It seems that BlogRush (the traffic generating tool released earlier in the week which I gave a first impression review of here) has updated the member dashboard to give publishers statistics on how things are performing.
I’d be interested to collect some data from readers on how it is going for everyone.
My own results have some good and bad things about them.
On the positive side I’ve referred quite a few bloggers to the program which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of credits. I’ve earned a lot more credits so far than they seem to have been able to serve.
On the negative side – while my headlines have been shown around 70,000 times I’ve only had 35 clicks on them. That is an extremely low Click Through Rate of 0.05%! I didn’t expect it to be high but thought it might have got somewhere in the 1% range (which would have brought in 700 clicks from the 70,000 – but this is pretty disappointing.
I know it is still very early days and they’ll find ways to improve things but it’s not a great start in terms of driving actual traffic so far.
Now that could have something to do with my headlines (although I try to write engaging ones) – however I suspect it also has something to do with the positioning that a lot of bloggers are using for the widget. I’ve seen a lot of widgets low on pages where I suspect they’ll rarely be seen by readers – let alone clicked.
It’s easy to look at these results and give up on BlogRush – I personally think it’s too early to jump ship or write it off completely. This is just a few days into launch and the only way is up in terms of performance. I suspect that the BlogRush developers will test and tweak their design and add new categories to make links in the widget more relevant to content on blogs.
I’m going to try to improve the CTR by trying a few of the techniques in my Tips for Using BlogRush post – particularly experimenting with different categories.
PS: I’m looking forward to seeing more detailed reports (still under construction) as I can’t wait to see how my different blogs have performed as compared to one another. Having this information will help bloggers improve their own CTR as they test different categories and watch to see how they convert differently.
hmm my stats today:
Current Credit Balance: 193, 0 clicks
it is kinda low on my sidebar however, right under my affiliate links module.
same ehre darren – I have up to 2 tiers I have a pretty good referrals – but clicks is very low and I think my analytics and this widget is a little false – I am still testing and checking to see how this is working out
but CTR looks low – and yes you are right lots of blogs have the widget on the lower part of their blog
Current Credit Balance: 102, 5 impr, 0 clicks, no blogger under me
i don’t even want to report how low they are :), although it is low on my site as it doesn’t fit into my design that well.
I just posted on this today. I haven’t seen a lot of traffic from it.
I’ll go back out to the dashboard, though. I haven’t seen it since they put the statistics up. (At least the stat weren’t there earlier today.)
I got one click from 135 impressions. I think this has a lot to do with the position of the widget and the headlines.
The items are so poorly targeted at the moment. I think it would be good if you could not only block keywords but also specify keywords that you prefer. Maybe that would make the results better targeted.
I’ve picked up a couple referred and have 638 impressions and 0 click thru; on a new site.
Was wondering how well the click thru rate would be, also if there would end up being lots of spam
Ok I just re-read my stats, starting to get this… over the last 7 days I earned 354 credits… checked again just now and I’m down to 188 credits. Which means my blog posts got seen about 166 times so far.
But ya still 0 clicks
I’m not using BlogRush, and I don’t think it would really suit me anyways. My thought is that maybe instead of going impression for impression, why don’t they go click for click instead? If you serve 10 clicks, you get 10 clicks. That would eliminate the incentive for free riders to put the widget in a spot that would typically get a poor click-through-rate.
Low…very low. Not a single click, but several hundred impressions if I’m reading it correctly.
I’ve only had it up a day now & I’m underwhelmed. Part of the problem for me is that my blog doesn’t easily fit into any one category (I write about children’s crafts and activities). I’ve experimented with several categories & the content that gets served is pretty much not relevant at all to my readers. I imagine the reverse is true of my posts on the categories I’m served with.
My next experiment will be to tweak the keyword filtering to at least knock out the stuff that’s obviously a bad fit.
Still, it’s fun to try a new tool and I can see how this could work well for folks who have more mainstream content to share.
I have the feeling that the credit-promise of BlogRush is not tenable, because of mathematical reasons. Its seems to be a pyramit scheme that will brake down for late adopters. I am no mathematician and too lazy. Can sombody calculate it?
For early adopters who already have some traffic BlogRush should generate some additional traffic. For late comers and smaller blogs it could be better to boycott it.
Wow. 0.05% CTR, that is abysmal. Assuming 50 cents per click value (I’m being generous) that’s a 25 cent eCPM. Ouch. At what point can we declare this thing dead in the water?
If you are small and lat BlogRush will cost you real estate and you will lose some traffic and win almost nothing. Thats my feeling, at least.
Current Credit Balance: 24
Credits Earned Today: 5
From Your Traffic: 5
From Your Referral Network: 0
And that sad part is, I believe those are all from me checking on my comments…
Although I just started my blog last weekend, so I’m not really expecting heavy traffic… haha…
I was going through my referrals and have come across a few referrals from the Blog Rush widget, yet on the statistics it says I have 0 clicks. I dont think they match up 1:1
Current Credit Balance: 3,289
Total Clicks: 0
What’s up with that? I am still yet to get a click. I haven’t even seen my link come up on the widget even once!
Lets assume it, if a no one launches a product like this he/she would be demolished… this is not the case because of the background of the creator …
I just shared my awful stats on Marketing Pilgrim.
Current Credit Balance: 4,312
Impressions Since Launch: 2,808
Clicks: 0
However, I have seen at least 2 blogrush referrals in my wordpress stats. The BR stats aren’t perfectly accurate, but I think the clickthrough rate kind of speaks for itself.
I think part of the reason is that blog widgets don’t get placed in high traffic areas of a website. They’re generally below the fold, in a sidebar, mixed in with a stack of other junk. After all, that’s where I put mine!
Slightly off topic: How did you guys keep Blogrush from showing a list of multi-level marketing sites and other stuff?
Complete garbage, and its already gone for me. NOONE is putting the widget in a high traffic area, including me, so the CTR is obviously gonna be terrible. I’d rather run an ad or something than that widget, I think an ad will have just about as much benefit to the user.
Not very impressive.
Credits:
Current Credit Balance: 574
Credits Earned Today: 352
From Your Traffic: 352
From Your Referral Network: 0
Credits Earned Last 7 Days: 1,026
From Your Traffic: 1,026
From Your Referral Network: 0
Credits Earned Last 30 Days: 1,026
From Your Traffic: 1,026
From Your Referral Network: 0
Syndication:
IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
TODAY 286 2
LAST 7 DAYS 449 3
LAST 30 DAYS 449 3
Note: My suggestion to the Blogrush folks would be to allow the users to edit the widget size, shape, colors, etc.
Hey,
I wrote an article posting my own stats (with images). My click though ratio is less than .01
http://theblogbeat.com/blogrush-the-results-are-in/
These… comments certainly aren’t encouraging. On the plus side, I sat and watched the whole promotional movie, very well made. :)
My blog is really small – so it shows in my statistics.
Impressions: 63
Referrals: 0
Clicks: 0
Not a single click through.
Pretty disappointing.
I agree with loldogs, we should be able to customize our widget.
I pulled the widget. They seemed to be having technical issues yesterday. Every time they had a problem and the widget wouldn’t display, it blanked out the rest of my sidebar. I’ve got established income-generating items there, I can’t afford to have an inconsistent new service messy with that.
98 impressions
0 clicks
That’s only 3 days worth of info on an unpopulated blog. Though I agree with some of the other comments that this will be limited to early adapters and larger blogs.
I tried this on Dumb Little Man and I quickly removed it after seeing spam for ‘fake handbags”. I just can’t subject readers to that.
On Diethhack, a smaller blog that I own, I was more patient and while the spam factor was surprisingly much lower in that niche, I just don’t see any value in keeping this up. Diethack had 4K page views today and I still don’t see the value.
I anticipate removing it at some point over the next few days and replacing it with my old homegrown “related topic” feed that shares posts from other blogs.
I hate to be a downer, but I don’t like it. I’d rather handpick the blogs that I send readers to. Maybe I am paranoid about credibility…
– Jay
Stats: 666 impressions, 2 clicks.
Where is your widget? I am not seeing where you are collecting stats from.
Debo Hobo,
I was going to ask the same thing but I’m guessing he probably has it on one of his other blogs.
I have 8 bloggers under me and I’m showing over 17,000 impressions with 3 total clicks…
I’m giving it another week or so and if things don’t improve it’s gone! The headlines are not nearly topic specific enough and I don’t see the benefit to my readers.
Plus, I think the whole thing is a little strange. It’s not really ground breaking stuff, just marketed well.
Which makes me think that it’s most useful for John to gather all of the analytics and study them for his own use.
Yikes. 196 impressions, 0 clicks.
2400 impressions today 4 clicks. This is most likely going to get worse I have a feeling.
I got 78 impressions and 4 clicks, sadly I dont have thousands of bloggers referred under me so …..meh!
3,063 impressions
3 views
I’m not to confident in the numbers Blogrush is showing in their dashboard. They say I have 0 clicks so far, however I see referalls from widget.blogrush.com in my site analytics package.
Either blogrush is slow to update or its not accurate.
Since everyone is positioning all their widgets in the worst possible place why expect anyone to click on it. I remembering banner exchange programs where people put them bellow their pages. I think the same thing is happening.
I got my stats darren I did a little Google Apps thingy too – to show everyone – I got a higher CTR than you darren that cant be – but you have tons more traffic than me :)
My Stats:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWdbCDgZ_kj0LIVEnq6lkDQ
My stats show 400 impressions and 1 click.
HOPING FOR RESULTS IN A NON-BLOGGING CATEGORY…
Does that count as a “compelling 7-word title”? :)
Anyway, I’m not all that surprised to hear that your CTR is really low… I’d imagine that a lot of the early adopters are just focused on getting this widget online and building referrals – and I’d bet that since the majority of users will be bloggers who blog about blogs you’re not likely to get a lot of clicks.
My hope is that the usage in some non-blogging categories (e.g., Photography in my case) will lead to more clicks due to a more targeted readership interested in related articles; not just in referral links.
I am also finding that my BlogRush stats are off. I have a couple referrals showing in my WP stats as being from BlogRush, but am also seeing 0 clicks.
The countdown has begun for removing BlogRush. While I’m happy to be an early adopter, I’m not seeing the value as of yet.
I removed the BlogRush widget. I read somewhere that it could potentialy violate the Google AdSense TOS.
I’m really not sure, but before things cleared up, I’m putting the use of the widget on hold.
101 impressions 0 clicks. Will shoot myself tonight.
Hey Darren,
My CTR is incredibly low too, 0 clicks and several thousand impressions. Hopefully we’ll see improvement in the coming weeks.
I think the CTR is so low because most bloggers place the widget too far down in their sidebars. There should be a lesson on BlogRush optimization. Thanks for the info Darren. If a big time blogger like you has such a low CTR, then there’s little hope for small fishes like myself.
So far I’ve got 11 clicks against 12,951 impressions with 64K credits remaining and 27 bloggers in my referral network. I could see how this could compound upon itself and eventually snag me 100 clicks a day or something. But yeah it’s not built with the small blog in mind.
Blogrush says that I have 112 total impressions and a doughnut for click-thrus. That said, I think that Blogrush is slow at updating as my traffic has jumped a bit in the two days that I’ve been using the widget. Or it could just be a conincidence.