BlogRush Is Closing Down

BlogRush, a blog advertising system, has decided to shut down. John Reese, the man behind BlogRush, announced The Death of BlogRush in his blog. I also understand that separate e-mails were sent to individual users instructing them to remove the BlogRush widget.

The Launch of BlogRush
When BlogRush launched in 2007, the news spread like wildfire all around the Web. It should be considered as one of the highly discussed topics, among bloggers of course. BlogRush worked hard to implement many changes after the initial launch. The second release came with attractive reports and much more options for customization.

The Failure of BlogRush
But, it remained a fact that BlogRush could not attract very high click rates, in spite of its many efforts. John Reese, himself, admits that “the click-rates across the network are dreadfully low”.In fact, I wrote about this in one of my posts titled "Does BlogRush bring any traffic?". I also noticed that BlogRush filters some posts being syndicated. It is not yet clear why BlogRush did this, and we may never know. It may be due to glitches in the system.

Bye Bye BlogRush
Whatever said and done, I should agree that BlogRush looked attractive at the beginning. It might end as an unsuccessful idea, but the effort has been made. My wholehearted thanks to John Reese and his team for doing their best to make BlogRush a success.

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Build Traffic With Entrecard

Entrecard provides a platform for bloggers to network and benefit from each other. I heard of Entrecard sometime ago, but I was reluctant to join them. I was of the opinion that the business model of Entrecard will not succeed. My experience with BlogRush was still fresh in mind. But, after reading many discussions supporting Entrecard, I decided to jump in and try it out myself. So, I signed up with Entrecard yesterday.

Concept of Entrecard
The concept of Entrecard is simple. If you visit a blog from their network, you get credit points and the owner of the blog you visited also gets credit points. These are called Entrecard Credit and shortly known as “ec” in the network.

What can I do with the Entrecard Credit?
The most important thing you can do is to use the credit to advertise on other blogs in the network. You have to sell your credit points to earn the advertising space in the blog of your choice. Depending on the popularity of the blog you would like to advertise, the credit points would vary. The higher the popularity, the more points you need to transfer. The same goes if someone wants to advertise on your blog. They have to transfer credit to you to buy space from your blog.

Where is the advertising space for Entrecard?
The advertising space comes in the form of a widget that resides on your sidebar. You have to install the code supplied by Entrecard to activate this. You will receive a notification if someone would like to advertise on your blog. Once you approve a request for advertisement, the widget will display the image/ text of the requester. A click on to the widget will lead you to the advertiser’s blog.

What is the first impression?
Looks good. In about 24 hours, I got about 35 visitors through Entrecard. I am not sure whether this is just an initial burst or will continue. As of now, I am getting some good traffic which is certain to boost my Alexa Rank, if not anything else.

If you are interested, please sign up with Entrecard for free. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post.

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A Quick Round-up of December 2007

December 2007 was a month when this blog achieved further heights. I could not actively blog as I would have liked to. This is reflected by the count of posts, only 15 last month. That is about 50% of what I was posting in the months of October and November 2007.

Irrespective of the number of posts, this month had good posts that drew some hot discussion. The one on BlogRush, Does BlogRush bring any traffic?, was discussed in detail and had a follow-up post Why my posts were not syndicated?. Following that, I did remove the BlogRush widget from this blog. I might use it in some of my other blogs, but I do not see much traffic to this blog from BlogRush.

I did a post on another useful service BloggingZoom, Does BloggingZoom bring traffic?. While I could not spend much time later this month on BZ, I had a good flow of traffic earlier this month.

As usual, I have written some posts on my favourite topic Blogger Hacks/ Widgets for Blogger:

• Quick Search for Blogger Blogs


• Popular Posts Widget for Blogger

The following is the current standing of this blog:

Marco’s Top Blogging Blogs List: #68 (November Rank: 66)
Google Page Rank: 2/10 (No change from last month)
Alexa Traffic Rank: 416,356 (November Rank: 664,445)
Technorati Rank: 132,066 (November Rank: 174,961)

My sincere thanks to all those regular readers and visitors for the support extended to this blog. I may not see any rise in the rankings in January and even there might be a drop due to less activity in December. But, I do hope to get back in action as soon as possible.

I wish all my readers a VERY HAPPY, PROSPEROUS and SUCCESSFUL New Year 2008.

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Does BloggingZoom bring traffic?

Few days ago, I wrote about the traffic that comes from BlogRush. Now, it is time to review another service that I signed up for building some traffic. Yes, this post is about BloggingZoom, the new social networking service on the net.

Why BloggingZoom?
I signed up with BloggingZoom immediately upon its launch. I was a latecomer to other services like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and so on. So, I wanted to join the BloggingZoom community as early as possible to build the network. I also had a feeling that bloggers will like BZ much more than the other services. As this blog is mainly on blogging, networking with other bloggers would be the right thing to do.

Total Traffic to this blog in November
It is about a month since I joined BZ. So, I thought of doing some analysis to see whether the effort is worth. I took the data from 07 November 2007 to 07 December 2007 (Thanks to: Google Analytics). Here is the traffic statistics during the above period:

So, the above period of 30 days brought in 956 visitors who had given me about 2021 page views.

Contribution from BloggingZoom
How much is the contribution from BloggingZoom? The following picture will give you an idea about that.

As you can see, BZ has contributed about 11% of my total traffic. In absolute numbers, it has brought about 103 visitors who contributed to about 150 page views. I think that is really a significant amount of traffic.

Further Analysis
Let us look at all the traffic sources that have brought in traffic to this site during the above period.

If I ignore the direct traffic and the search engines traffic, there are 604 visits from various referring sites. The 103 visits from BZ works out to a high proportion of 17% of the referring sites.

How to get traffic from BloggingZoom?
It is not easy to get the traffic from BZ. You have to work hard for it. I have posted about 15 discussions on BZ to bring 103 visitors. But, more importantly, I have also zoomed close to 200 discussions of other bloggers and visited their blogs. I have added many bloggers as my friends. For every comment left for my discussion, I responded with a thank you note.

Tips to optimize the returns from BZ:

1. Spend about 30 minutes every day on BZ.
2. Only post good discussions from your blog. Search through your archives for your popular articles. Use attractive titles, not necessarily your post title. Categorize them correctly.
3. Do not come out with a new tag for yourself. Look at the popular tags and try to classify yours under one of them.
4. Once you have posted a discussion, take some time to read other discussions and zoom them, leave comments or visit their blogs.
5. Whenever someone zooms you, visit their profile and read their discussions and zoom them, leave comments or visit their blogs.
6. Whenever someone comments on your discussion, respond with a thank you note and try to continue the discussion.
7. Before complaining that no one zooms you, think whether you have zoomed any one. It is a network of bloggers. If you give something, they will certainly return it.

Conclusion
I find BloggingZoom a very good service for bloggers. If you have not joined them yet, please do so. Remember that you won't get the traffic for free. You need not spend money, but you have to spend time. But, believe me, it is worth. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post.

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Why my posts were not syndicated?

I have written about the traffic from BlogRush a few days ago. I did receive considerable feedback from other bloggers, in this blog as well as over at BloggingZoom. The most interesting comment came from Saedel. He has pointed out in his post BlogRush Censors Unfavorable Reviews? as below:

 

"Based on my experience, it looks like BlogRush (I’ll call it BR from time-to-time here onwards) is trying to unexpose honest reviews that don’t favor them."

Do I face the same problem?

Saedel has mentioned that BlogRush is filtering out all the reviews about them. I did a quick check to see whether my post on BlogRush, dated 2nd December 2007, was syndicated across the network. To my surprise, I cannot find this particular post on the syndication list.

 

 

I have posted 4 posts in December so far, one each on 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th December. As you can see, three of them has been syndicated. Only the post on BlogRush has not been syndicated.

Why the particular post was not syndicated?

I do not want to jump into any conclusion yet. I just remembered that this was not my first post on BlogRush. When I checked through my archive, I noticed that there were eight posts in all, including the latest one, mentioning about BlogRush. When I checked the BlogRush reports, only four of them were not syndicated:

 

1. Constructive Changes to BlogRush
2. Is PageRank the best way to measure the success of a blog?
3. 10,000+ blogs removed from BlogRush
4. Does BlogRush bring any traffic?

My immediate finding is that BlogRush is filtering out those posts with the word "BlogRush" in the title. If you have the word inside the discussion, it seems all right. But, to my surprise, the post on PageRank was also not syndicated. I have mentioned about BlogRush in the content, but that may not be the reason.

Further Checks

I did search my blog, once again, for posts with the word "PageRank" in the title. I had two posts satisfying the search and as I expected, both were not syndicated. In addition to the above post with the word "PageRank", the following is the other post:

 

1. Great News: I got Google PageRank 2

Findings

From my study, I conclude the following:

1. BlogRush is filtering out posts with the word "BlogRush" in the title. I have purposely avoided the same word in this post title and I want to see whether this will be syndicated. In all probability, it should.
2. The posts with the word "PageRank" in the title are also filtered.

Conclusion

Initially, I thought only the reviews on BlogRush has been filtered out as Saedel has pointed out. The whole problem may be due to some glitch in the system. But, we do not know until John Reese and his team explain the rationale behind this.

 

Do you face this problem? Has any of your post been filtered? Feel free to share with us here. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post.

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Does BlogRush bring any traffic?

We had seen lot of buzz about BlogRush in the last two months. The grand launch was followed by unexpected huge response from the bloggers. As a result, BlogRush went into the hiding for close to a month and came back with a bang.

How is my blog doing?
When I first saw the phase 2 reports, I was really impressed. The reports are really attractive and very use to analyze. But, the bottom line is whether BlogRush bringing in any traffic to you? I thought of doing a simple study and took the data for the last 30 days. Here is the screen shot of my credits earned:


The numbers look really good with about 14,000 bonus credits earned in addition to the 10,000 credits earned by my traffic and my referrals traffic. But, the real picture emerges when I consider the number of visitors it brought to our blog.


Conversion Rate
It brought about 12 visitors. So, the conversion rate works out to about 0.05%. If I just ignore the bonus credits and compute the click rate based on my credits and my referral credits, it works out to about 0.12%. That is just one click for every 1000 displays of the title links.

Important Observation
I have noted another strange behaviour in my referral statistics graph. Take a look at the following graph:


I found it difficult to comprehend the sudden drop in the referral credits. I believe this may be due to those bloggers removing the widget from the blog. Does that dipping graph is in line with a dipping interest about BlogRush? In fact, I don't see any traffic from 3 of my first level referrals. Quite strange.

Conclusion
Is BlogRush doing justice to the precious sidebar space it is occupying? It is difficult to answer. I am not doing anything more than just displaying the widget. No promotion, no time spent on it. I agree that BloggingZoom has brought in much more traffic, but I also had to spend few hours regularly to achieve that. So, 12 visitors a month to this blog (about 1.5% of total traffic) from BlogRush has come without any additional effort.

If your sidebar is precious enough and you can do something better, then BlogRush is not worth continuing with. But, if you are just going to fill your sidebar with another ad, then I would suggest retaining the widget to get some traffic without a sweat.

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Build your traffic with BloggingZoom

In my opinion, posts on building blog traffic has been one of the most read in the blogging industry. Every blogger, irrespective of new or pro, wants to improve their traffic. A blogger with 10 visits targets 100 visits; one with 100 visits targets 1000 visits and so on. So, any service that promises to bring in more traffic is going to be an instant hit. We had seen this happen to BlogRush in the last two months. Now, it is the turn of BloggingZoom.


Launched by Court and Vic only yesterday, bloggers are already zooming in on to BloggingZoom. It is believed that the first day of launch itself has attracted about 8500 page views. In fact, I did not see much advertisement or buzz about this service before the launch. Few days ago, I just read a post on CourtneyTuttle.com that he is going to launch a traffic building service.

What is BloggingZoom?
BZ is a social hub where bloggers can share ideas, learn to better them, and receive deserved, huge bursts of traffic to their quality content. It is a FREE service.

How it works?
Upon first glance, you will notice that the front page of BloggingZoom looks and acts similar to Digg. I feel that the concept is also similar to Digg. If you find some great content, then you share it. If anyone else finds it interesting too, they will vote for it. The post with high number of votes moves up the ladder and will be visible to millions of visitors. Then, is BZ going to be Digg No. 2? The minds behind the idea of BZ say no.

Key factors that make BZ different from others
(Extract from CourtneyTuttle.com)

• Bloggers are not penalized for submitting their own content.
  In fact they are encouraged to submit all of their content. BZ allows you to add as much of your content as you want to a site that will get incredible amounts of traffic. Users will still vote for, or zoom, content and with enough zooms your content will be published front page to maximize traffic to your blog.



• If you’re not a blog, you’re out.
  There will be no competition between bloggers and huge news sites that already dominate search engine results and are indexed 100 times per day by Google. What happens if CNN submits an article to Blogging Zoom? Buried hahahahaha.



• We will use our SEO expertise to expose your content to search engines.
  This is the key factor that takes BZ 10 levels higher than anything else out there. The only thing even close to BZ in this aspect is Squidoo, but Squidoo doesn’t give you the potential to receive massive traffic bursts that can generate hundreds of links and thousands of visitors.



• Blog search engines like Google Blog Search and Technorati index spam like it’s premium content.
  Hopefully everyone is as tired as I am of competing with spam, because it’s a freaking joke. Since BZ is driven by bloggers, spammers will be reported, their work deleted, and their accounts banned.

So, there are obvious reasons to join the community if you are a blogger. If you are interested, please register at BloggingZoom.

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Can good titles bring in more traffic?

Recently, you might have noticed a new concept in blog advertising gaining momentum. I am referring to the use of widgets that display random links on your blog. While BlogRush widget displays the links to individual posts, the AutoRoll widget for blogger displays the links to your blog.

Which concept is going to be useful or successful? While I cannot forecast now, my vote goes to BlogRush concept. The reader’s attention goes to the widget for probably a fraction of a second. You need to grab his/ her attention within this split second. An attractive post title might do the trick rather than the title of the blog itself.

I have a feed on my blog that gets recent posts from the bloggers whom I admire. But, I do not read each and every post from them. The title is the key to me. If I like the title, I would explore further. As such, a good title for your post becomes very important.

What are the key components of a good title?

1. There should be bait in the title (Title baiting?). In other words, there should be something that will attract the readers to click on the link.



2. The title should be short and direct. BlogRush displays a maximum of about 42 characters from your title, including the blank spaces. In certain cases, depending on the first line break, it may even be lesser.
   
   For example, I have made $10,000 from my blog (Dreaming?) last month and would like to post about it. Think of a title “Last month, my blog helped me to make more than $10,000”. BlogRush will display the title as “Last month, my blog helped me to make mor…” See how your title has been curtailed by the widget. Now, let me think of another title “My blog made $10,000 last month”. In this case, the entire title will be displayed.
   
   So, plan your title and ensure that all your keywords appear in the first 30 characters or so.



3. Include numbers in your title, if possible. It is understood that the titles with numbers attract more clicks. For example “7 easy ways to make money online”, “9 effective ways to get free money”, “5 proven methods to bring traffic” and something in that line.

If an attractive title can bring in traffic, why should I spend time in writing good content for my blog? Remember, good titles can bring in traffic. But, only good content can sustain the traffic.

If you would like to share your thoughts or your opinions on the above topic, please add your views in the comments section to make this a complete post. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post.

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10,000+ blogs removed from BlogRush

John Reese, the founder of BlogRush, wrote to me (and, of course, to many other bloggers) that BlogRush is ready to roll out Phase 2 soon. He has indicated that those blogs that do not meet the requirement has been removed from the system. It is not very clear how the blogs had been evaluated. But, certainly, there is some clean-up as I had lost one of my referrals in the system.

While BlogRush promises an increase in click-rates, we need to wait and watch how it performs. The basic concept is really good as we can already see similar widgets being released like “What Others Say” widget for Wordpress and Autoroll widget for Blogger. But, the success lies in its implementation. I like John Reese’ commitment to BlogRush. I should appreciate his efforts in updating the members of the progress and replying to most the comments on his web site.

Here is a copy of the e-mail from John Reese for you to read:

An Important BlogRush News Update...

- Congratulations!
- 10,000+ Blogs Removed From BlogRush
- Phase 2 Being Deployed
- Busy Week Ahead!

-------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations!
-------------------------------------------------------------

You are receiving this update because your blog has passed our strict Quality Guidelines and criteria -- we believe you have a high-quality blog and we are happy you're a member of our network!

-------------------------------------------------------------
10,000+ Blogs Removed From BlogRush
-------------------------------------------------------------

We've just completed a massive SWEEP of our entire network. We've removed over *10,000* blogs (Yes, ten thousand) that did not meet our new Quality Guidelines.

We have done a huge "quality control audit" of our network and have reviewed all the blogs one-at-a-time. We will continue to review each NEW blog that is ever submitted to our network.

You will notice the HUGE DIFFERENCE in the quality of blogs that now appear in your widget. This major *sweep* of our network will also increase the click-rates across the entire network and you will start to receive more traffic.

But we're only getting started. We've got LOTS of amazing improvements in the works to help you get more daily traffic from our network.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Phase 2 Being Deployed
-------------------------------------------------------------

We're in the process of rolling out our massive "Phase 2" upgrade to BlogRush. In the next few days you'll see an all-new Dashboard, advanced statistics reporting, and much, much more.

We're introducing tons of new sub-categories to help with content relevance (which will increase click-rates and traffic).

We're also introducing a "Thin Widget" option. Many of our members cannot use the standard widget because it's too wide for their blog. This new widget format will solve this issue.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Busy Week Ahead!
-------------------------------------------------------------

We have a busy week ahead as we will start rolling out all these fantastic changes. Thanks so much for your patience! We will continue to work very hard to help drive more quality, targeted DAILY TRAFFIC to your blog.

Best Regards,

John Reese, Founder of BlogRush

If you were one of the BlogRush members that had their account deactivated, you will notice that the widget no longer will load on your blog. For now, please remove the BlogRush code from your blog. When you login to your account you will find instructions on how to resubmit your blog for review to reactivate your account.

One thing is clear. BlogRush team did not expect such a huge response from the bloggers and they were caught unprepared. They should have, in fact, implemented the review process even before allowing anyone into the system. This reverse process is going to give some negative publicity for BlogRush and could cause irrevocable bitter feeling among the bloggers.

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Increase in my blog traffic: Reason #3

This is in continuation of my previous posts on Increase in Blog Traffic: Reason #1, Reason #2 and Significant Increase in My Blog Traffic.

Read other blogs:
Schedule some of your daily time to read other blogs. You could choose to read blogs from popular bloggers like JohnChow or ProBlogger. Or you could choose to read blogs at random. I have included a RSS feed on my side bar that displays the five most recent posts from JohnChow.com, BloggingTips.com and ProBlogger.net. I make it a habit to go through these links daily and read those that attracts me.

How did it help me?
These blogs give me the broad picture of the latest trends in the blogosphere. Their posts had given me the starting point to write many of my own posts. I got the idea from these blogs to write some of my popular posts like How much is my blog worth? and 63/100: That is the grade of this blog.

I had been introduced to BlogRush by these bloggers. BlogRush has brought in some traffic for me. Even though the amount of visitors is not that significant, the BlogRush widget itself gave me lead to some wonderful posts. I like the concept of BlogRush that randomly displays posts from your own niche.

It is from other bloggers I learnt how important it is to provide different means of navigation to your readers. It prompted me to implement the Popular Posts widget, Recent Posts widget for Blogger, Related Posts widget for Blogger, list of categories and a list of archives on my blog. All these different means of navigational aids helped me to keep the visitors a little bit longer on my blog.

As an Indian proverb says “Learn from the mistakes of others; you don't live long enough to make them yourself”. So, read others blogs and learn from them. Your blog will certainly grow.

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Is PageRank the best way to measure the success of a blog?

In my earlier posts How much is my blog worth? and 63/100: That is the grade of this blog, I have discussed the importance of evaluating blogs based on some systematic approach. This would avoid the controversies and discussions about who is the best out there.

While PageRank is used predominantly as one of the measures, I had seen some excellent blogs with a PageRank zero. One such example would be BloggingTips.com. I have enjoyed the tips and tricks from BloggingTips.com, but surprised to learn about the PR status. PageRank, in a way, favours older blogs and it is not dynamic enough to reflect day-to-day changes.

Today, I got a lead to one of the posts written at Courtneytuttle.com (thanks to the little BlogRush widget). The author expresses similar sentiment as mine and has written an interesting article How do you measure your blog’s success? He compares the strengths and weaknesses of PageRank, Technorati Rankings, Alexa Rankings and RSS count. Take a look at the article and you will appreciate the discussion.

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A quick round-up of September 2007

Only in September, I started to look at this blog seriously. The statistics show that I am just going in the right direction.

1. I did apply a new template to this blog. While there are still many glitches to this template, the nice look keeps me stuck with it.

2. I also got the approval from PayPerPost for this blog recently.

3. The hot newcomer to blogosphere this month is certainly BlogRush. While it is still in its early days, it is a potential winner for bloggers. We will wait for few more months to see the impact of BlogRush.

Some of my popular posts written in September:

• New Template for this blog


• How much is my blog worth?


• 63/100: That is the grade of this blog


• Blog Review: Calling All Palauans


• Recent Posts Widget for Blogger

Some of the interesting posts from other bloggers written in September:

• Make Money Online with Youtube from JohnChow.com


• Forget About Page Rank and Build a Better Blog from ProBlogger.net


• Using Categories and Tags Effectively on Your Blog from ProBlogger.net


• How to make visitors not come back to your blog - 5 Tips from BloggingTips.com


• Typo Tips from BloggingTips.com

Enjoy blogging. Best of luck to all bloggers for a better October month.

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Constructive Changes to BlogRush

Finally, BlogRush has put their words into action. Now, you can change the border color of the BlogRush widget to match your blog. Another important change is to control which post links from your blog will be displayed. BlogRush provides a post filter that you can use to filter out posts with certain keywords. John Reese, Founder of BlogRush has written a long letter to all the BlogRush members to address all the concerns raised. Read it for yourself, the full content is displayed below:

TO: All BlogRush Members
FROM: John Reese, Founder of BlogRush

ARE YOU READY? Because *everything* is about to change. Forget everything else up until now…

PREPARE FOR *BIG* CHANGES! (TWO MAJOR CHANGES ARE NOW LIVE.)

BlogRush CAN’T EXIST if we’re not sending you a lot of ongoing, targeted traffic. We fully recognize this and that’s why this is our ONLY FOCUS.

The BlogRush team has been hard at work making major improvements for you and we won’t rest until BlogRush is running 100% smoothly and sending you tons of targeted traffic! This is OUR MISSION. Please know that our entire team is working around-the-clock to make improvements and fix any problems AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.

(We sincerely appreciate your patience.)

We’ve encountered some problems since our historic launch just over a week ago, and we fully recognize that we’ve made some real ‘goofs’ with the system for our Public Beta release…

For example, our data center provider (one of the largest in the world) had a short, temporary outage (they had to replace a network switch) two days after our launch. We had no control over this outage but want to SINCERELY APOLOGIZE to those that saw this message on their blogs (where the widget should have been):

"We are currently experiencing some technical issues and the site will be back online shortly. Please come back in a few minutes."

We were completely *EMBARRASSED* when we realized this happened. That simple message was part of our application code and was meant to appear only on *OUR* WEB SITE PAGES if we ever experienced an outage. This was accidentally ‘marked’ to be a global error message for ANY outage — including if our widget ever had a problem loading. This was a major GOOF and we’re willing to admit it. Our code was planned so that in the case of a problem with our widget, NOTHING WOULD LOAD in its place. So a visitor to your blog doesn’t see an error or anything wrong should the widget ever have any technical issues.

This was quickly corrected and is now working properly. Should the widget ever have any problem loading in the future, your blog will be served a transparent space (which will show whatever background your blog design has) and your blog readers won’t really notice anything.

Again, our sincere apologies for our major goof. It was quite embarrassing.

NOW ONTO SOME SERIOUS ISSUES…

We also realize that we completely underestimated the number of unethical people that would sign up and proceed to CHEAT and try to ‘game’ the BlogRush system. These cheaters ruined the click-rates of many of our members (and burned through a lot of their credits using automated ‘exploit’ methods) and hurt BlogRush’s ability to send maximum traffic to our honest members’ blogs.

BUT ALL OF THAT IS ABOUT TO BE ERASED… LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED.

In the next several days to come, we’re going to be rolling out MAJOR changes to BlogRush. BIG changes. And these changes (again) have just ONE primary purpose — to drive more ongoing, targeted traffic to your blog.

We’ve listened to your valued feedback and constructive criticism and we have been working in TURBO MODE to make the changes you want ASAP…

—– HERE’S WHAT’S COMING IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS —–

100% MANUAL BLOG REVIEW.
Our team is going to be manually reviewing every single new blog that registers to participate in the BlogRush Network.

We’ll be applying some quality guidelines and criteria to our decision-making process. (We’ll be publishing these guidelines very soon.) If a blog does not meet our guidelines and criteria, THEY WILL BE REJECTED from the network and not allowed to join — i.e. they won’t be able to serve our widget, refer other users, or have their blog posts distributed across our network. They will have no access to any BlogRush services.

Our members, like YOU, made it LOUD AND CLEAR to us… BlogRush needs to only have members that have quality blog content — not blogs filled primarily with ads and other spammy looking JUNK.

The only accurate way we’re going to keep these junk blogs out of our network is to REVIEW EVERY SINGLE ONE BY HAND. And we’re willing to do it to protect the integrity of our network. I don’t care what it costs us to hire more people (if we need them) to review 100% of any blog trying to join our network. We will be reviewing ALL OF THEM from here on out.

* We realize that several non-English language blogs blatantly ignored our “ENGLISH BLOGS ONLY” warning on our Registration page. Rest assured, though, they’ll all be PURGED from the network when we do our QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT over the next several days (you’ll read about it in a moment).

As I’ve said several times before, BlogRush isn’t some passing “fad” or short-term service. We’re dedicated to building an incredibly valuable resources for bloggers FOR MANY YEARS TO COME.

We’ll also be doing a QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT of all of our existing member blogs. We’ll be reviewing every single blog that’s currently in our network (or that registers before the Manual Review Process becomes active.) And we’ll be completely *REMOVING* any blogs in our network that don’t meet our quality guidelines and criteria.

As you can probably tell by now, we’re not messing around. We have put a lot of hard work into the development of this service and we will continue to bust our butts to make it one of the best Internet services in the world. COUNT ON IT.

We’re also deploying several new Anti-Cheat measures to SHUTDOWN AND WIPEOUT the cheaters and unethical users that have abused our network. Sorry, crooks, but THE FREE RIDE IS OVER.

We’ll be dedicating an entire department to stay on top of any abusive behavior in our network. We believe that our new measures are going to instantly eliminate most, if not all, of our system abuse. It’s going to take us a few more days to roll-out all of these measures (and to complete our entire QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT) but rest assured, BlogRush is about to go through a major TRANSFORMATION.

And a quick word to any ‘cheats’ that might be reading this letter… it’s very possible that you may come up with something extremely creative that temporarily gets by us, but you should know something… IT’S NOT GOING TO BE WORTH YOUR TIME. And I’m not just talking about the tiny amount of traffic that you’ll receive before we shut you off.

You see, we have other plans in the works…

If you attempt to cheat or abuse our network in anyway, shape, or form, we will not hesitate to come after you. Our company is well funded and has plenty of resources. And we WILL use them to punish you to the fullest extent of the law (and civil court process). Oh, you think you can just hide behind some anonymous proxy IPs? Sorry, it’s not that easy. ANY reason you’d have to try and cheat the BlogRush network for traffic and any attempt you make to monetize that traffic will lead directly to your front door — whether it’s AdSense, any affiliate program in the world, any online pharmacy, porn site, casino… ANYTHING. We will follow the trail and it WILL eventually lead to you.

Our hard-working company provides the income for MANY families. As the CEO of our company, I take this very seriously. I HAVE TO. People that attempt to abuse or cheat BlogRush are affecting the livelihood of all my employees and their families. And I will do everything in my power to protect them — it’s MY DUTY.

So for all you cheaters that joined BlogRush and had your fun trying to siphon off some traffic, hopefully it was fun. And I’ll go ahead and make this statement right now… IF you were one of the people that has been cheating our network I’m going to give you ONE opportunity… quit now and we’ll pretend it never happened. I think that’s more than fair.

BUT… if you continue after this point, all bets are off. We WILL eventually discover what you’re doing, where you’re trying to send traffic, and we will prosecute you. I GUARANTEE IT. Sorry, but WE HAVE NO CHOICE NOW.

* If you’re one of our valued, HONEST users, I’m very sorry you even have to read stuff like that. I know it’s a waste of your time. Unfortunately, there are unethical people in this world that attempt to abuse and take advantage of others.
MOVING ON…

—- ALSO COMING SOON! —-

**** A LOT MORE CATEGORIES! ****
You asked for it, and you’re getting it!

We’re going to be greatly expanding our directory of categories to increase the relevancy of post links appearing in the widget on your blog — this will also increase click-rates (and traffic) for all members.

* Stay tuned over the next several days for more news about the addition of new categories.

AND…

**** IMPROVED REPORTING! ****
The current Dashboard stats are being under-reported for all users right now. This is the reason that users show discrepancies when looking at Google Analytics data (or other stats packages). We’re currently sending more traffic to our users than we’re reporting in the Dashboard because we are giving all users bonus credits everyday. We’ll soon be reporting all bonus credit activity so all the numbers will be accurate.

SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL LOW-TRAFFIC MEMBERS: In the near future we’ll be giving our low-traffic members (those that need more traffic the most) the BULK of our bonus credit allocations. You’ll get a ton more bonus credits than high-traffic members because you really need it. It’s only FAIR!

* Also we apologize to anyone that has seen a “negative” credit balance for their account. This is a minor bug that we’re taking care of. It doesn’t mean anything and you can just ignore it for now. We apologize for any confusion.

**** IMPROVED NETWORK DISTRIBUTION ****
A few of our users have noticed that they're building up credits faster than the system is using them. This will eventually balance itself out as the network continues to "adjust" to the growth levels and traffic patterns of each category — because our network provides syndication distribution based on daily average "cycles" and then adjusts moving into the future; so it's able to accurately predict how fast to use a certain user's credits, etc. — as compared to just using them all "as fast as possible."

—- AND HERE ARE *TWO* BRAND-NEW ADDITIONS THAT JUST WENT LIVE!!!! —-

**** BLOGRUSH “FLAVORS” ARE NOW ACTIVE!
You can go login to your account, click the “Settings” tab and then select “Flavors.”
You can choose from (13) different widget colors. You no longer have to only use our original “black” widget design that many users thought was ugly! (Hey, just don’t let our lead designer hear that… he thought his black design was “really cool.”)
Now you can select a color that more closely matches the look of your blog. Our users have been asking for this since we launched our Public Beta, and we’ve taken action to offer these new options.

* We have future plans for further widget customization but we’re working on one “stage” of improvement at a time! Please bare with us. We’re fully aware of the request for a more narrow widget as our current one doesn’t fit on some blogs. We’re trying to produce a solution and should have some news soon.

HERE'S THE BEST PART…
You don't have to copy and paste new code to your blog. Just go to that "Flavors" section for your account, select the flavor you want, then hit the "APPLY FLAVOR" button. That's it! Reload your blog in another browser window and take a look.
And if you want to see what a different flavor might look like, just pick another one, hit the "APPLY FLAVOR" button and reload your blog. PRESTO!

AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST…

***** BLOG POST CONTROLS *****
Under the “Settings” tab you’ll also find a new option called, “My Post Control.” Here’s what this awesome new feature does…

You can create POST FILTERS for your blog posts…

For example, you can add a keyword or phrase and create a new post filter. If you ever create a post on your blog (while you have that filter active — and you can add/delete them at anytime) that contains one of those keywords in the TITLE of your blog post, that post…

WILL *NOT* BE SHOWN ACROSS THE NETWORK. And you won’t use any of your syndication credits!

All bloggers post "off-topic" stuff from time to time, or short posts that don't have a ton of great content. Well, now you can easily keep any of those types of posts from using your valuable syndication credits and from being shown across the network!

This is GREAT for you because now you can control exactly which posts of yours will be syndicated. This can help you maximize your CLICK-RATES and, ultimately, the traffic you receive from the BlogRush network. AND it can help retain NEW READERS for your blog (your ultimate goal that can grow your blog’s traffic on a day-to-day basis.)

Here’s Why…
By selecting which posts get syndicated (by simply adding filters right BEFORE you publish a post on your blog that you don’t want to be used; or having setup one well in advance) you can make sure that you’re only syndicating your BEST POSTS. The ones with top-quality content. Your posts that a new visitor to your blog will enjoy and be much more likely to make a “YES!” decision to become a regular reader for you!

AND OH YEAH, ONE MORE THING…

This is only the very beginning for BlogRush. We have so much great stuff in store for you! As I said at the beginning of this letter… we will continue to work VERY HARD to make improvements and add-ons with ONE PRIMARY FOCUS…

To drive more ongoing targeted traffic to your blog.

I want to personally THANK YOU on behalf of our entire company for your interest in BlogRush. We’ve received a lot of criticism from many bloggers on the Internet, and we’ll be the first to admit we’re not perfect and a lot of it was WELL-DESERVED.

But please know, we’re busy working around the clock FOR YOU. You have our word on it.

Now go login to your account and try out some of the new “Flavors” for your blog! And also start setting up some Post Control Filters so you can start maximizing your content syndication.

I’ll be in touch when I have more "news" to share. Thanks for reading this long letter. I had a lot to tell you about.

Best Regards,
John Reese, Founder of BlogRush

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