Sorry Mr. Reese, thumbs down on Blogrush.
November 16, 2007
Let me start this post off by saying that I have a lot of respect for John Reese. He's a true pioneer in the world of internet marketing, and he's been very successful because of his great ideas.
Okay, that's out of the way. Now let's talk about Blogrush.
Blogrush is simply a traffic exchange system that is dedicated only to blogs. You add your blog into their network, select its category, and drop some JavaScript on your blog. Blogrush pulls the RSS feed from your blog, your blog posts are shown on other blogs with similar content, and you show related content from some of those blogs on yours. The idea is that you will be exchanging traffic from readers who are interested in the same topics.
Great concept, right?
So I read a few good things about it, and I like I said, I respect John Reese, so I signed up and put the Blogrush code on this blog. I figured I'd give it two weeks (14 days) and see what kind of results I got. If the results were good enough, I'd keep it on the site.
You see, I've been having tremendous success with my own traffic exchange service, RealTrafficExchange.com. So I figured if Blogrush did at least that well, and I kept the two traffic-sharing blocks side-by-side, I'd really profit from it.
Unfortunately, that's not what happened at all. Here's a snapshot of the credits I've earned over the last 14 days (it says 30 days, but I've only had the code on here for 14):
Not too shabby, 'eh? 14,943 credits in 14 days. That's about 1,000 visitors a day who saw the Blogrush ads. One thing that surprised me, though, is that Blogrush doesn't seem to tell you how many clicks you've generated, so I have no idea what my click-through rate is.
Okay, so how many new visitors did I get in return for the almost 15,000 views I gave to Blogrush? Here's the snapshot:
Yes, that's right, 20. A whopping twenty visitors over 14 days. I'm sorry, but my blog real-estate is worth a lot more than that.
Meanwhile, I've earned 12,744 visitors from my RealTrafficExchange.com service in the last six months. That's more than 2,000 unique visitors per month, or 1,000 every 14 days (compared to the 20 I got from Blogrush).
So I've removed the Blogrush code from this blog. I'll be watching for news on Blogrush, though, because I find it hard to believe that a large-scale project operated by John Reese will fail. Time will tell.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
Comments
81 Responses to “Sorry Mr. Reese, thumbs down on Blogrush.”
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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I haven't tracked it carefully, but my impression is that Blog Rush benefits the big guys. It only makes sense: they get more traffic, so they get more exposures, so they get more traffic back. So, in other words, we're all advertising for the already high traffic sites.
First time when i saw blogrush ads full in my mailbox, i guess its must be something special from John Reese that many people willing to promote Blogrush to gain credit.However its not look like what it should be, trafic come from blogrush was very teribble and i will took it at my blog for another 1 month to see any improvement.
Jonathan,
Thanks for the candid review. I've actually been using RTE and have seen the same results that you're describing when comparing RTE to BlogRush.
Thanks for putting together this quick review with the snapshots for proof. I was wondering if anyone else was seeing what I was. Glad i'm not alone.
I do have a lot of faith in John Reese though, and I decided not to pull the plug quite yet on the widget on my blog. I'll be watching it closely though.
Mike
Hi Jonathan,
I've really not gone into Blogrush in any real depth so I've only been going by other people's results. I didn't get excited like many other people, but one thing I will say about you is that whatever you seem to produce works!! I'm off to check out your software.
Best,
Trish Jones
I took the blogrush off my blog also. I did not think, looking at my traffic that it was producing anything of value. This was a while ago. I did not use such a system as you did, but looking at stats, it was a no go.
steve
Blogrush is to collect your web traffic details and store as data collection. Nothing is totally free lol
Hi!
I just want to check in real quick and share my opinion.
Honestly, the ONLY reason why I still keep Blogrush on my site is because I don't 'fully understand' how it works. So I thought to myself,"Why not keep it there until I trully know the in and out of this stuff?"
Why not indeed…
Put Reese reputation aside. If Blogrush delivers it's promises (which I think is more than just numbers) I want to see it firsthand.
I never got my eyes of it. Not a second…
My results are similar to yours. Thanks for helping me decide to remove it.
I agree wholeheartedly. BlogRush did NOTHING for any of my 80+ blogs. I've pulled the widget off of half of mine and seen no difference in the ones WITH it versus the ones without it. Reese usually has a back end product in mind when he does something like this… and I'm sure this time is no exception, he just hasn't let the cat out of the bag yet… but I'm sure it's coming soon. For me… BlogRush gets TWO THUMBS DOWN! I'll be taking the wideget off the rest of my blogs in a few days… and notifying BlogRush that THEY don't meet my strict quality standards. Hogwash over the supposed 20,000 blogs they cancelled early on. They could cancel all of mine and it would be no skin off my back. Glad to see that others are seeing what I'm not seeing as well.
I guess it depends what you want from Blogrush. My site is more of a resource site than making cash though I will recommend products if they are good.
Blogrush has been throwing up some interesting posts which my readers will find of use. I guess the jury is still out but I am not prepared to ditch it just yet.
J Regan
You didn't use real stats, you might find a few more visitors shown in Analytics
It still relates to a 0.66 CTR for the widget.
You should also maybe use one of the many optimization plugins that allows you to select which story is shown.
From what I can see, if I took the time to optimize for Blogrush, I could see over a 1% CTR for my headlines. Whilst I am not currently doing that, I will do that as my referral credits start being allocated.
What is the real CTR on your exchange when people place the code in an obscure position?
It seems to me you are trying to leverage off the negativity currently with BlogRush but not giving a clear picture of your alternative.
If you look at it subjectively, it is rare for an adsense unit in the sidebar of a blog to get more than a 2% CTR and people spending money on clicks optimize their titles.
Thaks Jonathan,
Hasn't made a lot of difference to me either, but I'll give it another couple of weeks.
Andy:
I get a 6.34% CTR from RealTrafficExchange in the same position. Sorry, but Blogrush just doesn't convert for me (and, by the comments, apparently for a lot of other people).
I too noticed same trends Jonathan and have decided to not use and will try the service you suggest.
Ok, I did a review on someone else's blog about blogrush. At the time I put the script on my blog I also put another item. What I said was I wasn't sure that it was blogrush or the other item that brought more visitors to my site. However, I received a letter from John Reese saying that they were going to take the blogrush off my site.
Well, let's just say that I am not going to allow anyone to tell me where to put stuff on my blog.
AND, I really don't care who it is.
I look at it this way; You(John Reese) help me by giving me something to put on my blog so I can help you, and it should be left at that!!!!
Marsha Anderson
Hi,
I have also removed it from most of my blogs. I used to get like 2-3 visitors only.
PG
Jonathan -
Do you have any suggestions for programs or guru's that have worth while products on list building? Perhaps you have other suggestions on how to build opt-in lists…
Thanks.
Dave
At least everybody here got a chance to find out! I put the code on my PR3 site as soon as it hit cyber space. I read that there was some trouble with it being abused and that some blogs would be removed. Not worried, its got google ads on it and Kontera just approved it so I should be OK with BlogRush. Nope, I got the chop - glad to see that it doesn't look like I missed much…
Phill.
Thanks for the review Jon.
Glad it's not just me who was getting rubbish results!!
I'm going to leave the widget on my blog a little while longer, until I spend time on more productive ways to bring in traffic.
Peter
Hi Jonathan -
I've had BlogRush since it first became available. I have less traffic from it than you but I haven't removed it yet. You got traffic that may not of known of you without it and that's a good thing. If they liked what they saw you may keep them as readers and if you're lucky future customers. If you know for sure those same readers would have found you any other way I see you point.
I have also found about a dozen good blogs I like to read through BlogRush. I don't have it on my IM blogs and won't unless a miracle happens and it starts to show some improvement on the one blog I set it up on.
After they made the cut on what they said were not quality blogs my traffic slowed. I have also been to many blogs that were dropped and couldn't see why. On top of that 2 days ago I visited about 24 BlogRush approved quality blogs and at least 6 were total junk.
People seem to be dropping out of BlogRush at record speed so I imagine it won't be long before I go to my blog and the BlogRush widget will have vanished from my sidebar. It's time I started looking at other options any way so I think I'll check out your recommendation Jonathan.
Looks as if I'll never get to find out about BlogRush, and I had a problem entering data to get mine (it kept stick an "http://" in front of my "feed://" thus rending the URL no good), so I wrote to support. After a week with no answer, I wrote again asking that support please answer my previous support request. Still no answer. I don't deal with companies to whom customers are meaningless, so they can cram their widget. Moreover, in the meantime, I've since figgered out that the widgets must certainly only come with blue links (either that or every sincgle user is incapable of customizing the things), and I wouldn't use the widget unless I have full control of ALL the colors anyway, as I'm not sticking an ugly wart on my site which doesn't match 100% with everything else. Looks as if I'm not missing anything anyway.
@marsha: I gather there's no time to answer support questions because they're too busy reading blog posts, checking to see whether people might be saying unflattering things about BlogRush!
Yeah, never messed with it.
I repsect John Reese, but this idea just never grabbed me and I never messed with it.
Sorry for your wasted time and online real estate, Jon.
P.S. Glad to see the new picture of you on the blog! Looking sharp!
Jonathan,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and introducing me to this RealTrafficExchange.com exchange program. I'll be sure to try it. Your results are inspirational.
I'm a huge fan of John Reese. After watching his videos I went from $3-4k per month to doubling and tripling that. So I really respect and value his opinions, recommendations and products. I'm really trying to be patient with blogrush because I've seen John deliver before. So I still have hope things will get better in terms of that program. But with that said, I will explore the service you mentioned in your post. It doesn't mean I can't get some traffic while John works on his program. But your assessment is very true about the program so far. Time will tell if he really can improve it. It very troubling to see all those credits we're getting and such little number of clicks. The new enhancements in terms of tightening up the categories helped a little but not much. So I really hope it all gets better very soon.
Eddy Salomon
WorkAtHomeNoScams.com
Blog Rush even sounds like something you do not want on your skin after you ate something bad. Skin Rush. Jonh Reese may have been someone in the prehistoric time of the Internet but not so now and I lost respect for the guy.
I had BlogRush on my new blog for a while and then I get an email from John Reese and Co., that my Blog is not good enough for his BlogRush and it is nothing personal. Well Mr. “Rush” That Blog was done by Russell Bunson and makes me money. Who do You think you are John Reese? Google? To try to regulate my own blog with a piece of Java script. I Do Not Want it. Thank you.
One year ago I get an email from John Reese telling me he and a bunch of other jerks will go to visit China to source products and he goes on to offer me a spot on his team for a ridiculously high price. First of all, I lived in China for 6 years, speak the language and own businesses there. I tried to explain him that he should be paying me to be part of his new venture but as it is always with these big “Gurus” there is a one way communication only. All they want is have you on their list part you from your cash and they are not interested in what your real dreams and aspirations are.
Finally, there are a lot more new entrepreneurs out there to follow with brighter and better ideas the John Reese, one of them owns this Blog. Jonathan Leger is a name that shines like a star while others part of the old boys club are on the way out.
Also I believe that Jon Reese has gotten way too Arrogant lately. His forum is not accepting comments being “locked” but you can register. Why not just close it down and place 404 error on it. Or better forward it to your BlogRush to see what results you get and then keep them to yourself because few would want to use it anyways once they see the results.
Right On Marsha
Notice how they collect your email and name when you opt into Blogrush. Just imagine how many he would have added to his list. Thats all they really want. Later they can pitch related products to you for all your life, right
Jon V Jon
Well done Jonathan, that took guts to say!!!
I am more impressed with the fact that from ALL you do you have "The People" at heart all the time. As another comment made earlier everything you work on seems to work for the little guy which I personally think is "TOP NOTCH" for you Jonathan.
Stats, stats stats and lots of testing will robotically show any system to be either a success or a failure. If the added widget does not produce even a small respectable amount of the expected result within a short time frame…then DITCH it! We know this from newpaper advertising. Don't waste your hard earned money on things that don't produce results.
I think from the overall opinions in this comment section of your blog that it looks like John Reese has tried something which is set to fail. Nobodys perfect. This policing policy of his, has also angered quite a few people as they have had their blogs rejected from his Blogrush system.
These are again "little guys" trying to succeed online and cetainly don't need to be told they are not quality enough for the Blogrush system.
I personally, do not like to be told what to do and when to do it by anyone, we are all individuals and deserve to have the blogs we decide to have.
Keep up the good work with , RealTraffic Exchange, 3WayLinks.net, and your latest venture…
Regards and God Bless
Steve Shapiro.
I just did a post about this yesterday also. What is even more interesting is that their graph shows worse results as I have had more pageviews of the widget.
It seemed to work better before they tried to improve it. Not that it was great before.
It can't possibly work without changes.
Jon,
Thanks for confirming that I wasn't the only one losing traffic for virtually nothing in return.
I have also removed BR from my blogs…
Ken
I completely agree. Blog Rush did nothing for my blog. Then they removed me from their system because I didn't meet "their" standards. Not a very good system when they can pick and choose participants at their own will. I'm sure they didn't remove the "Big Boy Gurus". Just another scheme for the Big Guys leaving the smaller ones out as usual.
Thanks,
Keith
Jonathan,
Very well spoken. I am one of those little guys trying to get ahead. I was also terminated from BlogRush and told that I did not meet their quality standards. I agree with all of the statements that everyone has made. How are we supposed to learn and experience if we just get terminated because we do not meet their expectations? Your statistical data has once again proved that the system was not that good to begin with which gives me some peace of mind.
Ambrose Duperon
Jon, I really appreciate and respect your take on BlogRush. Too often we accept things from "respected" names without doing any due diligence on the product. You saved a lot of us some time and effort that could be applied elsewhere with better results.
Jonathan,
Nice study once again. I too believe that someone of John's caliber will improve the results. Time will tell.
Is that really you in the new pic?
Ted
Ted:
Yes, that's really me. Is it that bad?
This has really made my day. I have always respected John Reese, so when BlogRush came out and he appeared to want to help me succeed, I jumped on it.
Imagine how I felt when he told me that I didn't measure up. Well my blog, which I feel is an extension of me.
But then I realize that I was helping him as well. Marsha you are so correct, I will not be dedicated to by John Reese or Google. I may not have the millions that he has but I have my peace of mind. I also have the love of God in my heart and sleep great at night.
The little guy is what he needs to survive, so if we bond together and give BlogRush the boot, he will get the idea.
Thank you Jon for the lesson.
Jon
I will check out RTE, you have failed me yet
That took {snip: ahem, gumption} - Jonathan, keep up the down-to-earth no-crap blogging!
- D
I used Blogrush on a few of my blogs and wasn't impressed either. I'll have to check into your Real Traffic Exchange. I've been very pleased with your other products and services Jon.
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I have the blogrush widget on my blog, and I didn't check my stats yet… Because I've lost my password!
Anyway, I am waiting… John is always doing good stuff.
Franck.
The Body Guard Marketer.
Hey Jon, I have a couple of questions about your niche site case study.
First, is it really feasible to find dozens of niches that are capable of bringing in $3 a day? From what I saw in your video, the "rowing machine" niche appeared to be quite an anomaly, as far as having really great numbers, but I haven't used Niche Inspector myself, so I don't know how rare that really is.
Secondly, I'm curious as to the sustainability of niche sites like the one you created. Can you expect it to plateau at some point, and keep earning $3 or more a day indefinitely, or is it something that peaks after a few months and then declines over time?
I'm not finding a great click through rate either, some people are leaving, take off the widget and then because they offer the bonus impressions to people without visitors, those blogs are getting click-throughs still too.
Hi Jonathan,
I agree with you. I think MLM idea is great - for list owners who get other webmasters signed up, but even with this and with the relative targeting which are a great idea together, I'd want control over what sites appear on my site and whether there are ads I don't get paid when someone clicks on them…
Much rather spend some days here and there doing web2.0 magic to get tons of traffic then risk losing my visitors!
CurlyGirly
Let me Custom Peel Your Ads!
I added the widget to three of my blogs. I consider all three to be works of art! Just kidding. But I do spend time on all three and consider the content to be unique and of quality.
Apparently John and his mini-me's did not think so. Out of the three only 1 made the grade. But shortly after that all three of these blogs made a PR4 and do ok with traffic.
I haven't removed the widget on the third blog yet but I plan too. I honestly believe that this (allowing the widget to be placed everywhere and then once he got enough exposure and promotion then add quality to the mix) was his plan to generate the hype. Not a bad idea but I do not regard him on the same level as I once did.
Greg
Interesting. I just added Blog Rush to my blog. I may have to take it back down after reading this.
Thanks John for an insightful report, as usual.
I added 2 blogs to blogrush, one got accepted and the other got rejected.
I will be removing the widget from both blogs in the next few minutes : - )
Jonathan, on this blog your advertising system is the first content people see above the fold. I have niche sites that generate 30% to 100% CTR in Adsense doing that.
When people stick Blogrush in the sidebar, maybe lower down the page, you are not going to get the same CTR, though obviously disguising it as content is going to generate slightly more clicks, but they are possibly less targeted.
If someone was paying a few dollars CPM for the display of their adverts, I am sure they would spend more time on their titles, and have people land on a landing page that converts into subscribers.
You know marketers can be their own worst enemy. The more they talk about how bad something is, and how poor the quality of the sites are that are shown on Blogrush, the less likely people will click on them. It is a vicious circle.
That is exasperated by people they respect reporting results initially blowing possible returns out of all proportion, and then by being upset that they haven't achieved the elevated levels of performance previously suggested.
I didn't expect more than a 1% CTR on any post title, and that is what I told my readers to expect, especially if they are not optimizing performance.
A topical title with a little controversy will gain 0.3 to 0.5% CTR - and I am sure as with any advertising it is possible to boost that to 1%.
That is actually quite a useful return if you target that traffic to a sales funnel, especially if you are doing some traffic arbitrage between social media and a more targeted audience.
There is also the problem that many of the people who added Blogrush are marketers who generally don't link out to other bloggers, they are insular and not looking to build bridges.
I just clicked 4 of your ads, and those adverts didn't lead to any real content. Wouldn't I be better off using my own affiliate links in those positions rather than someone else's?
Blogrush isn't perfect by any means, but I would have expected you to be a lot more clinical in comparison.
Do some heatmap tests and see how many people click on that calendar in the sidebar, that would be a realistic place to place Blogrush.
I would say most bloggers would benefit more from having subscription information where you have placed your network ads than advertising or possibly a title followed by a nice picture.
To be honest, I have been disappointed with the Blogrush results I have seen so far. Blogrush has been put on the back burner but not totally ruled out yet.
Thanks for yet another great study Jonathan.
Hi Jonathan:
I am a little shocked about your BR comment. And of course no doubt at all because you have demonstrated to be a very savvy creator and marketer. Let's hope things get better soon.
Jesus Moreno
Andy:
My RTE ads, in the same exact spot as the Blogrush ads, get 6%+ CTR. If Blogrush can't deliver relevant enough ads to generate even a 1% CTR, it's not profitable enough to take up space on my blog in my opinion.
Jon, thanks for the review. I hadn't heard about Blogrush before your review. You know, I've never profited from a John Reese product of any kind.
What a waste of valuable blog space!
Traffic exchanges are just a joke anyway and always give
you how much traffic they generate, not how worthless the
traffic is.
I think people need to stop looking at over-bloated traffic
stats and start looking at their bank balances instead.
Stop chasing the dream of free traffic and actually learn
how to market correctly offline as well as online.
Phil:
I must disagree with you a bit in regards to traffic exchanges. Done correctly, they can result in mututal traffic growth for all parties involved. The problem is that so few of the exchanges "do it right". I've made many, many sales from my RTE traffic.
Hi Jon,
I'm in the same boat as you and everyone else. The CTR is very low. Perhaps I will try your RTE instead and compare it to blogrush. Always looking for more ways to ge traffic to my sites, not only my blogs. Gotta ive it to John Reese fr trying so hard though.
Cheers,
Same here! To me, BR is just a huge load of BS (excuse me)!
I too had a lot of respect for the great John Reese. Not any more!
This is exactly the thing I would do - compare BR to RTE. So many of us are clueless and in the dark. We NEED this type of information, need it coming from an impartial authority, a guru, or at least someone who knows what he's talking about. Thanks, Jon!
Okay, you compared it to your own RTE, but you did it with cold stats and figures. Right on!
In fact, even before the launch, I was wondering to myself how BR will measure up with Jonathan's RTE. And I didn't have a good feeling about it.
There is simply NO comparison! Not even apples to oranges, more like night and day or black and white.
Even though one is a free service and the other a paid one. But giving a free service doesn't mean you can treat your members like trash, bully them into doing what benefits only you, and to hell with their concerns.
I don't believe for a moment it 'benefits' blogs. Virtual real estate is virtual real estate. YOUR virtual real estate. Use it well and it should, it must, benefit you. It should not take away traffic from you. Which is the end result of having BR on your blog.
Talk of differences in CTR and that it needs to be given time are hogwash. If AdSense and RTE can bring almost instant results, why can't BR do this simple thing? Because it was junk to begin with. Well, junk for us, the masses.
I tend to agree that the whole exercise was probably to build a massive mailing list for JR and to capitalise on the publicity for HIS benefit. He is about to launch Traffic Secrets 2. This is just my opinion and I could be wrong, but he's probably figuring that since BlogRush failed for so many, it would be a cinch to sell millions of dollars worth of TS2 to those same poor suckers, and set some very nice sales records at the same time.
Recognise a good, quality product for what it is.
Even though I am not participating in RTE, one can see it should work well, the way it is set up and managed, and the way it was thoroughly tested before being launched. The results have been proven and are again proven by this comparison study.
It appears to work well, has been for months, helping each one in the program. It lives up to its promises and the members benefit in traffic. What more can one ask for?
What I would have done differently is bring out this info much, much sooner. Within 2 days of the BR launch, people were taking the widget off their blogs. For all the reasons you stated, and then some.
TEN thumbs down from me!
Keep on telling, Jon!
PS: I prefer the old picture of you.
I am with the majority here. I was very dissappointed with the results. With a space a premium on any blog, we want it filled with content that works
I personally don't think that traffic exchanges are a waste of time or blog space.
If anything, it's obvious that most traffic exchanges are visited by other marketers seeking sales not to buy… but (and that's a big but ;o)
If any of you are interested, you can actually use free or paid traffic exchanges to increase what I call your "trickle traffic".
By no means spend a lot of time setting up or clicking links or whatever, but invest a little quality time establishing some links to your sites get free traffic that will actually improve your Alexa ranking, and in turn will improve your Google ranking.
Every little bit helps and nothing is a waste of time. We could all stand to make better use of our time.
Ciao
I have had had blog rush on my blog and yes I guess it does benefit the bigger guys more… but given the kind of traffic I have as of now I'm still probably going to keep it on my blog, until something else presents itself as a better way to get traffic
Hi there Jon
I have my own problem with the BlogRush system…
I have a problem getting anything about internet marketing to really work. So I joined BlogRush as well…
I added a site - and was rejected. Added another and still it did not receive enough traffic to qualify me for acceptance.
I gave up.
So I just took the opportunity to check out Real Traffic Exchange. The sign up was amazingly fast. I added a clean portal site and would like to see what happens next.
I am not a split tester guru but it would be great to see that this gadget could work for the small guy.
I am rather new in IM and put blog rush on my blogger blog. I admit i am only starting out and my blog is not very professional yet, but blog threw me out with the explanation my blog has not enough quality content. Yes, i agree, blog rush is only for the big gurus and not for a beginner. Pity.
Hi Jonathan,
I am not doubting the traffic flow just the worthiness of the
traffic.
Are there any stats available showing the total traffic
for a certain period of time and how much in sales made for that
traffic. Also showing comparisons of the clickouts of the
Traffic exchange links and affiliate links or other monetization
links in the same ad spaces. This would be interesting to have.
Maybe the way your exchange is done allows for more targeted traffic.
Phil
[…] Jonathan Leger has an interesting post about John Reese's Blogrush: Read it here. […]
Jonathan,
My first reaction when John Reese revealed his 'big new project' was "A Traffic Exchange????" There just wasn't anything about it that got me excited and I couldn't quite figure out what the hype was about.
Then, there was all the drama about people spamming the system. That seemed to be a pretty obvious thing to anticipate and I was surprised when John's emails suggested that they hadn't expected it - he's pretty savvy and when savvy guys talk like they don't know what they are doing, I suspect ulterior motives.
I put the code on one of my blogs and saw a little traffic here and there, but certainly nothing you could call a rush. Since then, I've mostly forgotten about it. I honestly can't think of a good reason to spend any time tweaking it. I get better results from a Squidoo lens.
Over the years John Reese has taught me a lot of useful things and his Traffic Secrets course is one of my prized training courses. I'm not prepared to dismiss him over this, but it has dulled my enthusiasm for the roll out of Income.com
I really appreciate the effort you make to back-up your opinions with stats. That is one of the things I learned from John Reese - Test Everything!
Keep up the great work,
Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy!
I too have been a little disappointed with the traffic from BlogRush. At first I thought it seemed to be a great idea but then everything seemed to be coming apart. So far this month I've only had 3 visitors from BR. Not very impressive. There's been more coming from one comment on another blog then what BR has sent me.
After reading this post Jonathan I think I'll take down BlogRush. I had your RTE on my blog but when I changed themes I didn't put it back on for some reason (kicking self in butt). Don't remember what that reason was.
Stumble Upon has really been working for me this month. I surrpassed my previous high for unique visits by almost triple with the help of Stumble Upon. Now I just need to figure out how I can capitalize on that traffic and keep it increasing.
Thanks again for the post.
Jonathan,
Thank you for posting your review for all to see. As you are one of about 3 pro's online that I trust, I won't even have to waste the time to glance at blogrush. However I will be taking a look at RTE. Simply put, your stuff works and all of the bumper stickers in the world could be replaced with one.."happiness is things that work". Also I think you should tell Andy to run his own tests and comparisons, he seems to have an inordinate amount of time to critique your methods for testing.
Keep up the great work!
David
Hi Jon,
I'm a big fan of John Reese as well but Blog Rush has been huge let down for me.
Despite promoting and driving traffic too it, he banned my blog from using blogrush. The thing is, it didn't drive traffic to my blog… So I guess I was better off not having it in the first place.
Cheers,
Carlo Selorio
I put blog rush on my WordPress blog but BlogRush threw me out at the first 'Night of the Long Knives' with a general explanation that covered many reasons but not anything specific that I could figure out. I guess the blog is too commercial within their evaluation system.
I assumed that if it was from John Reese then it must be worth using but never really got the chance to find out.
hi,
I have put the blogrush script on my site and give them some traffic, unfortunatelly, they did not approved my site without any reason. Thus, need to kick it out from my site.
[…] to read that uber tester and multi talented Internet marketer, Jonathan Leger had actually come out completely against BlogRush and stated quite categorically that the program did not deliver the results that he had […]
I think I'll steer clear now. Its worth noting though that sometimes, no matter what the quality of guru, not every idea will be a winner.
Jonathan,
There was a major flaw in your "review" of Blog Rush.
Your blog titles sucked.
Come on man I mean a title like: "Niche Site Case Study Week 6" isn't going to get much of a click through rate from people surfing other blogs. It needs to be more descriptive. So you can't really judge the traffic from Blog Rush based on your above links.
The other thing that I'm trying to test now is… do those clicks yield subscribers or are they just window shoppers. If those few clicks from Blog Rush yield subscribers to my blog or mailing list then the space is worth it.
- Ben Fitts
PS. Of course you don't care because you got a lot of publicity from this and new subscribers to your RealTrafficExchange site!
Ben:
I would concede that if at least some of the comments here said "Sorry, Jon, I'm having good success with BlogRush." So far virtually nobody has had anything positive to say about their traffic results with BR.
Yeh your right Jon, you should break everything down by statistics before you give up your VR..
I absolutely agree with Jon that Blog Rush under-delivers BIG TIME. Getting a few click-throughs from thousands of impressions is a joke.
For the record, I'm very much in favor of trading traffic with other websites within the same niche (traffic trading is not the same as link or article trading).
Traffic trading when done properly can increase traffic to ones site exponentially (particularly when using scripts that track the trades properly). Unfortunately, it is a technique that is in my humble opinion underutilized by niche marketers (probably because they are unaware of the methods / scripts involved).
On another note, I'm quite impressed with all the work Jon has put into the various traffic / link programs. Keep up the good work.
All the best,
Steven
that sounds like an extremely awful conversion rate…it's hard to generate traffic and you should benefit from your time and effort. Didn't realize blogrush was this bad…sadly it may have even taken readers away from your blog and onto "a similar blog". It's like an adsense ad that shows alternatives rather than supplementary reading
Great post. It's good to see so much interest too!
I've been using blogrush for a while. It's not what it should be, not yet anyway. I've just started removing it from all my blogs.
I'll be keeping a close eye on it though. It does have the potential to be something big, and I keep waiting to see the real back end product?
Jonathan's review was a great honest post. And for now I agree. Thanks for the insight.
Sincerely,
John Adams
I've only put it on one blog. I find that it's an easy way to check out related blogs and hop right over and comment. So in that respect, it's at least been a time saver. I'll have to check out your recommended exchange!
Thanks,
Carole
On one of my sites, so far I've displayed the RTE widget 1396 times without a single click on any of the ads. So for that site, I can't even get my ad shown…
I've been rotating which goes first (RTE & Blogrush) on a sidebar.
I may not be getting a lot of traffic from Blogrush, but I do already have some traffic, so at least blogrush is giving me a chance. I have a whopping 9 visits from 1811 impressions of my headlines.
I suppose it might be a better test if the other RTEers in my category had better ads…
Modern:
Your site is in an exceedingly tiny niche, so I wouldn't expect much by way of results from RTE. RTE does much better with more general category sites.
Thanks for giving it a try though.
Jon
I got the same "sorry, your blog doesn't qualify" letter from Reese & Co. The email gave a series of possible reasons why my blog might not have fit their criteria, but not a single specific comment as to why my blog was rejected. The kicker was that I had to wait a month before I could submit my blog again for review. I don't know about you, but I don't have the time to guess what they didn't like, make changes based on that guess, wait a month, dutifully submit my blog for their approval, then repeat the cycle x number of times if they rejected it again. I replied to their email stating that and also stating that while I understand the reasoning behind the review process, I believe it's seriously flawed and they're shooting themselves in the foot by rejecting perfectly valid blogs. Needless to say, there was no response. I don't know that BlogRush was doing anything for me anyway, but even if it was, it would have had to be an awful lot to make it worth jumping through their hoops.
Hi everyone.
I would have to agree on Blogrush not working well at all. Stats differ very greatly from my other statistics, and though I have used it to get backlinking I do think it is on its way out during 2008.
If many others think the same it's going DOWN. Mr. Reese rarely performs poorly, but this is indeed a thumbs down for me also.
Happy New Year.