Goodbye BlogRush

by Ross McKillop on October 31, 2007

Blogging

I’ve been waiting for them to roll out the “version 2″ features. Well, they finally have – so now I can drop the service. Here’s why –

The Stats

From Sept. 16 to date (Oct 31st), the BlogRush widget has sent 156 people to Simplehelp. Those 156 people averaged 1.41 page views per visit (during the same time the site average was 2.00 page views per visit) and spent an average of 47 seconds on the site (vs. the site average of 1 min 52 seconds).

All of that info becomes more significant when I reveal the next set of numbers. I’ve “earned” 585,833 credits – 560,456 by displaying the widget on Simplehelp (my traffic) 25,377 by referrals (my network – which consists of 9 members who signed up via my referral link).

All of that amounts to this – a click-through rate of 0.026%. My “very best” (most successful) BlogRush post was viewed 32 times – after being displayed 82,424 times. And according to BlogRush – that click-through rate is “hot” (see screenshot below). You have GOT to be kidding me.

blogrush dashboard
click to enlarge

So I bid you a not entirely fond farewell BlogRush, your widget will grace my site no longer. Good luck in the future.

ps. I hope the folks @ BlogRush have learned, at the very least – don’t roll out something until it’s ready. I understand you weren’t expecting it to be so popular so fast, but that’s only valid for so long. Promising updates within a certain time frame and repeatedly not delivering does not make for good customer service.

related note: during the time I’ve been using BlogRush, the following sites have sent more traffic than BlogRush – images.google.co.uk, mail.google.com (from my email signature?), images.google.ca and even images.google.com.mx. And that’s not including the ‘real’ traffic referrals like lifehacker, howtogeek, ubuntuforums.org, webupon.com etc.

  • http://www.flightsimx.co.uk Mark Avey

    I can beat that! How about 1 visit from 15,836 impressions?! It’s not worth the real estate it takes up.

    Like you, I’ve been waiting to see what they came up and, like you, it’s now time to say farewell. I shall be removing it from the 3 blogs I’ve been trying it out on.

  • http://mythermos.com Scott

    I have to say you guys hung in there a lot longer than I did as I dropped them weeks ago.

    I was surprised to find that passed their “rigorous site evaluation” even without their widget on my page.

    SB

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  • http://andybeard.eu/ Andy Beard

    I can well understand why you are dropping Blogrush, though I would check your target category, and your real stats.

    I gain a real CTR of between 0.2 and 0.5% on “topical” stories, though some get none at all.

    There are plugins that allow you to have a special RSS feed for Blogrush, abd Blogrush allows you to specify RSS feed.

    With some testing you can probably get the CTR up to 1%

  • http://www.simplehelp.net Ross McKillop

    @Andy Beard:

    My target category is the closest one to the actual content provided on my site, though I did read that additional sub-categories will be added ‘soon’ (which in BlogRush-speak means sometime before 2010). I also of course compared what BlogRush said vs. what Google Analytics said – and they did match. In truth, I’d rather focus on content and other forms of marketing than wait for BR to get it together. The widget uses too much real-estate, and at some point I expect they’ll be accepting advertising or something else (if they plan on profiting) that will make me even less inclined to use it.

    Regardless, thanks for stopping by and commenting! Cheers!

  • http://www.kevinscrate.com/blog Kevin

    I was about to take it down also then they sent the following Email and took it off for me.”We regret to inform you that your BlogRush Account has been made INACTIVE because your blog did not pass our Quality Review criteria.” I guess they beat me to it. Love your site.
    Kevin

  • http://www.simplehelp.net Ross McKillop

    @Kevin:

    Are you serious? I took a look at your site – what on earth caused it to not meet their stupid quality (which is kind of a laugh coming from them) criteria? Is there hidden javascript that I didn’t look at pushing people to viagra ads or something?? Geez..

  • http://www.kevinscrate.com/blog Kevin

    @ Ross
    I have no idea why I didn’t meet their High standards. Maybe its because I only get a few thousand hits a month. I thought like everybody else that it would be a good way to drive traffic to my site, but I only got 9 hits from them. So as the say in the movies Hasta la vista, baby.
    Kevin.

  • http://InternetDuctTape.com engtech

    I finally had to unsubscribe because of all the emails they send out. 1-3 emails a week? Too many.

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  • http://www.sciencetext.com David Bradley

    Yep, it’s off my site…

    db

  • http://yahoo.com PhotoDUde

    Yeah I took it off too, giving too much traffic for peanut clicks , not worth it to me

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  • http://thecomedynet.com Don

    I was just about to put one on one of my sites, because I was watching the exciting video they have. You guys ruined it for me. :)

    Another sound good thing blown to hell.

    I think I will not even waste my time, looking at these stats tell me rush away from blogrush. I get more visitors from off the street by yelling out my website address from my window.

  • http://extremeezine.com/ Brian D. Hawkins

    How ironic is this? Exactly one year from this post and it really is ‘Goodbye BlogRush’. BlogRush just closed their doors.

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  • http://www.yamgo.com/ TV

    It’s like wearing a patch on your shirt that says “blogrush” and then one day, they come along and tear the patch off your shirt and say “Your shirt is not good enough to have this patch on it.”

    Who made them the judge and jury for what is a good blog and what is not-so-good.

    I’m thinking of pulling the widget off my blog myself!