BlogRush update
I spoke the other day about how BlogRush was launched way too early.
If you log into your control panel you will not see your stats but you will see this message from the owner John Reese.
TO: All BlogRush Members
FROM: John Reese, Founder of BlogRushHi,
I am sending you this urgent message to give you a special news “update” about several things happening with BlogRush.
Firstly, I want to sincerely thank you for joining BlogRush and for your interest in our service. Please know that our primary focus is to continually improve the service to help you generate more targeted traffic.
The first 60 hours since we launched the BlogRush public beta has been nothing short of EXPLOSIVE. We knew that we were developing an exciting tool that many bloggers could benefit from, but we had no idea how fast the ‘word’ would spread across the Web.
With this explosive growth has come some challenges, and our entire team is working very hard to solve any potential bug and issue that we’ve been alerted to. We’re improving things at a very rapid pace and we hope to have the entire network completely stabilized very soon.
I would like to ask that you are patient with us during this time and know that we are doing our best to help YOU drive more traffic to your blog and we will soon have things running smoothly.
I would like to address some of the questions and concerns that we have received:
1. “When Will My Dashboard Statistics Be Available?”
We encountered some minor issues with the batch processing of our first cycle of member statistics (it’s a lot of data to crunch) and we just about have it fixed. We hope to have your statistics up and running very soon as we know they are very important to you. We just need a little bit more time. Please know that we’re working as fast as we can and the moment we can start displaying them you will see them. (Thanks in advance for your patience.)
2. “I Don’t Understand The Syndication Credit System Formula”
In our video we mentioned that you earn a 1:1 ratio of syndication credits on your own traffic, and any direct referral’s traffic (such as “Bob” in the example video) and any direct referral’s referral traffic (yes, that sounds confusing!) such as “Jen” in our example. We also mentioned that you’d also earn credits based on activity through 10 generation levels. Here’s the breakdown of our formula:
Your Traffic = 1:1 1st Generation Of Referrals (Directly From You) = 1:1 2nd Generation Of Referrals (i.e. Jen in the video) = 1:1 3rd - 6th Generation Of Referrals = 1:4 7th - 10th Generation Of Referrals = 1:8
1:1 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 1 impression of the widget by your own traffic or by any users located on the 1st (direct) or 2nd generations. 1:4 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 4 impressions of the widget by any user located on the 3rd to 6th generations. 1:8 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 8 impressions of the widget by any user located on the 7th to 10th generations.
When all of this math is added up, it leaves 1 headline space available out of every 10 that are served. This means that BlogRush uses 10% of the headline spots (5 headlines in each widget load) to monetize the service. We currently have plans to sell these extra credits to any user that would like to purchase additional credits — this is one of the ways we will pay for the service.
3. “What happened To The FAQ?”
We were trying to wait until we received more feedback from our users (actual questions). We’ll be posting the FAQ very soon - many of the biggest concerns are being addressed in this message.
4. “I Didn’t See Any Help Section Tutorials”
It took us longer than expected to have the tutorials ready. You can view them now and see step-by-step how to install the BlogRush code on the following: WordPress, MovableType, TypePad, Blogger. They are available in the “Help” section that is accessible from the “Help” link at the bottom of our web site when not logged in, or the “Help” tab when you’re logged in.
5. “I Keep Seeing The Same Blogs Appear In The Widget”
While we’ve been busy optimizing our network, we were using some public RSS feeds to balance out activity so no widget would have any empty space. This will soon be completely replaced with our member feeds full-time; our member feeds were only being distributed part of the time as we were optimizing things.
6. “Some Of The Blog Titles I’ve Seen In The Widget Don’t Appear Relevant”
This will continue to improve as we work to optimize the network.
7. “I Noticed A Blog Was Using Two Widgets On The Same Page, Is This Allowed?”
No. You can only have ONE widget per page. If you made a blog post about BlogRush and used the widget inside that post as an example, you will need to immediately remove it and replace it with a static screenshot of the widget. If it is not removed, we will have no choice but to terminate any account that fails to do so.
8. “How Will BlogRush Stop People From Abusing The Network?”
We are putting many things in place (in addition to what we already have.) We are also in the process of activating a full “Review” process for all member blogs; using some automation and HUMAN REVIEW. Please know that BlogRush will do everything necessary to stop all fraud and abuse of our system. We have no choice but to protect the integrity of our network.
BONUS CREDITS ON THE WAY!
We have decided to take our entire surplus of syndication credits and give them to YOU the user. We will be randomly distributing all extra credits amongst our entire network for awhile to reward our early adopters.
Many of you have asked for a copy of our video to post on your own blog. We are working on this and hope to have it for you — it will be a version without the “click on the button below” ending since it will be on your blog.
A sincere THANK YOU for your support of BlogRush and for your patience and understanding. Please know that we are in this for the LONG-TERM and this isn’t just some FAD for generating a short burst of traffic. We will be continuously improving BlogRush for a very long time to come.
Best Regards,
John Reese
I’m glad they have given us some feedback on some of the problems but it just highlights even more how much this site was just not ready to be launched. I understand some problems cannot be found until it goes live but most of these problems could have been resolved before the site was promoted. Perhaps they should have launched in Beta Mode for the first few weeks with a selection of bloggers so that they could iron out all the bugs in the system.
Anyways, as I said, it’s good to see they are going to resolve these problems soon 
Link : BlogRush
Jonathan Street | September 18th, 2007 at 6:25 am #
I’ll need to watch the demo video again (no audio at the moment) but it looks to me like they misrepresented their formula.
I can’t say I’m surprised. Until people refer others they’ll have close to 4 surplus ‘headline’ slots for every impression.
Even with all the referrals taken into account I suspect they’ll have far more than 10% of the credits with which to monetize the network. I doubt many people will reach 10 tiers.
Zuggu.com | September 18th, 2007 at 8:10 am #
As you said on the previous post, BlogRush was absolutely Rushed. Look at the email…”We are putting many things in place”, “It took us longer than expected to have the tutorials ready”, “We’ll be posting the FAQ very soon”, “and we just about have it fixed”
Is something ready???
On the other hand point number 5 says “While we’ve been busy optimizing our network” and it should said “While we’ve been busy trying to get people to subscribe”..
Kevin | September 18th, 2007 at 8:17 am #
Have a look at Zac Johnsons post about it.
Jonathan - You make a very very good point. I doubt anyone will go past 3 tiers nevermind 10. They are going to have a lot of unused ad inventory which means bloggers are basically putting advertising on their blog in return for nothing.
Stay away.
What has surprised is the number of high profile bloggers who have raved about this without giving it any criticism. The whole thing has really given me doubts about the integrity of some bloggers.
Patches and Hacks | September 18th, 2007 at 10:13 am #
Everybody using the service is putting advertising on their blogs in return for nothing ( or very little ) anyway. If it’s free and it brings in as much as 1% of your page views I think it’s not that bad. But the service does need more work. there are a lot of things that need to be fixed/improved ( like targeting ), widget customization, reports and maybe others. The have to move fast or else the buzz will go away pretty fast…
Jonathan Street | September 19th, 2007 at 2:32 am #
The latest post over at problogger surprised me. It looks like even with an excess of ‘headline’ spaces in the widget they’re still having trouble serving impressions. A possible explanation is this bit in the statement:
The other piece of news is a click through rate of 0.05%. For me this was less surprising. There is really no reason to display the widget prominently, you’ll get no greater benefit, so why would you? Add to that the poor relevancy and you’re going to get a low CTR.