BlogRush - Yet Another Widget. But Kinda Cool
By Jay Thompson | September 16, 2007
Unofficially, there are 1,214,782 blog widgets out there. Some are very cool and useful, others not-so-much.
“Blog Rush” is a new widget that (according to them) can drive traffic to your blog:
BlogRush is a free service that was created to help bloggers solve their #1 need: More Readers For Their Blog.
By adding the BlogRush Widget to a blog, a blogger can get instant distribution for their latest blog post titles across a network of related blogs.
BlogRush users earn “syndication credits” (the right to have their blog post titles shown inside a widget on another related blog) based on their own traffic (loads of the widget) as well as the traffic of other users they refer to BlogRush. Users can automatically refer others to BlogRush via special links on the widget, as well as through the promotion of a special referral URL they are given.
Installing the widget is easy: register, provide your blog URL and feed URL and copy/paste a little code snippet and you’ll get this little gizmo in your sidebar. After 24 - 48 hours, your own links will start showing up in others BlogRush widgets. The more traffic/clicks your blog generates, and the more people you invite, the more often links to you show up in others widgets. (at least in theory, I’ll need more time to prove it.)
It’s a neat idea. How well it works of course will depend on how well it spreads and the penetration it gets. I’ve already seen it on a couple of real estate blogs.
Full disclosure - the links in this post to Blog Rush are referrals from my account. So I’ll get brownie points if you sign up that way. GeekEstate readers are sharp enough to figure out how to remove me from the loop (but why would you want to do that? 
)
Problogger has some good tips for optimizing. Andy Beard has his usual exquisite details.
My only gripe? I can’t customize the color scheme to fit my blog.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Author's Website: http://www.phoenixrealestateguy.com
7 Responses to “BlogRush - Yet Another Widget. But Kinda Cool”
Comments
« Fantasy Real Estate Coming Soon - Realius’s Price Me Now Game to be Launched at TechCrunch40 | Home | Q & A With PropertyQube.Com »
September 16th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Jay-
Do you think this is a widget that I should add to GeekEstate?
September 16th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Jay thanks for the h/t. ProBlogger is a major force in the blogosphere and when asked if we should wait or jump in, he noted that IF there are any benefits that it would be best to jump in to garner traffic.
My guess is that the next few weeks’ buzz will make it a great traffic supplement but I am dubious as to its future (and I don’t really need any more widgets on my page). The upside- I had ONE new visitor last night, so it’s brought at least that much! If I don’t like it, it’s just a code I can erase.
Not that you asked ME, but I would install it at least for a test trial.
September 16th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Drew - what Lani said.
September 16th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I just added it below the criteo widget.
September 17th, 2007 at 8:12 am
I look at the referral widgets a little differently than some. I was one of the early adopters of the Criterio widget on my blog. After a few months I removed it for a couple of reasons. The sites being referred, in many cases, did not really fit with the content of my blog. The primary reason I removed it was due to the fact it was showing blogs that I would never recommend to my readers. You have to look at it as a digital form of networking and if you wouldn’t feel good about having someone in your analog sphere of influence, the same has to hold true for your digital references. I didn’t check to see if there is a way to block certain sites, but even if there were, I wouldn’t have the time to continually manage the effort. I’d rather stick to managing the blog links on my site and leave it at that.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Pat Kitano sent me an invite for BlogRush and I went to check it out. Seems they have a filtering system so I can block sites that I do not want to appear in the widget, very cool indeed. I have added to my blog.
December 4th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
hmm i will install this .. under my tracker code .. i can believe when i use tag cloud the hosting server complain url limit .. so i odnt have tag cloud now..