BlogRush Has Closed Its Doors

After a few days away from posting on this blog, I’ll be resuming with some rather old news, but just as important as the day it was released.

BlogRush, the service that many low- and high-profile bloggers added to their blogs in hopes of gaining a lot of additional traffic.  Like many other startups, there were problems — from security issues to users who wanted to get more out of the system, gaming it to their advantage.

Eventually, many users found that the click-through rates and return for placing the rather large widget on their blog wasn’t worth it and removed it, criticizing the fact that it rewarded people who received large sums of traffic vs. those that really needed or could benefit from it.

While the project wasn’t successful in the sense it couldn’t stay alive and reward all parties, the owner and founder of the service says that he learned a lot about how to go through with future projects, and that no matter how “crazy” your idea may be, it could prove to be successful, no matter what others tell you.

My Opinion/Why I Never Used the Service

1. The service rewarded the people who could serve the most views of the widget, not those that had a quality blog.
2. Many high profile bloggers encouraged using the blog widget, as anyone who joined under them would be placed in their referral tree, thus receiving more placement of their posts on other blogs.
3. There was little reward for “smaller” bloggers — it took up space on your blog, and would mainly direct your readers to other blogs, not helping yourself.
4. There was little additional features other than the ability to receive some additional page views of your site (from other blogs using the widget).  Few features were added since it was launched.
5. Security and other problems plagued the system.
6. From the perspective of the owner, it was costly and there was no real way to monetize the system without angering its long-time members.

A remarkable statistic from the post is the fact that more than 3.4 billion blog post headlines were served using the widget.

From the Closing Post:

After careful consideration, we have decided to shutdown the BlogRush service. If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it.

 

When BlogRush launched in late-2007 it spread like wildfire all over the Web. Thousands of bloggers were talking about it and the service exploded to become one of the fastest growing free services in the history of the Web. During the first year of the service it successfully served 3.4 Billion blog post headlines and the BlogRush widget could be found on blogs all over the world; even up until the moment we closed down the service.

 

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

 

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs. This was our primary focus. Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else. BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue. We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later.

 

Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped. (It happens.)

 

I want to say “Thank You” to all of the great bloggers that at least gave BlogRush a test to see if it would work for them. We sincerely appreciate you giving the service a try.
We have received several offers & inquiries about acquiring BlogRush, but we are choosing not to go that route. While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it’s the ‘right’ thing to do for our users. Believe it or not, it’s not always about the money. In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it’s all said and done, and it was by choice.

 

There were many things we could have done to monetize the service but we wanted to make sure it was going to benefit our users first.

 

Last but not least I want to say that I hope the failure of this service doesn’t in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from “going for it” to just try and see if something will work.

 

Without trying there can be no success. And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn’t be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.

 

On behalf of the entire BlogRush team, we wish the best of luck to everyone with their own blogs, ideas, and crazy ventures.

 

Sincerely,

 

John Reese

Reaction from other bloggers has been somewhat split on their views of the tool.  Some congratulated him on the basis that the service was unique and was able to last as long as it did, while other said “good riddance” to the service.  It is suggested that you remove the sidebar widget immediately from your blog, as the servers will likely be taken down (costly to maintain).

Conclusion

What are your personal thoughts of the closing/purpose of the system – did you even get the opportunity to try it?