Earlier this week internet marketing superstar (and also my good friend) John Reese launched Blog Rush. Its pretty sexy I must say. Basically you display the widget on your site and for each impression the widget loads you get credit to get your posts displayed throughout the network in similar categories.
Also because its javascript you don’t have to worry about reciprical links or even linking to people or nofollow tags….. it just works. I think this might be the first cooperative link network matt cutts might even get behind 
.
Watch this video, I cant explain it better:
Get going on blog rush right now!
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2412 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 92 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome concept. I guess i must try this out
Thanks for sharing Jeremy
I signed up too earlier today. Almost as simple as AuctionAds.
Do you think it’s a bit like the DP coop?
I am in!
yes except its javascript so you dont have to worry about linking to sites you hate… also you can block sites and even add negative keywords (watch the video)
I blogged about this on the 13th and have just put it on my blog today. It’s a great concept, the expansion rate is unlimited so people with huge blogs (cough, shoemoney) should do exceptionally well from it when enough people start using it.
Okay done. I just have it updated on my blog too.
Oh, boy! Yet another blog widget!
Hey Jeremy, Please don’t lie to me, is this your own project?
I am just going to wait until more people start using it. At the moment, it lacks coverage of certain topics.
Yeah cool!
I’ll try it too!
Assume I own or have a interest in writing about everything.
(please see disclaimer).
Does it change anything? Are you really not smart enough to make up your own mind about a product?
hey calm down amazed guy it was just a kindly-kidding message. but i didn’t type a stupid smiley (i thought that you would understand it) assume that there is a smiley at the end of the message. good luck!
I’m in!
What a cool intro video too, I would have never read through all that info, but I sat there and watched it.
I had used adgridwork for a bit but it didnt really work but this one looks promising since its only blogs.
Could not explain without that video! Saw this on Andy Beards site too, but without the video. I was going to read it later, but I would of forgotten.
I wish I had more blogs. There is going to be a mad rush for this gadget. Its going to multiply fast just like all those BlogCatalog MyBLogLog widgets…. Will some people pay to have more headlines on and or will they have a little ad there at the bottom??
One thing I did not notice is how they are going to monitize…
Sounds cool, hope they get an auctionads type buyout lol
I am sure shoe is doing good on referring all our signups
Hmmm it’s like all the benefits of a traffic exchange without the fear of reciprocal linking, I wonder if adsense will dislike it (since they don’t like things like the digital pt co-op and stuff).
Im sure they wont mind because its javascript, google likes links being shared as long as you use the nofollow attribute, and google doesnt follow javascript
interesting widget. Does google even see the links if its a widget?
ok I’ve thrown it up on my blog (using your referral) – but every blog i’ve looked at is showing the same links – they never change… is it broke already?
I can’t wait for this site to bring me lots and lots of traffic
..I already added it on my site
I just added to my blog too and just posted about it.
Seems like a great service for newbies.
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/2007/09/15/blogrush-a-pyramid-traffic-scheme-for-bloggers/
Has this really sent you any traffic Shoe? It does sound similar to the coop without all the SE penalty worries, but I’m concerned this could just be a fly-by-night deal.
Man it works too, I just got carried away on someone else’s blog for the past hour, and totally forgot how I found it.
@Travel Notebook: It is javascript code, which means it is 100% loaded clientside through the browser, so Google does not see any links, or pass any PR/Authority.
Ive noticed this too and the blogs linked too dont even have the widget on their site.
I put the widget on my site, but so far I have not seen it installed on ANY of the sites linked from the widget displaying on ScreenRant.com. This was surprising to say the least, as I assume that to have a link show up, your site MUST have the widget installed…
What gives?
Vic
Just thew it up. My blog is brand new, so hopefully it drives some initial traffic and readers.
I threw it up too, will see how it goes!
Hey Everyone, John Reese here the creator of BlogRush. The reason why you’re seeing some blogs that don’t contain the widget is because we had to see the initial system with public RSS feeds so the widget wouldn’t display blank spaces initially before members started to populate the system. You’ll begin to see those disappear shortly and just be left with member sites. Thanks for the great comments, everyone!
Just what I thought. Income.com – sweet domain btw!
Doesn’t change anything for me, but I would be surprised if it was. Just doesn’t seem very “Shoemoneyish”
Installed it – and came here by clicking on the link on my own widget!
But I gotta ask, given your relationship with Reese, and your post, how come you don’t have it installed here?
Worth to try.. thnx for the tip..
Agreed, no one is going to be able to answer that now though because it is so new.
Its nice but that things is ugly.. they should get some more options..
I didn’t include the video because there wasn’t clear usage rights defined and when I wrote my in depth review John was most definitely asleep after a 40 – 50 hour session before launch.
If you had clicked through one of the links on my review you would however have seen the video on John’s landing page.
The script is new, and has thousands of new sites signing up. It might take 24-48 hours to realize what kind of blog you own… hopefully that is the case.
Wow – there’s a lot of buzz on this thing already – I’ve signed up already works quite nicely so far…
I was wondering how this would stand out against technorati, SU, DIgg, and othe rbuttons then I saw the size. I think the large size will get attention. I’m interested in hearing how this works out for others.
Cool plugin just added in my blog , hope i will get some traffic thru this links.
From what I can see – the people who are going to benefit most from this plugin are those who get heaps of traffic already.
I referring more to the traffic exchange aspect, not the linking aspect (which blogrush seems to have sidestepped).
I think this widget would be much better off going by clicks instead of impressions.
I guess the keywords “artificial” is the traffic from blogrush artificial? currently no but id email google just to be safe, I dont really care as their is no adsense on my blog.
Joined the rush last night and things have been going great.
Joined the rush last night.
I think this is more about targetting the audience than anything else. When I want to read blogs about Costa Rica for example, I find one in Google, read a little and then normally go back to Google to find some more. It’s a lot better when you have similar blogs displayed on the post itself and benefit from being the one referring readers to the other blogs.
Hopefully the first change will be to make it able to blend in better, most of my blogs color schemes make that thing stand out like a sore thumb.
should be interesting I am going to keep an eye on this
I’ve started my thread on DigitalPoint to grow up a network of referrals!
unless you want an infraction i wouldnt use referall links on dp.
Just came to your site after I clicked on the widget! It works!
40 uniques…. not bad!
Yeah you and 90 other people
Interesting angle, maybe they will look at this (or already have).
Still doesn’t look too bad for a first effort, and I’ve seen worse (MyBlogBlog).
I found your post on MY BlogRush widget and clicked through. How ironic is that! Great social networking tool – I love it.
Okay done. I just have it updated on my blog too
Ok in the DP sig, not stuck in the middle of a post.
Already telling my authors!
Just added it to my site using your referral Shoe. Let’s see what happens!
I’m in – it’s a cool concept, and really simple
i forgot to say;
“Are you really not smart enough to make up your own mind about a product?” you are a genious and this sentence is the proof
great tool. its up on my site.
The targeting doesn’t seem to work. I tried inputing some keywords that i want to block but It seems like it’s just ignoring them
I just dont like this. It’s way over rated, it’s everywhere on every SEO blog. And what you do is show 4 titles from other blogs, in exchange of getting one of your articles title listed somewhere else.
Yea it would be a great thing and help both sides out a lot.
Once again John Reese shows that he is one of the true visionaries of the Internet.
I set this up just once and can load all of my sites and blogs, etc.
Damn! this is good stuff
Kudos to John Reese for coming up with this idea. This has great potential to take off big time.
Thanks for sharing the video, Shoe.
Wow you read your comments… Went back and read your post. Definitely more informative… I am hoping the video gets on youtube so I can embed in websites…
Wow that looks pretty awesome!
Well I’ll be darned, this seems great! I’m signing up tonight via ur referral link, Shoe
Yea, i am rather confused about how the numbers work.. if the share is 1:1 and they display 5 results… theres a huge .. surplus of available content here..
Are they planning to have a pay model to fund this? If everyone is sharing 1:1, then the surplus number doesnt make sense at all..
I don’t really mind the 5 links part, but its the.. missing 80% of the blogs in 1:1 trade that I am concerned about…
I doubt you can say ‘oh show it once and we will show your articles 5 times’ which is how the numbers work out.. but it doesnt appear to be that way.
is there some marketing thing going on here?
Actually, is it some sort of pyramid scheme for the extra impressions? I see a lot of ‘sign up under me’ type things.. I guess i should look into it further.
It’s been 24 hours now since I installed the widget and I’ve seen my traffic go up quite a bit. I’m impressed.
I’m definitely trying this
This is great! I cant wait to try it out and see what kind of traffic it brings in.
Well how many real visitors you get with exposure?
Definitely a great concept. A friend of mine would be very interested in this. Thanks.
ill be on this shortly
great and inovative system. no longer time will be populer.
great and inovative system. no longer will be popular.
Very good job
Congrulations John Reese.
My blogrush stat is Up!
I received more with my referral Network.
Credits Earned Last 30 Days: 6,304
From Your Traffic: 2,906
From Your Referral Network: 3,398
That would be a great way to bring in visitors, thanks. I’ll be checking it out.
it wont work for bloggers. this is not something that will get you tons of traffic. why? read here ……
For every one display of the widget (which ultimately results in 5 links being displayed) you get one exposure of your blog post on the network – on other blogger member website widgets. This sounds fair, but if you look deep into things you will realize theirs a defect. I will come to that later. But irst another important trick thats going to work like viral marketing on steroids for BlogRush…
For every blogger you refer – when they sign up by clicking on the BlogRush logo at the bottom of the widget, you benefit. For every direct referral you also will get one free link exposure everytime your referral displays the widget. If this referral refers another member – you get the same benefit again… gaining one more exposure for a two level deep referral. And so on … 10 levels deep.
This trick is absolutely fantastic, because it will cause bloggers to start promoting this new exchange service to fellow bloggers immediately in hope of getting referral bloggers before others snap them. Bloggers can see the potential of the 10 level deep credit system. It can really balloon to a large amount of free link exposure. Which *could* result in traffic.
This is where I tend to differ. Blogrush is claiming that – bloggers should sign up right away to get a huge rush and volume of traffic to their sites in a short span of time. There is however 2 issues here.
The first one is that – if this is a 1:1 exchange network, and BlogRush is displaying only 5 ads inside the widget – then they are creating an excess of 4 ads per display – which they can then distribute to the referring members. So, the excess credit of 4 ads can help them – BUT only 4 levels deep. As the system grows and referral lelvels start to get deep and aproach 10 levels of depth – how will BlogRush maintain the 1:1 ratio? The answer is – that well, now all members will have referrals of 10 levels deep. So there will always be member whose widgets display 5 expousres, and get one credit exposure in return and therefore create an excess of 4 credits for the system. This will help BlogRush.
And if it doesnt, and the excess exposures being created are geting close to zero – they can always simply increase the widget size or make it scrolling and display 10 links!! This will immediately create a larger excess for BlogRush on every widet exposure. Super!
Super for BlogRush, but bad for members.
I can already see a very very very low CTR on this network. Although the links displayed are in your category and may match your sites content – the CTR is going to be extremely low. A standard ad on yor blog post probably has a CTR of half to one-and-half percentage. This widget firstly may not be placed by bloggers on the top of their sidebar / page – and will probably be tucked away at the side bottom – is my guess. My guess is that the CTR for this widget will probably be around 0.1% ( or one-tenth of one percent. ). Now, if your blog post title appears with 5 others – your CTR will be further reduced by a factor of 5 or 20% of 0.1% which is 0.02% which is 2 clicks out of 10,000 page views or 1 click every 5000 page views!! Now, what kind of rush of traffic is that?
And, if BlogRush decides to increase the number of Blog Links inside their widget tomorrow (to compensate for excess credits being given to members for referrals) – then you can be assured that the paltry traffic and CTR will get even worse.
Nice try BlogRush. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. This is just a passing fad.
I dont like these “Exachange systems” I think it takes traffic away…
thanks for the tip
BlogRush still has tons of issues to iron out, including how to accurately judge blogs for inclusion in their network. In our case, they got it completely wrong.
Commenter, Vishal, (above) has it right too in pointing out that the amount of referral traffic (CTR) that you get will be poor or possibly even non-existent.
Obviously, they’ve got a tool that is attractive to many bloggers for the promise of additional traffic that it could bring for free, and you’ve got to give them credit for building and hyping such a system.
BlogRush still has tons of issues to iron out, including how to accurately judge blogs for inclusion in their network. In our case, they got it completely wrong. (Click my name for our write-up.)
Commenter, Vishal, (above) has it right too in pointing out that the amount of referral traffic (CTR) that you get will be poor or possibly even non-existent.
Obviously, they’ve got a tool that is attractive to many bloggers for the promise of additional traffic that it could bring for free, and you’ve got to give them credit for building and hyping such a system.