BlogRush for writers
What is BlogRush?
This is BlogRush. You can currently find another, more clickable, version of it on my sidebar. It’s a widget. In the web world, a ‘widget’ is something that sits on your sidebar (or on other parts of your website) and does something. There are widgets that create calendars and countdowns, widgets that keep track of who leaves the most comments on your blog, widgets that display random videos or Bible verses, and so on.
BlogRush is a widget that has been designed to increase your blog traffic. The title-links that you see on my BlogRush widget here have been taken from the RSS feeds* of other blogs which are on similar topics to this one.
* The BBC website has a simple explanation of RSS feeds.
From reading the FAQs on the BlogRush website, it seems that BlogRushers earn credits based on the traffic their own website gets. The more credits you earn, the more frequently the titles of your blog posts appear as links on the BlogRush widget of others. Extra credits can be earned by referring other bloggers to the service, as their site traffic is also counted on your account.
Advantages for writers
I only installed this widget yesterday, so I’m still experimenting with its features and potential. However, I was pleased to find when I signed up that there was a ‘Writing & Literature’ category that I could choose for my blog. This means:
- My blog titles will appear on other blogs which have also been BlogRush-categorised as being about writing and literature. Arguably visitors to those blogs will be more interested in reading another blog on a similar topic.
- I’ve already whiled away a couple of hours by clicking on the links on my own BlogRush widget. It seems that it’ll be a great way to find interesting writing and book related commentary and resources on the web, and to ‘meet’ other writers.
Interested?
You can sign up for BlogRush here. Once you’re registered you will be given a piece of code which you need to cut and paste into to the appropriate place on your blog. If you’ve got any questions about how to do this, let me know, and I’ll see what I can do to help.
Already have BlogRush installed?
What are your initial thoughts? Have you seen an increase in visits to your website? Can you see any other benefits for writers?
I signed up in the original Blogrush um… rush. *chuckles* I haven’t seen much turnover at this point but as they keep explaining they’re refining and improving things as quickly as possible to power up the click-through rates.
So far I’m unimpressed. Over the week or so I’ve had it on my blog I’ve had 11 click-through with an approximate time on site of about 20 seconds and 100% bounce rate. Basically this means 11 unique people arrived scanned and left. I’m still holding out to see what things settle into with time.
One of my major concerns is the load time. I’ve noticed my page hangs on loading while it adds the widget which freezes movement for at least a few minutes before I can scroll. It frustrates me because most of the time when I view my own site it’s not to read my header and first post. Hopefully for average users it’s not a big deal but if the click through rate doesn’t improve drastically this hang time will be the reason I dump the widget from my site.
I agree that it’s a fantastic way to find other interesting and topic related sites. It’s a fantastic time waster too. *chuckles* I spent pretty much the whole day clicking about on the widget when I first added it to my site. There are so many interesting places to see and get hooked on. My RSS reader list tripled that day. lol
But it’s how I found you so I guess that’s a huge bonus. *grins*
I’m not getting huge amounts of traffic through BlogRush either - at least I don’t think I am (with all the ‘fixing’ that’s going on, my BlogRush control panel hasn’t been working for days).
However, the visits I am getting through BlogRush seem to be from people who are already interested in the topic of my blog - so that’s an improvement on some other blog listing services, and perhaps even things like StumbleUpon.
And as you say, clicking on one’s own BlogRush widget is a great way to find new content (and to procrastinate!).