BlogRush: Hype Galore or Holy Grail?

September 20th, 2007 · 6 Comments · Tags: Blogging & RSS · Internet Marketing

It seems that by now, virtually every big boy (and girl) in the web marketing arena has pushed this new widget down the throats of their mailing lists – I for one got around 65 different e-mails announcing the launch and trying to get me to sign up under their network downline.

But even with all that hype and promotion, the question remains: Is it just hype or is John Reese’s BlogRush really the next big thing on the blogosphere? Let’s take a couple of steps back and analyze the widget, the service and the true potential it holds.

The BlogRush website pitches it as “The fastest and easiest way to instantly drive a flood of targeted readers to your blog… absolutely free”. The service, in itself, is a blog syndication network that lets you build a downline MLM-style. I’ve been around the web for many years, so the whole setup rings a few bells (some of you may remember Mike Glaspie’s BannersGoMLM, Mark Joyner’s StartBlaze or even Mike Chen’s InstantBuzz).

The entire system is powered by a nice-looking widget that you can add to the sidebar of your blog to display “headlines” (titles for posts from related blogs). When people visit your blog and click on one of the headlines, you get a 1:1 credit to display one of your RSS headlines on another blog. If your visitors click on the “Add your blog” and sign up, you’ll also receive credits from the visitors they generate… and so on and so forth until your download reaches a whooping 10 levels deep.

The BlogRush widget puts a very interesting spin on the concept because it feeds on actual content from blogs instead of displaying annoying ads – and that’s a big plus in my book.

Unfortunately, there are a few variables that you must consider before expecting any serious traffic: First, you’ll need to have a decent amount traffic to your blog in place. Else there won’t be anyone clicking on your widget.

Then of course you need to consider placing the widget in a good spot in your blog’s sidebar to maximize its click-through ratio. But that’s not all…

The widget will display headlines from blogs that fit the category you selected when joining their service, so traffic in each category will be different.

And finally there’s the whole pyramid factor, which means that early adopters who actually promote the use of BlogRush will probably get more traffic from the service than those who wait longer; plus the above variables also apply to each blog in your downline.

I have signed up and will be testing the service (as you know, I LOVE testing), but I’m not getting my hopes up in terms of it actually generating a “flood of traffic” to my blog.

Although I don’t have enough data yet to predict if BlogRush will become a big player in the blogosphere, the results will be clear when you either see the widget stay in place or get more prominent placement in high-traffic blogs or if it suddenly starts vanishing from them.

If the system goes supernova, the potential for growth and traffic is enormous, but at this point in time it could go either way.

If you want to test the BlogRush system in your own blog, the time to do it is now… before it hits the blogosphere mainstream. After all, the system is brand new as it just launched this past Friday. Click here to register and test BlogRush.