BlogRush Appologizes for “Goof”, Releases Flavors and Promises BIG Changes and Tons of Targeted Traffic

September 26, 2007 | Marketing

Wow! That title is almost as long as the email BlogRush members received from John Reese, founder of BlogRush, today. From the tone of the email you can tell John is fired up and after a lengthy rant about “cheaters” of the BlogRush system and apologies for “some real goofs” and data center outages, he promises some BIG CHANGES for BlogRush.

Those of you who have already signed up for BlogRush should have received this email, but in case you didn’t, choose not to read it, or haven’t signed up, here are the highlights.

Big Changes Coming in the Next 48 Hours

Manual Review & Anti-Cheat Measures
“Our team is going to be manually reviewing every single new blog that registers to participate in the BlogRush Network… If a blog does not meet our guidelines and criteria, THEY WILL BE REJECTED from the network and not allowed to join… BlogRush needs to only have members that have quality blog content… The only accurate way we’re going to keep these junk blogs out of our network is to REVIEW EVERY SINGLE ONE BY HAND.”

“We’ll be reviewing every single blog that’s currently in our network (or that registers before the Manual Review Process becomes active.) And we’ll be completely *REMOVING* any blogs in our network that don’t meet our quality guidelines and criteria… I don’t care what it costs us to hire more people (if we need them) to review 100% of any blog trying to join our network. We will be reviewing ALL OF THEM from here on out.”

“We’re also deploying several new Anti-Cheat measures to SHUTDOWN AND WIPEOUT the cheaters and unethical users that have abused our network. Sorry, crooks, but THE FREE RIDE IS OVER… BlogRush is about to go through a major TRANSFORMATION.”

“If you attempt to cheat or abuse our network in anyway, shape, or form, we will not hesitate to come after you. …punish you to the fullest extent of the law (and civil court process).”

“IF you were one of the people that has been cheating our network I’m going to give you ONE opportunity… quit now and we’ll pretend it never happened. BUT… if you continue after this point, all bets are off. We WILL eventually discover what you’re doing, where you’re trying to send traffic, and we will prosecute you. I GUARANTEE IT.”

A Lot More Categories
“We’re going to be greatly expanding our directory of categories to increase the relevancy of post links appearing in the widget on your blog — this will also increase click-rates (and traffic) for all members.”

Improved Reporting
“The current Dashboard stats are being under-reported for all users right now… We’re currently sending more traffic to our users than we’re reporting in the Dashboard because we are giving all users bonus credits everyday. We’ll soon be reporting all bonus credit activity so all the numbers will be accurate.”

“In the near future we’ll be giving our low-traffic members (those that need more traffic the most) the BULK of our bonus credit allocations. You’ll get a ton more bonus credits than high-traffic members because you really need it. It’s only FAIR!”

New Features Now Active

BlogRush Flavors
“You can choose from (13) different widget colors. You no longer have to only use our original “black” widget design that many users thought was ugly!… We have future plans for further widget customization but we’re working on one “stage” of improvement at a time!”

“You don’t have to copy and paste new code to your blog. Just go to that “Flavors” section for your account, select the flavor you want, then hit the “APPLY FLAVOR” button. That’s it! Reload your blog in another browser window and take a look.”

Blog Post Controls
“You can create POST FILTERS for your blog posts… If you ever create a post on your blog (while you have that filter active — and you can add/delete them at anytime) that contains one of those keywords in the TITLE of your blog post, that post… WILL *NOT* BE SHOWN ACROSS THE NETWORK. And you won’t use any of your syndication credits!”

Update: You can read the entire email on John Reese’s blog.

Unleash A Flood Of Traffic With BlogRush
My BlogRush Stats and New “Flavors” Coming
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5 Responses to “BlogRush Appologizes for “Goof”, Releases Flavors and Promises BIG Changes and Tons of Targeted Traffic”

Jerad Kaliher | September 26th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

It seems like they are backpedaling. First it was my fault for writing bad blog titles, then it was people cheating, now they promise to make BIG changes.

I was really excited when I first started reading about the project. It still seems like it may work out if it ever yields any clicks, but I think I am going to be a little more skeptical from now on out.
Nate (Average Joe Blogger) | September 27th, 2007 at 6:30 am

I think all of the pre-launch hype definitely dug a big hole for them and they are frantically trying to dig themselves out.

I still think the idea is solid and as long as they continue to make strides toward fixing the problems, I will give them a chance. But that time frame is limited and I’m going to give them forever.
Steven Snell | September 27th, 2007 at 5:54 pm

I’m glad I didn’t use BlogRush. I think it is a very good idea, but as a visitor I totally ignore the links in BlogRush so I think the click-through rates will always be pretty low. It will bring some traffic, but I think most bloggers will have other items that can be more productive uses of space on the blog.
samulli | September 30th, 2007 at 2:31 am

Woohoo, that sounds quite feisty.
I believe their big promises only when I see reuslts, though.
SEMSpot | September 30th, 2007 at 9:19 pm

Before Blogrush was made public, they were relying on the pre hype that other bloggers were causing before the launch date. This hype was huge and a lot of bloggers were trying to round up as many readers as possible to use it. To me it is nothing more then a pyramid scheme, there is not a lot of control yet for the widget and they have had more problems and negative hits then positive. I think in 3 or 4 months the hype will have died down and blogrush will die with the hype. I could be wrong though.