Many of the most prominent and trusted bloggers got caught up in the Blog Rush launch party. It’s almost shameful the lack of distinction and critical thinking displayed…
“Get a Tidal Wave of Free Targeted Traffic to Your Blogâ€, they trumpeted.
The only problem is that Blog Rush is an over hyped shinny turd with 3 major flaws so obvious every email I get about it makes me bow my head in disgust.
1) Ghastly Pyramid Scheme: You can’t receive traffic that doesn’t exist…
Come on, this isn’t even funny. Even a flunkee of grade school math should be able to see that Blogrush is promising more traffic than it is possible to deliver. And by a monstrous margin.
Let’s break it down in a simplified manner.
John has a blog that gets 10,000 daily impressions. He was one of the fat cat first adopters so he referred 50 people on whatever level of the pyramid. It doesn’t matter since he gets 1 impression for each impression on the blogs he referred up to 10 levels deep.
These 50 blogs he referred total 200K impressions daily.
Since the Blogrush widget displays 5 links on every impression, John can provide 50K impressions daily, but he is owed 200k.
That’s the top of the pyramid. Â What of the bottom?
On the tenth level, any referral creates the need for 10 times their daily impressions. Â If they get 200 daily page views, that means that each of the 9 people above in the referral chain are owed 200 impressions.
That’s 1800 impressions. Â Add them to those now owed to this particular blogger and you get 2000 impressions. Â Yet his 200 page views can only provide 1000 impressions.
Thus there is more traffic owed than traffic available.
Compensation for this factor either does not exist or does so at the expense of those on the bottom step of the pyramid. The system is flawed.
If it involved money instead of traffic, an as of yet unregulated resource, it would be branded a ponzi scheme and closed down by the FTC.
2) The Black Hats have Already Spoiled the Party:
As pointed out by several shadow dwellers, the system is unbelievably easy to game. All you have to do is setup a simple script on several domains and spoof impressions with random user agents, rotating proxies through TOR.
It doesn’t take many people gaming the system for hundreds of thousands of credits each to quickly throw a wrench into the already invalid system.
People are doing it already. Expect it to become a plague. You can get the code to do so right here.
People like Andy Beard have already posted to the effect that they will “filter out†blogs that have no content, or are spammy.
Since you can choose where you attribute your credits, the black hat can “earn†a million impressions using one of the scripts above and then send it to a legit blog to be monetized.
In not time, the smart bloggers will realize they are feeding spam empires with their precious blog real estate.
This won’t be easy to counter… that is, if the black hats even find it worth doing because:
3) CTR is Pathetic:
Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim released his stats here. Not only did he get less than 10% of the impressions he was owed, his clickthrough rate was 0.0017% (3 visitors from 1,715 impressions).
But wait a minute, Blogrush is still new. Once the ad blindness sets in, the results will be even more amazing.
In other words, you are chucking out that part of your screen real estate for peanuts. If you really want traffic for your blog, use that space to monetize. Buy some text links or traffic from somewhere else. Then it will actually be targeted and worth doing.
Use that large rectangle for an affiliate banner, datafeed, even adsense for chrisakes, or maybe a widget that actually provides a semblance of community and value like mybloglog or bumpzee.
In other words, it’s barely even worth gaming, which says a lot about the overall value of the system.
Thanks for the waste of bandwidth.
Popularity: 20% [?]
take this blackhatdomainer idiot out… he just copied my article…
Done.
I agree that traffic exchange systems can easily be manipulated. I think the bigger problem is that so many bloggers are looking for a quick traffic fix. In my opinion, John Reese is super smart and is probably collecting loads of data from this widget. But for users of the widget it will be a very mixed experience. I for one decided not to join when I saw it in pre-launch.
BeachBum Michael
Hey beachbum,
I have plenty of respect for John Reese. I can’t really understand why he would put out something so obviously flawed. The market seems to be eating it up. Time will tell…
Lets just look at it from the none BH perspective initially
1. The Pyramid
There is decreasing credits as you go down the referral structure, such that the referral scheme only uses up to 90% of the total exposures in the system… sometimes
Yep sometimes, because the head of the structure has no upline, and have in general the highest traffic. That is a lot of unallocated credits which are being given out to those sites- those credits are being given out such that the small traffic blogs benefit (yes I know that benefits spammy BH sites as well
) – that is why I have had to block so many “hello world” blogs.
2. CTR – there is no data available to allow this to be calculated, because no data has been released for the bonus credits.
Andy Beal had:-
I have one test site that only gets low traffic, in the last 4 days just 70 visitors, and 10 of those have been from the widget.
Don’t forget you have to count CTR for the whole widget, not just an individual line when you compare it to advertising space it might take up, though many will show it lower down the page (greedy buggers)
Andybeard.eu has now received 79 clicks, and that is without any of the referral credits being used.
That would be a CTR above 1% or possibly 5% for the widget in total, but I can’t account for the bonus impressions that I have received, which are significant.
3. BH
Your point No.2, I am placing it No. 3
Yes your darker side will exploit the hell out of this widget for now. Maybe they will add a human verification system. That could still be exploited in all kinds of ways.
They could also easily use a few APIs and scrape some results.
Does the blog have Technorati Authority
Is the blog listed in blogsearch
Does the blog have some subscribers
Add a human reporting function
BH exploits in general low hanging fruit. John Reese isn’t low hanging fruit, though BR might be looked on that currently.
This isn’t a normal startup, he has fund to just go out and hire 20 humans for verification of every account if that is needed.
There are so many widgets out there that promise 1:1 ratios, you might as well go and exploit those. You can just exploit Google’s widgets for instance and get the occasional referral from Matt Cutt’s blog (at least he was once running their widget code with a Google search), haven’t checked recently)
I know that Blogrush is more attractive than “The Good Blogs” because it is topical and had a more successful launch than most startups will ever have unless owned by Keven Rose.
How heavily do Blackhats abuse Twitter? It is still so exploitable
The possibilities are endless.
Hi Andy,
You have good insight as usual…
1) I looked for the information to inhibit my theories and didn’t find it on the site. In fact I didn’t find a working FAQ page either…
2) CTR: You have the highest returns I have seen yet. Your name recognition might have something to do with it. It will be interesting to see the stats when they become available.
Right now it looks pretty dismal. How do you have time to block the spammy sites?
3) Yes, they could fix it. But they could have done it before. in fact the whole thing has a pre-beta feel to it. John Reese may not be low hanging fruit but he sure is making a case for it with this.
As you hint to, what makes it attractive is its vulnerable state combined with its popularity.
All in all, it remains a pyramid and a waste of screen real estate. Excluding monetization, there are more intelligent ways to syndicate content which the blogger will actually have approved of and such features would have made Blogrush much more interesting.
Finaly, you are the blog expert, or at least in my book. I have faith in your opinions and reviews but the advantages of Blogrush have yet to be demonstrated in any way. It’s certainly not in the “flood of free targeted traffic…”
Hey Bofu2U,
Indeed they are. This is going to be a long night for the Blogrush programmers…
Hey there Alex.
Nice to know I am not the only one who decided to give this thing a big miss!
Huge amounts of hype, some questionable returns, and (as you say), the blog real estate would be far more valuable hosting some ads or some form of monetization…
If the CTR is really that low, you’ve got to seriously consider whether its cheaper to pay for the clicks on Google and put a money earner in the spot than give up that space for the BR widget.
Mr Reese must be smart enough to figure out what’s likely to happen here, so I guess he has his own reasons for this, if nothing else than to create a huge amount of buzz.
No doubt he’ll earn some moolah on it someway… lets wait and see.
Eran Malloch
Hey Eran,
Agree with you 100%. John does know what he’s doing and undoubtedly will monetize this one way or another. Not that there’s anything wrong with monetizing…
Alex,
I feel like a complete jackass after reading and studying this post.
I put this on 2 blogs on Saturday when It was released. In relation to the top of the pyramid, my 2 blogs are not even at Cairo airport yet.
Only thing I had the intelligence to doubt was the CTR.
I just blindly followed the crowd. I’ll console and forgive myself only because John Reese is the Pied Piper here.
Great post and a super analysis of BR.
Kieran
Two points NOT covered anywhere in this post (nor in comments so far)…
1) I never even stopped to do all the (excellent) analysis listed here. I passed, due to one factor: “Over-hyped”.
Recently, I have found that passing on anything over-hyped, appears to be the most reliable Anti-Crap Filter in the Internet business.
2) Goodbye John Reese?
John Reese appeared to be one of those RARE Internet “gurus”, who actually cared about his reputation.
Unlike the make-a-million-on-the-internet-by-buying-my-useless-ebook boys, who publish a “new” ebook every other month, (and who all seem to be British, for some reason?) – John sent out almost unheard of “apology emails”, anytime he felt in retrospect, that he’d made a mistake.
Now, one can only wonder:
Will we’ll be seeing one of those emails, in the near future…?
Hey,
Kieran: I think your “mistake” is understandable, if it really is one. I stick to my guns on the real estate part. If your blog could generate enough impressions to get a handful of visitors from Blogrush, it could do better some other way.
Ray: I like your crap filter.
I’m not ready to give up on John yet, he definitely is a cut above the rest. Marketing remains marketing and if you’re going to put up a product, go big or go home. That’s what he did here, and that’s why we’re even talking about it in the first place.
That whole apology bit really turned me off. So what the Rich Jerk uses strong language. It was a valid networking charity event. Get over it and put down the violin already.
[...] NetFrontierMarketing – 3 Reasons to Nuke it Now 1) Ghastly Pyramid Scheme: You can’t receive traffic that doesn’t exist… 2) The Black Hats have Already Spoiled the Party: 3) CTR is Pathetic [...]
Hey Alex, John Reese from BlogRush here. We appreciate all criticism and feedback — good or bad. That’s the only way we’ll be able to improve our service.
Just to clarify a few things…
You’re mistaken about this “pyramid scheme” you speak of. There is not one impression provided by the network that gets “promised into the future” as you suggest. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE NETWORK TO NOT SERVE WHAT IS EARNED. It’s because of the MATH. All the impressions are calculated UPWARDS. That’s the only way a “network effect” referral system like this can work. Every single widget impression (5 headlines served) is awarded with 1:10 (1 out of 10) being surplus that goes to the network — which will be used to monetize the service.
So just to clarify, there’s no “promising” of future impressions — each impression is awarded to the network based on the math formula. The FAQ page is up and explains the entire formula in detail (it’s also been listed within the dashboard stats every since we were able to get those released.)
We are moving to a 100% MANUAL REVIEW PROCESS — for all new blogs from now on and all old blogs. That alone will eliminate 99% of the cheaters.
We are working very hard to improve things for our members and we won’t stop until we’ve done the best we can do.
John Reese
(CONTINUED)…
The only reason some impressions are “held back” and not immediately delivered are because the system continues to ‘adjust’ based on the network size itself, as well as how many members in each category — because we serve each members’ credits in the category they choose. There ‘can’ be an imbalance of inventory in certain categories, but we’re able to make up that adjustment based on the “breakage” of math that occurs because all the accounts that immediately signed up essentially joined ‘under’ BlogRush — and so the network has a large percentage of surplus; which we are currently auto-distributing to all the members equally to help them get more traffic. We have plans to eventually give most of the bonus credits to our SMALL USERS since they need the traffic the most.
Hi John,
Thanks for dropping by.
Pyramid: Now that you have a FAQ page up that explains the math, I agree it’s not a pure pyramid.
You mention this was in the dashboard. I never signed up because the video seemed to suggest traffic was distributed otherwise.
I’m afraid it still doesn’t work for me though because the opportunity for traffic leak remains 5 times greater than the opportunity for traffic gain when the ration is 1:1. The only way to counter balance this is with referrals…
As for the Blackhats: I believe you will knock out the problem somewhat but the more noise you make in doing so, the more incentive you will give those who want to cheat to do so and brag about it. It will require more work than most perceive.
As for redistribution of credits, it’s a noble aspiration. I’m still concerned about quality and think the selection of categories by receivers will create an unworkable imbalance not only in the quantity of traffic available, but also its quality.
While I’m still not a BlogRush fan, I’m glad you weighed in to clarify some issues, it certainly makes it more palatable.
Alex I am going to rip off John’s second comment to add to my most recent post
One thing you might want to add is a permalink to comments
Hey Andy,
Go right ahead
1) A classy reply by John Reese.
a) Nice to see that at least HE believes in what he’s doing – and is trying his best to make it a “fair system”.
b) What a compliment to NFM that it was “worthy” of so rapid a response, by such a well-known Internet figure!
2) I still wouldn’t touch Blog Rush, with a 10-foot DSL cable.
Too complicated. Too untested. Too “leaky”. Too open to BH abuse.
Just too questionable…
Hey Alex,
Once the BH’s are mostly eliminated and all the haters tire of talking Blogrush down, It may work fairly well. There’s a tremendous interest in this concept and need for it.
I would be interested to hear how you would do this. Care to share? or is it a total waste trying to make it better than it currently is? What would you do to make it fairer or more ‘realistic’?
Bruce
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Hey Alex,
I like your review, very honest & insightful, I just linked to you.
Even if you wanna use BlogRush, put the widget at the bottom of your sidebar. Why give away traffic for free? (Even if the links open in a new browser.
I rather have ads on my sidebar.
Hey,
Bruce: I haven’t thought that much on how to improve it but if I had to take one direction it would be this: allow publishers more control on what content shows up in their widget. Arrange for a more equitable distribution of traffic.
Allow for publishers to be rewarded on CTR also, thus penalizing those that “cheat legally” by placing the widget where nobody sees it.
Samuel: Thanks for the link. I agree that is another problem. The widget only tracks impressions and that creates a gap between those that have it above the fold and those that hide it in the nether regions of the blog, this to the disadvantage of more comitted bloggers.
“Thus there is more traffic owed than traffic available.”
Your maths is completely flawed. They don’t pay out 1 credit for an impression by a 10th level referral, it’s 1/8th of a credit. The whole thing scales meaning for every impression (5 links), 4.5 credits are given out, learving 10% of impressions for BlogRush to keep themselves running.
Hi Danny,
My review was based on information available on the Blogrush site at the time of writing.
If you read the comments above, you’ll see I’ve corrected myself after being pointed to the facts concerned.
I finally got rid of it today.
http://www.semmy.name/index.ph…..-blogrush/
I gave it a break after their “initial launching problem†phase (you can call it public beta testing for nothing), but the widget is a pain in the ass. Even after they have done their quality assessment and booted a gazillion of blogs there are still “Hello World†blog entries on the system and totally non-content blogging stuff that is highly annoying to have in a widget that touts to bring target traffic to your blog.
There are better ways to bring traffic to your blog, and if it is with stealth strategies like http://www.buryadsense.com
Semmy Stumpp
http://www.semmy.name
Without Fun There Is No Success!
I heard about BR too and was overjoyed at what I thought it promised… I almost went for it! Thanks for the heads up.
On the other hand, though, I do appreciate John Reese getting on here and commenting and trying to clear things up. His argument isn’t good enough to convince me to register, but I do have a lot of respect for the guy.
Hey Guys,
It’s hard not to have respect for John after all he’s done in the industry.
As is often the case, some people will make the product or service out to be much more than it really is. I think that’s what motivated this post. There are far worse programs out there than Blog Rush and while the idea behind it has some value, the implementation could use a little work.