After two months of giving Blogrush a full chance on my site, placing it above the fold as recommended, I have joined the ranks of Court and others who have given it the boot. I will explain the rationale and how this could possibly work for you, and its drawbacks. As a souvenir of my three month engagement with Blogrush and for those who haven’t come across this widget, here is what it looks like:

The concept as stated by John Reese is great in principle. One of the business angles for this tool is similar to that of McDonalds. The burger giant is very clear about their business – they are in the real estate business owning prime property and Blogrush had this initial business appeal that I liked.

Where it falls short, is on the claim about driving traffic to your blog vs. driving traffic away from your blog. Blogrush’s point system favors people who are in multi tiered network marketing like pyramid schemes (for the lack of a better way to say this). You earn points if you display the widget on your site and exponential points for recruiting others who use the widget on their site. Those that have recruited others benefit from more display of their blog titles on the Blogrush network.

So let’s look at the numbers. In the last 30 days there were about 26,000+ blogrush views at SEOecom with a total of 7 inbound clicks. Regarding outbound clicks, this is where the numbers aren’t shown to anyone (hush-hush style reporting, another sign of deception). I personally have read more than 7 blogs displayed on blogrush in the last 30 days. Those I clicked on had good catchy headlines and then I landed on poor content articles or good product pitch blogs, with the title as a decoy. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that out of 26,000 views, how many outbound clicks would occur at 1% click through rate! Compare this to your inbound clicks to decide if Blogrush is delivering on its promise to get you more traffic.

 

I am sure the wise guys at Blogrush would have you believe, it’s all about making your title more interesting to get inbound clicks. I am just not happy about directing my readers to contents on which I have landed and that which has no real value! So how do you get traffic to your blog? Natural search remains very powerful for bringing in traffic, along with Digg, Stumble and hundred other social network channels. Quality of the content is something not factored in Blogrush business model.

To all my Drupal followers and others who may have added this widget on my suggestion or emails, I apologize and suggest you make your own independent evaluation for Blogrush. Blogrush can work for you if you spend your time recruiting others, but on the internet, pyramid schemes run on steroids and the last tier sufferers can collapse a pyramid really fast! Use at your own discretion.