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.
Impressions – 4,416
Clicks – 4
I think the CTR will get better as they allow us to customize it and hopefully give us more choices of widgets as far as shape and size go.
According to Google Analytics I’ve had 3 visits from widget.blogrush.com and average time on site was 21 seconds with a bounce rate of 66.67%.
Average time on site is 1min 35seconds with a bounce rate of 35.79% The differences in the stats are a little disheartening. I’m honestly not sure why Blog Rush is more advantageous than something like Stumble Upon where I average 1min 27 seconds on site with a bounce rate of 31.85%. At least with stumble upon people are making their decision based on the content of the site not on the headlines.
Credits Earned Last 7 Days: 20,458
From Your Traffic: 18,984
From Your Referral Network: 1,474
Current Credit Balance 15,364
IMPRESSIONS 5,094
CLICKS 1
(nb back end stats & analytics are reporting 2 clicks). Have to work on more engaging titles, I think.
blogrush said copy and paste to wordpress widget but my wordpress.com account will not let me use javascript
bummer
I have had 1,551 impressions and 2 clicks. It’s a pretty awful percentage when you think about it. I like the idea and dare I say the look of the widget but I’m not sure it’s going to get the results that were predicted.
My site is down right now but I have it on my blog. I’ve heard so much bad press though that I think I am going to remove the widget.
Like I’ve said on my own blog, Blog Rush is a useless banner-exchange system with a twist. Instead of banners, you exchange headlines or post titles.
As long as bloggers continue to be selfish (installing Blog Rush as the bottom of their pages) and as long as it’s not a requirement to place Blog Rush at a prominent position, you will get no significant traffic from this new service.
And it’s the worst kind of traffic exchange because Blog Rush puts your headline up against four other headlines, makes your opinion less important on your blog because now any site could get linked from your blog, and Blog Rush links back to itself.
Blog Rush was built to benefit BlogRush.com, not you. You’ve all been WAMBOOZLED!
I’m not sure how bloggers are going to keep the widget above the fold unless they have two sidebars. Their RSS subscriptions and Recent Posts will probably fill the fold (mine does!)
So is this a lot more hype than it actually is? Lets give Time a chance to tell.
I’ve gotten about 20 hits from blogrush and I don’t even have the widget installed. It was too big to fit in my sidebar. They really need to make it customizable so all blogs can use it. Fortunately I referred a lot of people to it so I have a lot of credits. I guess the credits work even if you don’t have the widget installed. :) I think my blog name makes people curious so they click on it. lol
On the other hand, Small Potato, I’ve found BlogRush is as good for the blogger as the visitor.
I think it’s too early to completely write off the system, so I don’t particularly consider myself “wamboozled” (bamboozled?). I’ve discovered four or five new blogs in my niche already via the widget. Yes, I could’ve found them in other ways, but it was BR that helped.
My current credit balance is 30,695 and I referred 4 bloggers. This is for Novak’s Blog
Figures are very ordinary at the moment … but will stick with it and see where it goes.
I was considering BlogRush but after seeing these stats and many other peoples stats, it just isn’t worth my time.
Stats on http://malaysiacrimewatch.lokety.com and http://glob.lokety.com:
Credit: 404
Impression: 129
Click: 0
The links on my widget are quite relevant, so I think it’s important to select the most appropriate blog category.
I hope BR will be able to expand on multiple categories and look and feel customization of the widget.
Current Credit Balance: 257
Credits Earned Today: 322
From Your Traffic: 19
From Your Referral Network: 303
So that means 303-257=46 page views. So far, wordpress has registered 3 clicks through the blogrush widget. 6% clickthrough rate…. Hmm…. seems pretty high, anyone confirms I didn’t miscalculate something please ;)
They all come to this post title “How can I say no?”
Well, it seems that I miscalculated the impressions XD and didn’t see the thing beneath it. 303 views. So it’s not much either. Hopefully it will change.
I discovered a bug in that I’ve seen a blogger own headline appeared in his own widget. So I suggest you add your own blog domain into the URL filters list
10,000 credits earned (8500 from me).
3600 impressions.
2 referrals (without even asking).
1 click.
.00028% CTR.
The 1 click thing is interesting because my stats show that I’ve had 8 visits from the BlogRush widget. This would increase my CTR to .0022%. Still not very good.
I’ve had 186 impressions, and 2 click-throughs. So, about 1% CTR. Which is pretty good, as far as I’m concerned (especially considering the results above).
Regarding the person above who mentioned that they didn’t have the widget installed, but were still receiving credits and impressions…. I think that’s something that really needs to be fixed. I don’t think it’s really fair that people are getting their headlines displayed without giving anything back.
Meant to include above that I’ve seen quite a few pages show up that don’t have the widget installed. I’d almost say that it’s been as many as half of the blogs I’ve clicked through to.
After reading some of the above comments I’ve decided to pull the BlogRush widget until I read some pleasant reviews about the service.
Same here, atrocious results and b*ggers up my loading quite often. Pulling it, this thing’s dead.
Credits Earned: 144
Impressions: 51
Clicks: 0
Much like I was expecting really. I don’t see this bringing a lot of traffic but as I have only a small amount of traffic every bit of exposure helps.
i have made almost 1500 impressions over some blogs in total, but only got 4 clicks. no referrals yet.
Forget the stats inside Blogrush, that doesn’t account for the overflow, only on earned credits.
Look at your Google Analytics, or MBL stats or whatever other live stats you use.
Referral credits are not being used yet
I suppose I need to write yet anther post to clarify how things seem to be allocated.
My stats:
IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
TODAY 148 0
LAST 7 DAYS 269 0
LAST 30 DAYS 269 0
So if I got click right now, I would have a ctr of 0.25%
TODAY 160 0
LAST 7 DAYS 802 3
LAST 30 DAYS 802 3
Joined 2 days ago:
My stats look low as well here is the review:
IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
TODAY 2561 3
LAST 7 DAYS 6219 9
LAST 30 DAYS 6219 9
6 referrals
I think this is poor as well, ill give another 10 days and see how it works, if not that thing is gone!
Thanks for sharing your !
My post about blogrush:
BlogRush New Tool To Maximize Your Blog Traffic
The very low CTR is not impressive.
But I like what Andy Beard said about BlogRush being a “discovery tool” and am trying to view it that way… at least while the bumps get worked out.
That’s one hideously butt-ugly widget, though… I sure wish BlogRush would make it so that the styles could be tweaked. A theme-appropriate appearance would help persuade me to keep the widget on my sidebar long enough to give it a fair trial…
I pulled the widget Monday. Not sure if its Adsense freindly yet with conflicting info out there. Another thing is, with the size of my blog, it would take forever to get to a point where mine would be showing up regularly enough to have it be worth it for me right now. Maybe when my blog grows up.
1700 credits, 450 impressions, 0 clicks. I’m sure the low CTR is because people are putting the widget where it won’t be seen, some even putting it inside a and hiding it. Too bad it can be so easily abused and defeated. I have it in a prominent location but I’m going to probably drop it.
I’m getting a 7.8% CTR over the past three days!
I’m not sure what is wrong with all you pro-bloggers out there because I seem to be getting WAY better results than anyone commenting here. Either that or I’m calculating it wrong. Check it out.
617 total credits
258 credit balance
= 332 impressions served
According to statcounter I received 26 click throughs from the BlogRush widget.
26/332 = .0783 = 7.8% CTR
Maybe I’m not calculating this correctly but if I am it seems pretty damn good to me. My widget is in the “lifestyle” category and the post that has been receiving all the clicks is titled, “How I Got a Date From Facebook“
I’ve used a similar widget called The Good Blogs for sometime now. It has had a similarly disappointing click through rate for me as well, but at least that widget allows the promise of customization.
Has anyone yet developed a widget that allows you to build YOUR OWN network of specific RSS feeds you want to show up in your sidebar? Or is that too obvious?
I definitely think the low CTR has to do with their system not updating accurately yet. Everyone might be better off checking under their stats for external links to get a more accurate portrayal on how well BlogRush has been helping them. This thing is in the very beginning stages too and John Reese knows what he’s doing so I would wait it out a bit before deleting it.
@Mark Goodyear – you can just share items from Google Reader in a widget on your blog, but unless the other blogs also share your items equally, it doesn’t give you any traffic in return.
I used the Goodblogs for a while and then removed it. It was too complicated and hard to track how effective it was, but in general the traffic gain was less than Blogrush by a long way.
The quality of content displayed wasn’t necessarily any better.
Thanks for the response, Andy. I guess it’s time to switch from Bloglines to Google…
Mark, that is just one way of doing it.
There are lots of ways to import RSS feeds into a blog sidebar, and lots of ways an OPML file can be shared.
If you do the research, there are literally 10s, maybe hundreds of widgets that can share feeds, scripts that can share feeds, plugins for using blogrolls to share latest posts etc.
You could also plug your OPML into a site like Megite.com to let it choose what are the hot topics in your niche that most people are linking to, and then add the feed from Megite to your sidebar.
But those all just give traffic to someone… potentially
I have also tracked traffic from being a top commenter on Marketing Pilgrim, listed sitewide – that gave almost no traffic.
I’m getting something like 293 impressions, 1 click so far. I’ve been busy the last few days though, and haven’t written as much as usual.
today:
IMPRESSIONS CLICKS
248 0
The last time I looked I’d earned about 750+ credits and about 400 impressions all resulting in 0 clicks.
Like you I was expecting a low click through, but I was thinking more in the 1%-2% range. I do agree it’s way too early to make and definitive statements. I’m sure BlogRush will need some time to better target the ads and I’d imagine that it’s so new many people don’t realize they’re supposed to click on those links.
If so then blogrush wouldn’t increase your blog traffic. I used their widget . You can’t changes its size even. I was unable to add it to blog template .
I’ve tried the Blog Rush widget for two days and here’s the results:
Impressions – 404
clicks – 0
Waiting in queue – 467
No clicks yet…
I think the blog widget looks like an ad. =)
Since they don’t let you customize the skin or anything it really isnt all that nice to have on a well designed blog that has it’s own template.
I bet you readers are glazing right over it.
Perhaps I missed something but I do not see the widget on your site.
I was showing BlogRush on PCMech.com. Gave them about 25,000 impressions. They gave me about 2,200. Resulted in 2 clicks. Two words: Screw that.
I think one of the big problems here is that the “rush” is only among bloggers trying to get traffic. End users just don’t care. It’s one-sided, and as I said on webbyonline.com, it’s structured like a pyramid scheme.
1154 impressions, 1 click
too early to tell but reminds me of the pyramid scheme.
3,000 imps from referrals and 2 clicks…definitely not addign the widget to my site
They’ve just sent out an email defending their program. I’ve posted a couple of excerpts if you’re interested.
http://www.webmaster-source.com/2007/09/19/blogrush-defends-their-program/
I think 1% is a really unrealistic expectation for BlogRush. They could have it start whistling the “Star Spangled Banner” when the page loads and you aren’t going to get that. Since there are 5 headlines shown at any given time that would be a 5% click through on the widget as a whole.
My stab at it is that somewhere in the 0.3% to 0.4% would have to be considered a success.
Also, I think that BlogRush is more likely going to bring in new potential readers rather than current readers. With a blog as widely read as ProBlogger within its niche, many of the people that are seeing the headline on the widget are probably already subscribers or frequent visitors to the site and may have already been exposed to the post.
Of course, there are things that could improve it – the widget is to “heavy” looking and needs to be customizable. More like AdSense. It also needs the ability for bloggers to be able to select the posts from their feed that they want to promote so that people begin to learn that there is great content lurking in the BlogRush widget, as opposed to what someone had for breakfast.
Blog Rush has sent visitors to my blog, but they need to improve their user interface. I tried to retrieve my stats the other night, and I could not retrieve them.
I found a nice trick to get 4.5 times more traffic through BlogRush. I posted an article about it on my blog (it’s really quite simple!)
http://blogsformoney.com/post/Clever-Trick-Getting-45-Times-More-Traffic-From-BlogRush.aspx