Tenacious Creations

  A month ago I came across Blog Rush. Blog Rush describes itself as a cooperative syndication network. Basically what this means is it is a network of bloggers who run this widget on their sites. Every time the blog rush widget is loaded it has five headlines from other sites, that if clicked open a new browser window with that syndicated site in it. You get a credit for each time this widget loads on your page (as well as bonus credits - more on that later). This credit in turn allows for one of your head lines to be syndicated in the widget on someone else’s page.

 I thought this sounded like a great idea, almost to good to be true. I kept thinking to myself whats the catch? How does Blog Rush benefit from this? Surely they are not going to do this for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

 Well the catch is that every once in a while they plan to throw a paid advertisers link in with the 5 links on their widget (by there math 1 link out of the 5 will be a paid link). But hey, nothing in life is free so I guess it is a minor trade off. Still I wasn’t quite convinced so I decided to do some independent research on Blog Rush.

 Well my google search turned up everything from Blog Rush being a scam to cautious optimism. While it is true Blog Rush kind of works like a pyramid system if you refer people to it. (You’ll notice all my Links to Blog Rush have my referral code on them) They are still interested in providing traffic to smaller sites so they’ll keep the widget there. They have a thing called bonus credits, for example this month I got 21,000 credits from my traffic and 12,000 bonus credits. They don’t say how they determine how much bonus credits you get. But it is designed to provide low traffic sites with some traffic.(my site would qualify here I would think)

 Now I have no affiliates under my account, so I am not generating any credits from my affiliates traffic. But their affiliate program does seem to be fair to all the participants. If your interested in becoming one of my affiliates click here.

 Now to the real question. Does it work to generate traffic? Well although when I look at my Blog Rush stats page it is a little bit disappointing at first impression it is working. Out of the 23,073 head lines Blog Rush has syndicated for me I have got 6 readers. Now 6 out of 23,073 doesn’t really seem like a lot. But that is just over a 2.6% click through. Not too shabby really.

 Look at it as buying ad links. If I were to buy 1 million ad links and from that 2.6% clicked the link and came to my site that would be 26,000 readers. That’s a higher click through rate then I get on some of the advertising on this site.

 So would I recommend Blog Rush? I would have to save over all yes it is a good system but it does have a few problems.

1. After I post a new article, it takes almost a day before it appears on my Blog Rush syndicated feeds. If I post multiple articles close together Blog Rush often loses some. Come on Blog Rush developers get this fixed!
2. Blog Rush states that they screen the sites before they are allowed to participate. They must meet Blog Rushes standards. At one point I heard they were paying people to manually review sites. Well sorry Blog Rush if I understand your terms correctly you have let a few slip through.
3. Although not really a problem - more of a suggestion. It would sure be nice if I could control the percentage of my credits that goes to each of my syndicated posts.

 This would be pretty biased if I didn’t also state some good points about Blog Rush as well. So the shinny side of Blog Rush is:

1. Excellent support to help you get their widget install on your word press site. They have support videos that clearly out line what you have to do. Their videos also clearly describe how Blog Rush works. Good job Blog Rush, you have set a great standard in providing installation support.
2. An unexpected bonus of Blog Rush is that while checking my own page I found some sites sydicated that really appealed to me. Now subscribe to their feeds and I don’t think I would of come across them with out Blog Rush.
3. Because Blog Rush uses head lines it has forced me to give greater thought to my posts titles.

 If you are just starting a blog or just want to get some more traffic to your blog sign up and give Blog Rush a try. All you have to loose is some space from your blog page.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!