BlogRush Shutting Down

Looks like we have seen the last of the widget banner exchange service BlogRush.

If you visit the website all you will see if this message :

After careful consideration, we have decided to shutdown the BlogRush service. If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it.

When BlogRush launched in late-2007 it spread like wildfire all over the Web. Thousands of bloggers were talking about it and the service exploded to become one of the fastest growing free services in the history of the Web. During the first year of the service it successfully served 3.4 Billion blog post headlines and the BlogRush widget could be found on blogs all over the world; even up until the moment we closed down the service.

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs. This was our primary focus. Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else. BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue. We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later. Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped. (It happens.)

I want to say “Thank You” to all of the great bloggers that at least gave BlogRush a test to see if it would work for them. We sincerely appreciate you giving the service a try.

We have received several offers & inquiries about acquiring BlogRush, but we are choosing not to go that route. While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it’s the ‘right’ thing to do for our users. Believe it or not, it’s not always about the money. In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it’s all said and done, and it was by choice. There were many things we could have done to monetize the service but we wanted to make sure it was going to benefit our users first.

Last but not least I want to say that I hope the failure of this service doesn’t in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from “going for it” to just try and see if something will work. Without trying there can be no success. And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn’t be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.

On behalf of the entire BlogRush team, we wish the best of luck to everyone with their own blogs, ideas, and crazy ventures.

Sincerely,

John Reese

http://twitter.com/johnreese

Personally I’m glad to see the back of Blogrush. When it first came out I said that BlogRush Was Rushed. I tried to give the network the benefit of doubt and hoped that most of the problems would be resolved but they weren’t. The whole thing was a shambles from start to finish and they launched with half the site incomplete. And most importantly, bloggers who used it lost more visitors than they gained.

The launch of Blogrush also changed my opinion of 3 or 4 high profile bloggers. I won’t name names but it was clear that those who knew John Reese personally gave the network a much different review from those who didn’t. These bloggers were highly critical of other services yet raved about BlogRush and promoted it heavily. I do understand giving a slightly favourable review to a friends new website or service but they could have at least pointed out some of the bad points about it. At the very least they didn’t have to promote it so heavily and tell their readers to use the service because the referral system clearly favoured those at the top, just like any pyramid scheme.

If you do use BlogRush, the first thing you need to do is remove the widget from your blog as the service is no longer active. I would also discourage you from using this kind of banner exchange in the future as usually only 50% of the visitors are returned and whilst the visitors you send away are probably targeted to your blog, the ones which visit your blog from another widget might not be.

Some more blogs who have covered this story :

• Blogrush – Mi Ultimo Adios (My Last Farewell) – Thanks Athlon, your forum post brought this to my attention.
• BlogRush Joins The Deadpool – Written by Jeff Chandler
• Blog Rush Shutting Down (I Told You…) – Daniel was one of the few high profile bloggers who criticized the service from the start.
• RIP BlogRush (2007 – 2008)

Written by Kevin Muldoon from Blog Themes Club
Posted on October 30th, 2008 and filed under Blogging News
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