Blogrush update

It’s been a couple of weeks since I talked about Blogrush - that little widget in the bottom right margin.

As I said last time, I wasn’t entirely convinced by Blogrush - and many people (myself included) have been reporting very low click-through rates with it.

But now I’ve been running the widget for a couple of weeks, I’ve noticed a trend that may make Blogrush worthwhile:

Ignoring the dip at the end of the graph, which is just down to an incomplete day’s reporting, you can see that while my own traffic is fairly steady, credits from my network (people I’ve referred) are increasing all the time.

By my estimates, in a couple of weeks time, I would be able to remove the Blogrush widget entirely and still have the same level of exposure, simply because of my referral network.

And that, I think, is the key to getting anywhere with Blogrush. It’s not your own traffic that’s important, so much as the traffic you refer. The fact that you get credit when your referrals start referring people (down to 10 levels of referrals!) is the key. After a while, click-through rates become entirely irrelevant, as you don’t even need to be displaying the widget in order to be getting traffic.

Part of me is still wary about promoting a network where the best way to get anything out of it is to refer more and more people, but I’m going to give it another few weeks and see how it goes.

It’s obviously one of those things that’s more effective the longer you leave it on your site, but you’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s the best use of space on your blog.

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