BlogRush, the traffic building widget started by Internet marketing kinpin, John Reese, has decided to close it doors forever. Launched in late 2007, BlogRush spread like a wildfire all over the Web as thousands of bloggers (me included) installed the widget. However, fast growth brought its share of problems.
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.
I wrote a post on what went wrong with BlogRush back in September. I guess they were unable to overcome the problems. If you’re still running the BlogRush widget, it’s time to remove it.
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Oh man! I was just trying to get my newest blog accepted too. Nice heads up!
It’s just good to see a company that is willing admit defeat and close the service down instead of dragging it out forever. *cough* Entrecard *cough* These people are willing to let their service drag on forever to satisfy those few that think it’s actually good so that they can rake in some dough the whole time.
It’s good to see someone decide not to take the money and just to do what was needed morally.
I agree. Not the entrecard thing, but how it was smart for them to shut it down. I can’t believe they didn’t sell it though. They could have raked in some decent cash for the script alone.
Agreed, it may take some time to sell the whole business, but if there is a monitize strategy, I think John already done it himself…
Haha, good thing I started using it about 3 months ago and took off the widget 9 days later. I gathered more than 5000 credits but unfortunately only 1/5th of them were used in 3 months.
I agree with you. I give the owner props for being a man & admitting that BlogRush just didn’t work out as well as expected.
That is what I was doing too.
John Reese is still a cool dude.
Yea he is and he always will be. At least they were honest about not being able to keep up with it. Its always nice to see a honest company. And they did a good job while they stayed in business.
I love the honesty here..it seemed like a pet project
I’m pretty sure it was a pet project for him.
It’s a double edged sword… Everyone wants to be successful, but you have to be careful not to grow too fast, too soon. Too bad, but definitely a good thing that they’re aware of what they can and cannot handle. Respectable!
It already lose its charm…
It became popular like a fire and went down with the same pace.
Entrecard will shut down too, don’t worry
EC is one of the worst services, trust me worst then Blogrush.
I wonder how far Entrecard is behind BlogRush?
Can’t be that far behind. Entrecard is full of nothing but pretty much spam blogs now.
I never even used BlogRush. I never really thought the service was that great to begin with. I wasn’t suprised that eventually it was going to shut down.
I just took off the blugrush widget right now
I am sure you have lotsa free space now
one more of many, and surely many more to come, shutdown stories. i work for a dotcom, and i am paying attention and trying not to worry!
I for one am not surprised.
In today’s marketplace, you do not have the luxury of turning away business.
My BlogRush account was simply DELETED after I got 50 blogs under me signed up for it. I had an Alexa in the 300,000 range and some of the blogs that I recommended that signed up had Alexa’s in the 50,000 and one had 50,000 visitors/month.
And the way they thank me is to delete my account and give me a multiple choice form letter, it was either this, this or this. Adding insult to injury was the lame replies from their “team” of “you can reapply in 60 days. No thank you. Is John Reese really that ignorant and ungrateful? Apparently so. No one cares how great your tools are if you are a pomopous ass.
You cannot treat people this way in this economy and expect to have any kind of success.
What goes around comes around I guess.
It seems like John Reese did piss off many people with some quality filter…!
However, he did his best to provide the **FREE** services, we should cut him some slack…
kok did you use the widget?
I wonder how entrecard will do in the next 6 – 8 months
Thanks for the heads up
It is soooo horrible how people mess it up for everybody. I bet you that Google probably had something to do with it as well.
ahah maybe not google .. the system was wrong from day 1 … like any other traffic exchange widget in the past..
Google along with all the major complaints users were having…it was only a matter of time for this. Instead of all these widgets it’s best to just go back to basics with a bit of unorthodox methodolgy
I think people is the problem. Here’s why:
Everyone want to get traffic from other blogs, but many don’t like to share…
Some even manufacture clicks through for more credits…! If John can’t detect fraud accurately, it will make the situation worst.
As mention in his blog, BlogRush failed to increase the click through…I think he failed because of people!
Many thanks to abusive users that caused a good service closed
That’s too bad. Best of luck though to John, it was a good try.
Wow, this sucks. I installed the widget for the first time yesterday and today it shut down.
Congratulation! haha…just the wrong timing!
What a co incidence. I added their widget and even removed it in 7 days. It was of no use though.
It didn’t do much for me either – oh well on to the next big thing
and i was trying to get signed up for them also.
O well
I didn’t really like the service, but i am guilty of installing the widget. Greg Ellison
Yea BlogRush is a tool I used but early on I saw that it was failing and removed it. It had potential too!
that too bad that BlogRush Is Shutting Down
It’s unfortunate that BlogRush is shutting down but I never liked BlogRush on one of my test websites anyway.
Saves time for people like me =)
It was fun while it lasted.
I used them and never got any traffic from them. So I am not surprised. It’s nice that they are so honest.
I’m not surprised in the least. Perhaps John has a better project in the works.
Only coming on blogrush now, but their demise does give me pause when evaluating other services. We bloggers often want to be the first adopters, but when failure comes how do we look? Plus, the sheer amount of programs and services available, there is only so much room, time, and money. Myself, may start looking at some qualifiers like how many years in business and good reviews before trying a new service.
Then again, I haven’t been burned yet. Newest services I am using are Picapp, TNX, and Voxant on different sites. So far so good.
It sucks when something like this happens… Especially when it was a benefit to so many.
The traffic it brought for me was pitiful and I really wanted something off my sidebar. Now I had the perfect thing to muck. Oh, and loading times have improved as a result. Whoopie!
I could’ve sworn it was already dead. Didn’t the development stop about half a year ago? They didn’t really do much to fix any of their problems.
-Mike
Yes… Its dead…. But still I want to know the ways how BlogRush managed to grow so so soooo fast.
It started with a boom with traffic shooting up like anything in the first few days and then gradually dead. It was an instant fame for John. He is smart in pulling wildfire traffic. I’m sure he’ll come up with more such ideas; although of not much worth to anybody else.
I hate to say it but, Good Ridden’s!
Never liked this service anyway, no care…
Good riddance. ‘Course, I’m a little bitter because they turned my site down
“Not enough original content”.
What was interesting to me is that I checked out the logs, and they only looked at one page of the site, and it wasn’t the front page. I’m not clear on how they decided it didn’t have enough content
lol @ all the bloggers who believed in John Reese.
That’s your idea of making a contribution to a post?
Yeah just removed it.. Sad to see it go!
That sucks, I didn’t even get to try it.
John, since I’m going to be removing the widget, care to advertise on the site? That spot will only run you 100 million dollars.
Thanks for the heads up!!!
I can’t fault John Reese. He put up $500k of his own money if not more to start BlogRush. That’s what entrepreneurs do. They put there money where there mouth is and take risks.
what a shame
i didn’t even get to try it either 
No big surprise about Blog Rush. I ran it for several months on a couple of blogs I have and got almost no traffic in return.
This isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s also sad that a great, cooperative concept wasn’t able to succeed, long term.
I never used BlogRush, being a little skeptical and cynical from the start, and concerned about quality control issues. (My sidebar is overloaded already. I’m very careful about what I add.)
That said, I admire John Reese’s vision and idealism, and the decision to do what’s right instead of what’s merely a means towards profits.
Perhaps BlogRush can be reinvented with safeguards that will make it more viable. I hope so. The basic idea was good.
I just received the email a couple of days ago that Blogrush was ending.. I was sooo bummed out because I had just started the program..
I used BlogRush on some blogs but I must admit like many widgets I have long forgotten it exists!
John Reese is a true entrepreneur and has many successful ventures so I guess it’s no huge loss for him. Just another adventure in the online business arena!
Damb it was free so what the heck!
BlogRush widget is big bad burden on many blogs with no accompanying good results. Thanks Heaven for its demise.
it is sad new to hear
it is sad news to hear
i did not try their service at all. most of the people got huge rush of traffic from them for free
dang, any other other sites like this?
Hopefully there are coming someting similar to the market place soon.
I wonder if he made anything in between!
I meant money….lol