blogrush, 7 reasons why I don’t like it.
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There’s a few bloggers commenting on a new widget called Blogrush, it’s a service that is supposed to increase your traffic by sharing links to relevant stories on other Blogrush users blogs and your posts being displayed on theirs and so on.
It’s a great idea and I expect it will work for a while with all the buzz happening but, here are 7 reasons why I wont be using it…
- The rich get richer…
- You lose credibility
- You’re working for someone else
- You will be sold stuff by email
- Where is the luv?
- You could be promoting your competition
- No control on the quality of external links
The person with the most traffic and established blog will benefit most, sure if you refer them and they get the 10,000 views a day on their pages to give you your credits and all the other people referred by you and them get you credits (10 levels they say) then surely there’s going to be the situation where there’s more credits than available blogs? I thought about this and it seems they can just rotate the links to be shown enough times on high traffic blogs so it uses the credits up.
If you have 1000 credits and your link is on five or six high traffic sites, it will only be seen for a very short time before it gets pushed out by another site. 5 blogs getting 200-300 hits a day means your link will only be shown for part of a day.
If you already have lots of traffic, you will get even more! but, if you only have a few hits (credits earned) a day then your links will be gone in no time at all.
What I don’t like the most’est is the referral nature of it, people will be referring others, not because it’s a great site or service but only for the traffic they can harvest from it. They wont care if your blog is good or not, they just want the credits! Not to mention the inevitable, someone creating an extremely high traffic spammed page with a widget it on it so they can rack up credits by displaying links to yours and other peoples sites, showing your blog link on a spam site is bound to affect your credibility with the search engines. Showing a link to your blog on a spam site will lower your value to surfers
It’s MLM for nothing, now MLM and word of mouth are great tools for promotion but only if you get something valuable enough for it, like money! (I worked very hard with elottery and make a bundle from it, I plan on doing the same with uVme). If you’re going to promote someone else’s product then you should get paid for it with money, not promises of ‘exponential’ traffic. I feel that Blogrush is benefiting only Blogrush, they are getting everyone else to build their list for them, they’ll have thousands if not tens of thousands of peoples email address and topics of interest, powerful stuff when you want to market to targeted people!.
I would expect to receive marketing emails from Blogrush after registering with them, maybe not straight away but definitely in the future. Their privacy policy states
If you are a registered user of an Income.com website and have supplied your email address, Income.com may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Income.com and our products.
Their main site is due to launch soon and it’s targeted at entrepreneurs, so you can be certain they’ll be hocking a “make money with this” product real soon.
If you’re gonna put links to posts that are on other peoples blogs, why not do it for your loyal readership? Send traffic to your readers blogs, proper linkluv!
They say it only links to similar sites and articles but, if you’re in business as an affiliate or you like to promote your own stock then the last thing you want to do is send someone to another site where they can get the same thing!
I’d prefer to link to posts and blogs that I have personally found to be useful, that way the reader knows I’ve approved that site and my credibility isn’t damaged by sending someone to a high traffic splog that just happens to have some of the same things I write about! Why tell your readers, go read this on another blog, I haven’t visited it yet or endorse it but go there anyway!
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t smell anything ‘evil’ about the service, in fact, I think it’s an extremely clever way to create a buzz (not to mention create a massive list of people and their likes and dislikes), it’s just not for me, I think I’ll stick with writing good content and only linking to sites that I have found or are for the people that participate in the discussion here.
It’s a clever tool but, I think blogrush and income.com will benefit the most from it. You don’t get something for nothing when you download a tool from someone that makes money from marketing! It’s one of the first rules listed on marketers ebooks, build a list and market to it, or, provide a tool for free and then ‘upsell’ to the takers.
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Tags: blogrush, buzz, credibility, marketing, plugin, referral, Social Networking, story-links, traffic, widget
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September 16th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Actually I didn’t think much of it at first, but after reading the post, I also agree more and more that this would be a viral marketing strategy that would help an internet marketer build his list VERY effectively.
I also liked Point 1 about the rich getting richer. I didn’t post about it in my blog but I did mention it in Andy Beard’s post about BlogRush. The high traffic sites definitely would have the most to benefit from it all.
I’ve been seeing Shoemoney, Entrepreneurs Journey, DoshDosh, JohnChowDotCom and a few other sites quite frequently on a few of the sites I’ve been on that have the BlogRush widget.
Jonathan’s last blog post..3 Ways On How To Create A Buzz With Social Web Widgets I.E MyBlogLog And Blogrush
September 16th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
I’m glad to see my plugin works by showing a link to your last blog post under your comment, reward the commenters!
thanks for taking part in this discussion
September 17th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Bravo! This is the first review about blogrush that wrote in great length but did not have any blogrush affiliate link in it
I like the “rich get richer” statement too, and I’ve included that in my squidoo lens on the blogrush “downside” section.
If there’s more to add in time to come, feel free to add to the list at http://www.squidoo.com/blogrush too.
Thanks!
Hans
Hans Chee’s last blog post..BlogRush - Automatically Promote Your Posts On Related Blogs
September 17th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
I must admit that the article you link to has the most information about it I have seen so far and not as hype as others. happy to link to your post, it’s at the bottom of your comment, now I can leave a link to the commenters post automatically.
better than blogrush
September 17th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Hi Andy,
Good article; encompassed a lot of my initial thoughts about this program … the main one being that I want to have some control over where I send people who read my blog … ie, I choose who I add to my blogroll, and/or who I link to in my posts.
Is there a difference between “good” traffic, and “any” traffic?
Todd
Todd Morris’s last blog post..From my dreamboard
September 17th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
after many years of traffic harvesting, I can categorically say that good traffic is waaay better than any old traffic by miles.
quality visitors rock!
I like your dreamboard picture, good luck with that!
September 18th, 2007 at 2:34 am
I agree with what you’ve said except this particular gem:
The links are in JavaScript, meaning search engines can’t “read” those links, thus can’t reward or punish those who put them up.
Azmeen’s last blog post..BlogRush: MLM Style Web Traffic Generator?
September 18th, 2007 at 7:37 am
that’s true Azmeen, I realized that after doing some curl tests on a page with the widget, maybe I should have put
thanks for coming by!
September 18th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Excellent review.
I am generally skeptical about new services such as BolgRush, especially when it’s the big names who rush first to get it. And the rich get richer indeed.
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September 18th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
It looks like you and me didn’t receive the “write well about BlogRush”Check :p
Nice article, and nice blog
September 19th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Dear Sir
Thank so much for your Dogg visiting again ! I would like to introduce your review concerning blogrush on my Japanese pages. If you do not permit me citation, Please send me notification.
Best Regards
Muesli Junkie’s last blog post..Web hosting Ranking with Wordpress Forum Hits
September 19th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
hello muesli junkie! I visit your blog often.
feel free to use my posts anywhere you like as long as you mention where they came from!
thanks for visiting
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:07 am
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February 28th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I have the Blogrush widget on two of my blogs and while I admit I don’t get many visitors from it I do get some and I am not one to shut the door in anyones face ‘)
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