I decided to give John Reese's new Blogrush widget a try here at NPT and on my Roamsters.com travel blog this morning.
The picture to the left shows how the widget is supposed to display on your site. However, just a few minutes after I installed it, the display was replaced with text that read, “We are currently experiencing some technical issues and the site will be back online shortly. Please come back in a few minutes“.
HUH?
That strikes me as really odd text to use in a placeholder on someone else's site. MY site IS online, my visitors are already here, so why would I want to show text that reads ‘come back in a few minutes'?
Wouldn't it make more sense to display nothing at all than an error message?
Anyway, I trust that John will get the technical difficulties sorted out quickly and Blogrush widgets will soon be displayed all over the net… or at least on Internet marketer's blogs.
So, what's Blogrush?
BlogRush is a free blog syndication service intended to help bloggers increase traffic to their blogs. When you sign up for the service, place the widget on your site, you earn credits based on the number of impressions of the widget as well as the number of referrals you send. In return, your latest blog post titles are distributed on related blogs also using the Blogrush widget.
All well and good in theory – but as of now, you can't see your stats. When I clicked ‘Reports' within the Blogrush interface, I saw “Under Construction – We're hard at work creating some cool custom reporting features for you! Please check back soon.”
I was surprised to say the least. Coming from an uber Internet Marketer / uber affiliate, I would have expected John to have everything solidly in place prior to launch.
Anyway, let's just say that the jury is out on Blogrush for now. I may leave the widget up on Roamsters for a day – but I really really hate to waste good traffic.
Actually I’ve had BlogRush up on my site for about a month now and haven’t had any problems until today, when I tried to log on to see my account and it refused to accept any of my login information. I wrote customer service for help.
Didn’t realize you had actually been injured in that accident Ros. sorry to hear it glad you are on the mend, take it easy.The computer is not compatible with an aching body I know I was in a car accident some time ago ,(also not my fault):). Interesting comments re Blogrush.
rgds.
Patricia.
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/
Hi Ros, Glad your back safe, PLEASE check out my NEW website and let
me know what you think, LOVE always to hear from you, PETE…..
I know that everyone is going to shout
“Have you been hiding under a stone for the last few months”
But Widgets seem to have appeared from nowhere…. I have had my nose to the grindstone on launching several different web projects inthe last few weeks… but did i miss something.
What I really need is one of your excelent ‘bring me up to speed’ articles on ‘what’ widgets are, ‘why’ they are important and what sites will benefit most from them.
I hope you don’t think … “who is this guy who has his head inthe sand”… i am trying to keep up to speed but don’t seem to be running fast enough.
Thanks again for all your crafted emails and newsletters, as always appreciated and respected.
Regards
Brian Cotsen
The Website Coach
First, may your healing be fast and surprising in it’s speed.
Thank you for pointing out their rather interesting way of announcing to their (and our) readers that they are off line. I hope you made them aware of that as well.
It sounds and looks ingenious. Stephen Pierce, Mike Filsaime and other marketers are embracing it (for now). Me too, but, thanks to you, I’ll keep a close eye on it!
Healing wishes to you and all who read this,
Tom Justin (.com) : )
Hi
About BlogRush….I haven’t had a problem with it inside its stats reporting area, and as a small blog owner, I have been getting traffic from it. Like anyone…will give it a few days and see what transpires.
And Rosalind…glad you are on the mend! Take care.
I’ve been monitoring Blogrush all day and it’s been down a few times. However It does seem to generate (or should that be divert) traffic. I set up a new blog and created some posts. It already has managed to over 30 unique visitors in a few hours.
Hi Rosalind – Hope you have recovered from your crash. I’m surprised that you’re trying Blogrush out. But, I suppose it is just for a day. I wrote one of the few negative reviews on Blogrush this week, and I won’t be giving it any traffic at all.
And I have nothing against John. In fact I was keenly waiting for his new Adwords product to come out.
I just feel it is there to benefit the minority, and they get enough traffic without vacuuming it all in from everyone else.
By the way, did Joel remember to let you know about that guy with the McAfee reviews? I hope they ban him. Joel said he thinks he is probably doing it to try to get backlinks. He can’t possibly have reviewed the thousands of sites he claims to have reviewed.