DealDotCom and BlogRush - The Power of Hype
Ever wonders what happens to the traffic of some sites when nearly everyone in the blogsphere talks about them? Take a look at the Alexa traffic graph comparing my blog to that of BlogRush and DealDotCom.
Billing itself as the Woot! of Internet marketing products, with a great affiliate program that pays 35% commission on the first tier and 15% on the second, DealDotCom exploded onto the blogging world. And the amazing thing is, the site doesn’t officially go live until tomorrow. If the rise of DealDotCom was impressive, then rise of BlogRush has been nothing short of meteoric. Pretty much every blog I visited today has a post on it. At the rate it’s growing, BlogRush will have every blog on the Net signed up within a month!
BlogRush Growing Pains
This kind of growth level always puts the developers on the edge. Logging into my BlogRush control panel today, I see a message from BlogRush founder, John Reese.
The first 60 hours since we launched the BlogRush public beta has been nothing short of EXPLOSIVE. We knew that we were developing an exciting tool that many bloggers could benefit from, but we had no idea how fast the ‘word’ would spread across the Web.
With this explosive growth has come some challenges, and our entire team is working very hard to solve any potential bug and issue that we’ve been alerted to. We’re improving things at a very rapid pace and we hope to have the entire network completely stabilized very soon.
To make up for the growing pains, BlogRush is giving everyone bonus credits. Their entire surplus of syndication credits will be given to the BlogRush users. They will randomly distribute all extra credits amongst the entire network for awhile to reward the early adopters. To get maximum benefit from BlogRush, you pretty much have to be among the first to sign up. It’s only been live for a day so you should still be good.
Now, I hope DealDotCom’s grand opening goes well tomorrow. I wonder what the first product will be?
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Whoa, that just goes to show the power of blogs.
Reply to this commentI hope that they were able to obtain enough of the first few products to accomodate the forecasted volume of visitors they are guarenteed to get. It would be a shame if they run out in the first few hours knowing that they have greated all this buzz.
Running out would really pull the reins back on the excitement for me.
Reply to this commentI thought the idea was to sell out? I’m more worried about the quality, if it’s good enough then I’ll make sure I’m there early enough!
Reply to this commentYeah, I thought the idea was to sell out too. I’m pretty excited about this though. What a brilliant idea.
Reply to this commentExactly.. I just saw a hilarious adsense ad on my blog today - i hope blog rush picks it up since i posted a screen cap of it.
Reply to this commentYup blogs are very powerful tools especially if everyone talks about the same exact thing.
Reply to this commentExactly. I’m impressed by how quick word got around. The Internet is incredibly amazing.
Reply to this commentAre John Chow and John Cow mirroring each other now? Say it ain’t so!
Reply to this commenthaha yeah..I was just on it and the layout looks prettyyyy close if you ask me.
Reply to this commentThat’s not what I meant but nevermind
Reply to this commentIt’s hard to be prepared for success. I ran into a similar problem with a restaurant/pub guide I made. It wasn’t built to scale, and was a little too successful!
Reply to this commentThat is a really clear graph giving a great picture of the strength of great marketing and tapping on the shoulder of the right people(bloggers). I was glad to see the email from them this morning, after a lot of the comments I was reading this weekend they were starting to sound a little hokey. The email has cleared up a lot.
I had a widget in a post as well as on my sidebar, that was a violation so I corrected it. Unlike Google they gave me an opportunity to correct my error, before just closing my account.
I have had an increase in travel related traffic as well.
Reply to this commentThe power of being first never ceases to amaze me! On the Web, early adopters (assuming they have a decent product), always win.
Reply to this commentWell thats a huge achievement and with a success like this there is always a added responsibility to maintain that success for longer time.Lets hop they do exactly the same
Reply to this commentCheers
Abhishek
Has anyone seen any traffic from Blog Rush yet?
Reply to this commentAll I know is my RSS numbers are going higher and higher. Its too early to justify the traffic. Give it a few weeks
and we will see.
Reply to this commentThats what I wonder too, whats the first product going to be. I got couple things in mind that I will wait to get on DealDotCom and buy them (if the price is reasonable of course)
Reply to this commentSeeing as how I just spent $79 of the SEO Book I have a gut feeling I’m going to lose out.
Reply to this commentHahaha, should of have waited a little longer (but after all, worth the money).
Reply to this commentDefinately, the first e-book I’ve ever bought that was worth the hype (and money)
Reply to this commentI really hope to see what DealDotCom will offer in their first product.
Reply to this commentI hope its a laptop. That way I can get that deal!! I am in dire need of a new one. My laptop is 3 years old
Reply to this commentOk. I’m doing it. I’m signing up right now to BlogRush.
Reply to this commentThe hype has certainly taken over. I am seeing new people’s blog on my blogosphere for sure.
Reply to this commentI can’t wait to see what the first product is!!
Reply to this commentI think their targeting is a bit off, as I just recieved traffic from a xxx porn site coming through BlogRush
Reply to this commentI hope THAT doesn’t keep up or I won’t be able to keep it!!
Reply to this commentMe too. I took off the BlogRush widget ASAP. I don’t need that kind of crap on my site. I hope John checks out these people a little bit better in the future before he endorses them on his site. Blogrush sucks to do that kind of thing!!!
Reply to this commentJohn can’t do it all, it is the blog authors responsbility to do their own investigation of items placed on their blog no John’s.
Reply to this commentWhat the hell ever happened to personal responsibility? You’ve got your own minds so use them.
Reply to this commentSo if I have some great service to offer I know where to go to get exposure.
Reply to this commentIncredible these racet starts!
Reply to this commentI have not received any click from BlogRush. I have signed 1 day ago.
Reply to this commentYeah these programs must be getting an incredible amount of users to their site.
Reply to this commentBtw John - I emailed you about it - but I interviewed the Owner of DealDotCom yesterday - thought you might be interested
Hm..this new program explode..
Reply to this commentI also using this tools now…
hope it will explode my blog too…
I got to read a lot blogs today in my niche that I would not have found if not for BlogRush. So far so good…
Reply to this commentI have the next product coming soo. All about making money..helping you make money, helping everyone make money
Reply to this commentQuite interesting graph there John! Also, haven’t commented in awhile so let me just say that I love the new design!
Reply to this commentI haven’t seen this much buzz since the last Harry Potter book was released.
Reply to this commentStill haven’t read any of those books, I’m not really a buzz sort of person. I might crack a small smile if DealDotCom keep delivering good products though
Reply to this commentit seems like you have donated some traffic to them, as john chow have given both DealDotCom and BlogRush some advertisements
Reply to this commentEveryone hype my site! Haha
Reply to this commentI’ve been following the progress of John Chow’s blog for several months and there’s no arguing that it’s a great resource and a massive success, enriching the pockets of John Chow and his legion of readers alike.
That being said, I feel as though John is starting to lose significant credibility and slip into the same category as the same unscrupulous ebook marketing gurus that he denounces on his blog. Get more in depth on my blog.
Reply to this commentBlogRush has blasted the entire blogosphere. Every blog worth its while has a writeup on it. I hope they make enough money to pay for all that publicity. Looking at a few comments over this, people don’t seem to happy with it.
Reply to this commentYOUR STATS WILL START DISPLAYING WITHIN 24-48 HOURS.
Reply to this comment(Thank you for your patience.) I’m running out of patience
it wont work for bloggers. this is not something that will get you tons of traffic. why? read here …… http://www.successonline.in/the-rise-and-fall-of-BlogRush
Reply to this commentit wont work for bloggers. this is not something that will get you tons of traffic. why? read here …… http://www.successonline.in/the-rise-and-fall-of-BlogRush
Of late i’ve been seeing a lot of blogs promoting the new Borush offering. For those who are unaware, Blogrush is basically like a Banner or Link Exchange system. Bloggers sign up at Blogrush to get an embedded widget code that they can place in their blog sidebars. Everytime your page loads, the widget displays a set of 5 blog post heading links, from other blogs that are part of the BlogRush network (just like you) and are in the same category as you. These links are displayed inside the nice looking widget. An example is shown below.
For every one display of the widget (which ultimately results in 5 links being displayed) you get one exposure of your blog post on the network - on other blogger member website widgets. This sounds fair, but if you look deep into things you will realize theirs a defect. I will come to that later. But irst another important trick thats going to work like viral marketing on steroids for BlogRush…
For every blogger you refer - when they sign up by clicking on the BlogRush logo at the bottom of the widget, you benefit. For every direct referral you also will get one free link exposure everytime your referral displays the widget. If this referral refers another member - you get the same benefit again… gaining one more exposure for a two level deep referral. And so on … 10 levels deep.
This trick is absolutely fantastic, because it will cause bloggers to start promoting this new exchange service to fellow bloggers immediately in hope of getting referral bloggers before others snap them. Bloggers can see the potential of the 10 level deep credit system. It can really balloon to a large amount of free link exposure. Which *could* result in traffic.
This is where I tend to differ. Blogrush is claiming that - bloggers should sign up right away to get a huge rush and volume of traffic to their sites in a short span of time. There is however 2 issues here.
The first one is that - if this is a 1:1 exchange network, and BlogRush is displaying only 5 ads inside the widget - then they are creating an excess of 4 ads per display - which they can then distribute to the referring members. So, the excess credit of 4 ads can help them - BUT only 4 levels deep. As the system grows and referral lelvels start to get deep and aproach 10 levels of depth - how will BlogRush maintain the 1:1 ratio? The answer is - that well, now all members will have referrals of 10 levels deep. So there will always be member whose widgets display 5 expousres, and get one credit exposure in return and therefore create an excess of 4 credits for the system. This will help BlogRush.
And if it doesnt, and the excess exposures being created are geting close to zero - they can always simply increase the widget size or make it scrolling and display 10 links!! This will immediately create a larger excess for BlogRush on every widet exposure. Super!
Super for BlogRush, but bad for members.
I can already see a very very very low CTR on this network. Although the links displayed are in your category and may match your sites content - the CTR is going to be extremely low. A standard ad on yor blog post probably has a CTR of half to one-and-half percentage. This widget firstly may not be placed by bloggers on the top of their sidebar / page - and will probably be tucked away at the side bottom - is my guess. My guess is that the CTR for this widget will probably be around 0.1% ( or one-tenth of one percent. ). Now, if your blog post title appears with 5 others - your CTR will be further reduced by a factor of 5 or 20% of 0.1% which is 0.02% which is 2 clicks out of 10,000 page views or 1 click every 5000 page views!! Now, what kind of rush of traffic is that?
And, if BlogRush decides to increase the number of Blog Links inside their widget tomorrow (to compensate for excess credits being given to members for referrals) - then you can be assured that the paltry traffic and CTR will get even worse.
Nice try BlogRush. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. This is just a passing fad.
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