our layout so if we remove that widget it would be due to performance issues.
http://www.problogdesign.com/blog-design-reviews/design-review-starfeeder/
Valentin
September 25th, 2007 9:13 pm
@ starfeeder
No money involved ? lol, be patient … :-P
As about pyramidals required something paid or money, - don`t shoot the messenger - you are thinking to much “online”.
But for the sake (not that japanese drink) of conversation, please consider I replace “pyramidal” with “vertical”.
Rule number one of any comersial activity : client rulz ! my “master” is my client!
If this mean vertical relations, I`m the next pope. :-)
On the other hand, any refferal system is build to give advantage to one on higher position.
(sidenote - guess who are allways in top 5-10 highest levels ? No, wrong, are .. “gurus” !)
If refferals mean :
a
b1 b2 b3 .. b(n)
(cb1-1 cb1-2 …cb1-(n)) ((cb2-1 cb2-2 …cb2-(n)) ………
and if this “scheme” centred on page is not looking as a pyramid, I may need to re-learn geometry.
Yet, I`m sure egyptian pharaons would see it as a pyramid.
Pyramids on biz = mlm.
mlm = failure for 99% (see the above sidenote where were pointed who are the others 1% …)
By now, this “thing” was successfull in only one point, which was not said by none in plain english : tousends of link back to blogrush dot com.
I know what is wrong with the BR system and how to make it work. REALY !
Somebody intersted ? I have a contact link on my blog.
Yet attention, that would reset all “credits” earned … and would mean cut off (somehow) refferal system too ..
Mathias
October 1st, 2007 7:40 am
I think the reason for the pyramid scheme is really to make blogrush.com popular. It’s not only for thei own sake, though.
To make a system like blogrush.com work you really need lots of members. And a referral system motivates people to invite other users.
If the system has enough users i would get rid of the referral system.
MaxBlogPress
October 15th, 2007 10:18 pm
I recently developed a free wordpress plugin called “BlogRush Click Maximizer”. By using it you can vastly improve your Click Through Rate.
This allows you to control what you want to display in BlogRush. You can even write alternate - short and catchy title just for BlogRush.
You will have total control of what appears over the BlogRush Network.
Check it out here:
http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/bcm/
D
October 24th, 2007 4:32 am
BlogRush accepted a lot of members and got them to promote their service. And how did BlogRush repay them? They deactivated their blogs and removed them from the system.
They did this to over 10,000 people just this weekend.
I can see sites not accepting a submision. But don’t accept someone’s submission, get them to promote your site, and then turn around and screw them over.
I would recommend using a legitimate blog submission service. You might just find that you put BlogRush on your blog and promote it, and when they are done using you, they will screw you over too.
Kelly
January 14th, 2008 4:56 am
I have a super small site but have seen zero good things from BlogRush, and like someone mentioned, I got some non-family oriented ads.
It does not appear to be a winner.
Paul
January 15th, 2008 11:08 am
You may want to try a similar content linking service thats based on relevance vs popularity. I found it to have better CTR because the links are more relevant to what users are reading.
http://www.arkayne.com
3magin8.com
April 1st, 2008 5:03 am
i havent gotten many clicks from blogrush but ive gotten a lot of refferals.
i think they benefit more from bloggers.
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