Why I didn’t install BlogRush

I’ve seen so many blogs jumping on the BlogRush wagon in the last couple of days, and as much as I respect how much buzz has been created and how virally catching the idea of it is, I think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the program itself.

BlogRush is designed to reward credits for signing up and referring a downline, and the credits dictate how far your own articles will syndicate across the widgets that are installed on the participating blogs. The way that it works now, one could potentially attain a HUGE amount of credits for being an early adopter, especially with a large enough audience to promote to. But no matter how many impressions your articles will get across the network, I expect that the users will find the click through rate to be terrible… here’s why:

There’s no incentive for BlogRush users to click though to read the syndicated articles of other users!

I think that the ability to gain credits by virally referring a downline is important to the success of the program. There’s nothing that drives anyone to click on other articles in the widget, though. It’s advertised as if a user should be able to easily install the widget, promote it a few times to a large audience to build a downline, and then sit back and watch the traffic roll in. In reality, though, as many times as your articles are displayed on widgets across the blogosphere, users may not be inspired to click through and visit your site.

The program might be improved to award credits for click-throughs by your downline, instead of just downline impressions, or maybe a formula that awards credits for click-throughs and impressions, but is more heavily weighted for click-throughs. In this way, users would be more incentivized to participate with the articles in their widget, rather than just installing it and letting it sit there.

Another method that might improve click-throughs would be to allow users to spend the credits they’ve accumulated on feature improvements for their headlines, such as bold or italic typefaces, or being able to purchase a top placement in the widget. This method is similar to one that Ebay uses, where you could choose from a small menu of ways to make your article stand out from others in the widget.

In any case, BlogRush has had an impressive launch, if one can judge by the number of blogs that seem to be participating. However, until there are systems in place to allow users to have some way to influence and improve the click-through rate, early adopters may quickly become bored if the amount of traffic they are receiving from the widget doesn’t justify the amount of on screen real estate the widget takes up in the sidebar.