Succumbing to peer pressure
It seems I have just been going back on my own advice in the last post regarding uncluttered sidebars. After long deliberation and some initial misgivings I have finally signed up and added a Blogrush widget to my own sidebar (you have to scroll down a bit to see it).
When I started seeing those widgets appear, and read the initial reports about the abysmally low click-through rates from some of the professional bloggers (god, that phrase still makes me giggle every time), I took quite a dim view to it. Actually I already had a quite cynic post drafted that made fun of the whole concept.
So, what made me change my mind? Well, firstly, it seems wrong to make fun of a product I haven’t even tested (yeah, I know, normally that wouldn’t stop me). And, secondly, I am just a bit curious to see if maybe it does actually work better than I thought. Contrary to common belief I have no problem with admitting to be wrong from time to time. 
The thing that I still find curious about it is that you have a 10-tier referral system watch the video on their homepage to find out the details), which basically allows you to “earn” more impressions through the traffic their blogs get. Somehow that has a definite pyramid scheme sound to my ears. As I said before, I am by no means a mathematician, so I might be totally wrong about it, but somehow it seems to me the numbers they promise you can’t really add up…
I have seen that many of you guys already had the widget for a while. Have any of you noticed a marked increase in visitor numbers through it?
I have NOT — not if you count two hits. I’ve seen both my friends Breeni and Dewey show up repeatedly, though. (And Breeni’s seen me a few times, too, she says.)
I hope that as they are working on the beta, they’ll throw out some of the crap sites. I have found quite a few that are straight advertising, no blog content, and at least one GoDaddy holding page.
The traffic they send is shit, thanks to the low CTR and to the thousands of spammers, but fortunately their working on it :D. I’ll keep the widget for 2-3 more weeks, if results fail to come through I’ll more then certain remove it :
Hm, that doesn’t sound too promising. LOL
Thanks for the feedback, thouch. I’ll give it a chance for a couple of weeks, too. But I guess I wouldn’t be all too sad to see it go again, either.
No, it didn’t bring a great party to my blog too. I guess I’ll just leave it there until I am in the mood for some decluttering the sidebar job soon.
But does anyone ever click on these things? I’ve seen them on several blogs and have never even bother to look at them properly, let alone click them. I just assumed they were clutter. That little demo they give makes it all seem to good to be true. Totally free? Then what is in it for them? It must be a con.