BlogRush Update: Steve Jobs-Style Introduction

Just got this email from BlogRush...

Boom! Phase 2 Is Now Active (And New Video)
BlogRush to me
10:02 pm (1 hour ago)

The massive BlogRush "Phase 2" is now active!

New Dashboard, new reports, new widget sizes, and a lot more!

Please start by watching this VIDEO that will explain how to use it all:
http://www.blogrush.com/vphase2

* It's very important that you watch the video FIRST
or you will miss out on some of the new additions.

After you watch the video login to your account at
http://www.blogrush.com

AND...

We're not done yet!

Lots of additional improvements and features in the works!

We're working very hard to help drive even more traffic
to your blog.

Stay Tuned.

Best Regards,

John Reese
Founder of BlogRush

The subject line is funny. It makes me think he tries to copy Steve Jobs at Apple Keynotes.

I really want to check it out BUT it looks like they screwed up my password during the migration -_- Just asked for the new password and hope it's going to work tomorrow.

In terms of stats, still two visits were driven in from BlogRush widget. Still keep monitoring.

BlogRush Update: I'm Qualified

Only a day after I blogged about BlogRush's quality audit process, I've got the email below from the founder.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations!
-------------------------------------------------------------

You are receiving this update because your blog has passed our strict
Quality Guidelines and criteria -- we believe you have a high-quality
blog and we are happy you're a member of our network!

-------------------------------------------------------------
10,000+ Blogs Removed From BlogRush
-------------------------------------------------------------

We've just completed a massive SWEEP of our entire network. We've
removed over *10,000* blogs (Yes, ten thousand) that did not meet our
new Quality Guidelines.

I've always placed the widget four pages (for 1024*768 resolution) down on the right pane. Well... sorry to say this but I wouldn't consider it a good page location (at least I wouldn't put AdSense there).

But after all, keep up guys. You're at a very important moment of your idea... whether it will take off or will flop.

BlogRush Update: A Month Later

After I started placing BlogRush widget on my blog and wrote one update, here's the update at one-month mark:

• BlogRush member's Dashboard and Report are not up yet; the temporary Dashboard shows that my "Traffic Last 7 days" is 36. Below is the preview that the founder promised to the community. Looks pretty neat.
  

• Google Analytics reported that I've got two single visits from BlogRush widget, with the average page view per visit of... one.
• The founder sent a short email (thank god...) to every member and link it back to his blog post. Here's a quote (with the part that I think important bolden):
  

We are adding Widget Performance Monitoring to our network. If a member’s natural widget performance (the rate at which visitors click headlines and other factors we aren’t making public) falls far below the average activity of other members in their category…

THIS MEMBER WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE BLOGRUSH NETWORK.

We are working on something that might give members with poor widget performance a “warning” to let them know they are in danger of being removed from the network; which will give them a chance to give the widget better placement on their blog so they can, hopefully, rectify the situation and remain a member of the network.

We are not going to require our members to place the widget at the very top of their blogs or put it in any specific location. However, it’s common sense that if someone places the widget where normal visitors aren’t going to see it much, that they will achieve poor widget performance — and will most likely be removed from the network.

DO YOU HAVE THE WIDGET PLACED REALLY LOW ON YOUR BLOG?

If so, you need to move it higher on your blog to give it better placement.

Don’t want to do that? THEN PLEASE REMOVE IT COMPLETELY.

As I said, BlogRush was designed as a FAIR system. There’s a reason it was created as a COOPERATIVE network. It’s so its members can work together to generate more targeted readers for their blogs.

But this system doesn’t work if all members aren’t contributing at least somewhat equally. Why should any member give the widget high placement if other members are not going to? And yet those other members stand to receive the SAME REWARDS? It’s just not fair and, therefore, we have no choice but to make this change.

So any member that’s only willing to put the BlogRush widget at the very bottom of their blog isn’t a member we want in our network — and our network will deliver more traffic, per member, without them.

This is the part I don't get. We have to give their widget good placement enough, otherwise, we'll be removed from their network? Here are my takes on this:

1. BlogRush is not yet a mature service. Its success relies heavily on involvement of the community, i.e. bloggers. Thus, the "stick" approach - forcing the bloggers to give up the valuable page space (potentially for ads) to the service that hasn't been proven to boost traffic - is not going to work.
   
2. The criteria for fairness and equality doesn't make sense. I haven't gone through the whole logic for giving members the credits yet but I feel from his message that earned credits are primarily constituted of the number of times that the widget is loaded, and not much on the times that the widget is really viewed or clicked. As you figure, the weight on views and clicks should be much higher.
   
3. Lastly, I don't agree that the higher the widget is located, the better performance it's going to give. Back to the second point, BlogRush should change their logic to give more credits when blogger's widgets are watched or clicked.

Like I said, I'm a big supporter for innovative internet marketing ideas but BlogRush doesn't go the right direction. The blogger should have freedom to choose where in the screen they want to place the widget and accept the consequence of higher or less traffic. Threatening to cut off membership is, frankly, quite dangerous for BlogRush at the moment.

BlogRush Update: How to Write a Good Email

I wrote about the weblog headline exchange service called BlogRush about two weeks ago. Although their widgets on the lower right pane consistently stream links to contents similar to those in my blog, they have hard time keeping their member's dashboard up. Currently, what they can provide is how many visits (and the primitive blogrush credits) my blog got so far, and how many referral traffics my blog received and created which equal to... ahem... 0 from the start till now. Google Analytics hasn't identified any traffic generated from BlogRush yet.

Their report feature hasn't been up yet so I don't know what it does. Oh... one thing I found interesting is that I received an email, all in plain text, from the founder. I've copied it below. I'm a big supporter of innovative internet marketing concept so I'm not going to criticize their service which is still strictly beta right now. But man... you really need to find a better way to write your email.

Even though I never consider myself a good writer, my first and foremost recommendation would be keep it short. Then, I know it's hard to call something out sometimes when you are writing plain-text email, DON'T OVERUSE CAPITALS. Also the mix of *asterisk bold* and capitals keeps stopping me when I was trying to finish the mail.

TO: All BlogRush Members
FROM: John Reese, Founder of BlogRush


ARE YOU READY? Because *everything* is about to change. Forget
everything else up until now...

PREPARE FOR *BIG* CHANGES! (TWO MAJOR CHANGES ARE NOW LIVE.)

BlogRush CAN'T EXIST if we're not sending you a lot of ongoing,
targeted traffic. We fully recognize this and that's why this is our
ONLY FOCUS.

The BlogRush team has been hard at work making major improvements for
you and we won't rest until BlogRush is running 100% smoothly and
sending you tons of targeted traffic! This is OUR MISSION. Please
know that our entire team is working around-the-clock to make
improvements and fix any problems AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.

(We sincerely appreciate your patience.)

We've encountered some problems since our historic launch just over a
week ago, and we fully recognize that we've made some real 'goofs'
with the system for our Public Beta release...

For example, our data center provider (one of the largest in the
world) had a short, temporary outage (they had to replace a network
switch) two days after our launch. We had no control over this
outage but want to SINCERELY APOLOGIZE to those that saw this message
on their blogs (where the widget should have been):

"We are currently experiencing some technical issues and the site
will be back online shortly. Please come back in a few minutes."

We were completely *EMBARRASSED* when we realized this happened.
That simple message was part of our application code and was meant to
appear only on *OUR* WEB SITE PAGES if we ever experienced an
outage. This was accidentally 'marked' to be a global error message
for ANY outage -- including if our widget ever had a problem
loading. This was a major GOOF and we're willing to admit it. Our
code was planned so that in the case of a problem with our widget,
NOTHING WOULD LOAD in its place. So a visitor to your blog doesn't
see an error or anything wrong should the widget ever have any
technical issues.

This was quickly corrected and is now working properly. Should the
widget ever have any problem loading in the future, your blog will be
served a transparent space (which will show whatever background your
blog design has) and
your blog readers won't really notice anything.

Again, our sincere apologies for our major goof. It was quite
embarrassing.

NOW ONTO SOME SERIOUS ISSUES...

We also realize that we completely underestimated the number of
unethical people that would sign up and proceed to CHEAT and try to
'game' the BlogRush system. These cheaters ruined the click-rates of
many of our members (and burned through a lot of their credits using
automated 'exploit' methods) and hurt BlogRush's ability to send
maximum traffic to our honest members' blogs.

BUT ALL OF THAT IS ABOUT TO BE ERASED... LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED.

In the next several days to come, we're going to be rolling out MAJOR
changes to BlogRush. BIG changes. And these changes (again) have
just ONE primary purpose -- to drive more ongoing, targeted traffic
to your blog.

We've listened to your valued feedback and constructive criticism and
we have been working in TURBO MODE to make the changes you want ASAP...

----- HERE'S WHAT'S COMING IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS -----

100% MANUAL BLOG REVIEW.

Our team is going to be manually reviewing every single new blog that
registers to participate in the BlogRush Network.

We'll be applying some quality guidelines and criteria to our
decision-making process. (We'll be publishing these guidelines very
soon.) If a blog does not meet our guidelines and criteria, THEY
WILL BE REJECTED from the network and not allowed to join -- i.e.
they won't be able to serve our widget, refer other users, or have
their blog posts distributed across our network. They will have no
access to any BlogRush services.

Our members, like YOU, made it LOUD AND CLEAR to us... BlogRush needs
to only have members that have quality blog content -- not blogs
filled primarily with ads and other spammy looking JUNK.

The only accurate way we're going to keep these junk blogs out of our
network is to REVIEW EVERY SINGLE ONE BY HAND. And we're willing to
do it to protect the integrity of our network. I don't care what it
costs us to hire more people (if we need them) to review 100% of any
blog trying to join our network. We will be reviewing ALL OF THEM
from here on out.

* We realize that several non-English language blogs blatantly
ignored our "ENGLISH BLOGS ONLY" warning on our Registration page.
Rest assured, though, they'll all be PURGED from the network when we
do our QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT over the next several days (you'll read
about it in a moment).

As I've said several times before, BlogRush isn't some passing "fad"
or short-term service. We're dedicated to building an incredibly
valuable resources for bloggers FOR MANY YEARS TO COME.

We'll also be doing a QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT of all of our existing
member blogs. We'll be reviewing every single blog that's currently
in our network (or that registers before the Manual Review Process
becomes active.) And we'll be completely *REMOVING* any blogs in our
network that don't meet our quality guidelines and criteria.

As you can probably tell by now, we're not messing around. We have
put a lot of hard work into the development of this service and we
will continue to bust our butts to make it one of the best Internet
services in the world. COUNT ON IT.

We're also deploying several new Anti-Cheat measures to SHUTDOWN AND
WIPEOUT the cheaters and unethical users that have abused our
network. Sorry, crooks, but THE FREE RIDE IS OVER.

We'll be dedicating an entire department to stay on top of any
abusive behavior in our network. We believe that our new measures
are going to instantly eliminate most, if not all, of our system
abuse. It's going to take us a few more days to roll-out all of
these measures (and to complete our entire QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT) but
rest assured, BlogRush is about to go through a major TRANSFORMATION.

And a quick word to any 'cheats' that might be reading this
letter... it's very possible that you may come up with something
extremely creative that temporarily gets by us, but you should know
something... IT'S NOT GOING TO BE WORTH YOUR TIME. And I'm not just
talking about the tiny amount of traffic that you'll receive before
we shut you off.

You see, we have other plans in the works...

If you attempt to cheat or abuse our network in anyway, shape, or
form, we will not hesitate to come after you. Our company is well
funded and has plenty of resources. And we WILL use them to punish
you to the fullest extent of the law (and civil court process). Oh,
you think you can just hide behind some anonymous proxy IPs? Sorry,
it's not that easy. ANY reason you'd have to try and cheat the
BlogRush network for traffic and any attempt you make to monetize
that traffic will lead directly to your front door -- whether it's
AdSense, any affiliate program in the world, any online pharmacy,
porn site, casino... ANYTHING. We will follow the trail and it WILL
eventually lead to you.

Our hard-working company provides the income for MANY families. As
the CEO of our company, I take this very seriously. I HAVE TO.
People that attempt to abuse or cheat BlogRush are affecting the
livelihood of all my employees and their families. And I will do
everything in my power to protect them -- it's MY DUTY.

So for all you cheaters that joined BlogRush and had your fun trying
to siphon off some traffic, hopefully it was fun. And I'll go ahead
and make this statement right now... IF you were one of the people
that has been cheating our network I'm going to give you ONE
opportunity... quit now and we'll pretend it never happened. I
think that's more than fair.

BUT... if you continue after this point, all bets are off. We WILL
eventually discover what you're doing, where you're trying to send
traffic, and we will prosecute you. I GUARANTEE IT. Sorry, but WE
HAVE NO CHOICE NOW.

* If you're one of our valued, HONEST users, I'm very sorry you even
have to read stuff like that. I know it's a waste of your time.
Unfortunately, there are unethical people in this world that attempt
to abuse and take advantage of others.

MOVING ON...

---- ALSO COMING SOON! ----

**** A LOT MORE CATEGORIES! ****

You asked for it, and you're getting it!

We're going to be greatly expanding our directory of categories to
increase the relevancy of post links appearing in the widget on your
blog -- this will also increase click-rates (and traffic) for all
members.

* Stay tuned over the next several days for more news about the
addition of new categories.

AND...

**** IMPROVED REPORTING! ****

The current Dashboard stats are being under-reported for all users
right now. This is the reason that users show discrepancies when
looking at Google Analytics data (or other stats packages). We're
currently sending more traffic to our users than we're reporting in
the Dashboard because we are giving all users bonus credits
everyday. We'll soon be reporting all bonus credit activity so all
the numbers will be accurate.

SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL LOW-TRAFFIC MEMBERS: In the near future we'll be
giving our low-traffic members (those that need more traffic the
most) the BULK of our bonus credit allocations. You'll get a ton
more bonus credits than high-traffic members because you really need
it. It's only FAIR!

* Also we apologize to anyone that has seen a "negative" credit
balance for their account. This is a minor bug that we're taking
care of. It doesn't mean anything and you can just ignore it for
now. We apologize for any confusion.

**** IMPROVED NETWORK DISTRIBUTION ****

A few of our users have noticed that they're building up credits
faster than the system is using them. This will eventually balance
itself out as the network continues to "adjust" to the growth levels
and traffic patterns of each category -- because our network provides
syndication distribution based on daily average "cycles" and then
adjusts moving into the future; so it's able to accurately predict
how fast to use a certain user's credits, etc. -- as compared to just
using them all "as fast as possible."

---- AND HERE ARE *TWO* BRAND-NEW ADDITIONS THAT JUST WENT LIVE!!!! ----


**** BLOGRUSH "FLAVORS" ARE NOW ACTIVE!

You can go login to your account, click the "Settings" tab and then
select "Flavors."

You can choose from (13) different widget colors. You no longer have
to only use our original "black" widget design that many users
thought was ugly! (Hey, just don't let our lead designer hear
that... he thought his black design was "really cool.")

Now you can select a color that more closely matches the look of your
blog. Our users have been asking for this since we launched our
Public Beta, and we've taken action to offer these new options.

* We have future plans for further widget customization but we're
working on one "stage" of improvement at a time! Please bare with
us. We're fully aware of the request for a more narrow widget as our
current one doesn't fit on some blogs. We're trying to produce a
solution and should have some news soon.

HERE'S THE BEST PART...

You don't have to copy and paste new code to your blog. Just go to
that "Flavors" section for your account, select the flavor you want,
then hit the "APPLY FLAVOR" button. That's it! Reload your blog in
another browser window and take a look.

And if you want to see what a different flavor might look like, just
pick another one, hit the "APPLY FLAVOR" button and reload your
blog. PRESTO! :-)

AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST...

***** BLOG POST CONTROLS *****

Under the "Settings" tab you'll also find a new option called, "My
Post Control." Here's what this awesome new feature does...

You can create POST FILTERS for your blog posts...

For example, you can add a keyword or phrase and create a new post
filter. If you ever create a post on your blog (while you have that
filter active -- and you can add/delete them at anytime) that
contains one of those keywords in the TITLE of your blog post, that
post...

WILL *NOT* BE SHOWN ACROSS THE NETWORK. And you won't use any of
your syndication credits!

All bloggers post "off-topic" stuff from time to time, or short posts
that don't have a ton of great content. Well, now you can easily
keep any of those types of posts from using your valuable syndication
credits and from being shown across the network!

This is GREAT for you because now you can control exactly which posts
of yours will be syndicated. This can help you maximize your CLICK-
RATES and, ultimately, the traffic you receive from the BlogRush
network. AND it can help retain NEW READERS for your blog (your
ultimate goal that can grow your blog's traffic on a day-to-day basis.)

Here's Why...

By selecting which posts get syndicated (by simply adding filters
right BEFORE you publish a post on your blog that you don't want to
be used; or having setup one well in advance) you can make sure that
you're only syndicating your BEST POSTS. The ones with top-quality
content. Your posts that a new visitor to your blog will enjoy and
be much more likely to make a "YES!" decision to become a regular
reader for you!

AND OH YEAH, ONE MORE THING...

This is only the very beginning for BlogRush. We have so much great
stuff in store for you! As I said at the beginning of this
letter... we will continue to work VERY HARD to make improvements
and add-ons with ONE PRIMARY FOCUS...

To drive more ongoing targeted traffic to your blog.

I want to personally THANK YOU on behalf of our entire company for
your interest in BlogRush. We've received a lot of criticism from
many bloggers on the Internet, and we'll be the first to admit we're
not perfect and a lot of it was WELL-DESERVED.

But please know, we're busy working around the clock FOR YOU. You
have our word on it.

Now go login to your account and try out some of the new "Flavors"
for your blog! And also start setting up some Post Control Filters
so you can start maximizing your content syndication.

I'll be in touch when I have more "news" to share. Thanks for
reading this long letter. I had a lot to tell you about. :-)

Best Regards,

John Reese, Founder of BlogRush

BlogRush - Hoax or Real?

Just found this article about the new blog headline exchange service dubbed BlogRush via BlogNone site. Basically, a blogger has to register their blog and RSS feed with BlogRush, place the BlogRush widget, and then BlogRush service will automatically find the similar contents to your blog and place them in the widget. Your postings will also be placed in others' blogs in return.

The article argue that this BlogRush doesn't do any good except trying to boost their site popularity. I feel it's no harm trying it so I just placed it there. I've also got Google Analytics enabled in this blog -- will report back how much more traffic it improved.

Gift Idea

Since you are the reader with good taste, I would like to present you some gift idea for upcoming special occasions.

First, for gentlemen who are into watches, I recommend the luxury octagon 18K Audemars Piguet with brown genuine crocodile leather strap. This timepiece is equipped with Tourbillon to ensure accuracy.

Buy now from Amazon by clicking the image below and you will receive 29% discount equaling $48,000, which is enough for you to purchase another Chardonnay Pearl Lexus GS350 All Wheel Drive with Bird's-Eye Maple Accent Trim to match the watch.

Second, another watch for Him. Featuring perpetual calendar, sub-dials for day, month, year, and moonphase, this timepiece has power reserve of forty-four hours. Click link below for extensive reviews from sixteen distinguish individuals who own and are impressed with it.

Lastly, if you feel uncertain of crazy trafficker around you on freeway, I recommend JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. This would do the charm. Click the image below to see comments from one hundred and sixty customers. Order now folks, only two are left in stock at the time this post is written.

Like other Amazon product links you'll find more in this blog, once you buy anything through the clicks, I'll receive a cut of commission from the Associate program. And if you get anything in this post, I'll be your best friend, promise.

Last Words on iPhone Price Cut

What's going on here?
Like mentioned in the prior blog post, Apple slashed $200 or 30% the retail price of their overly hyped iPhone, two months after they introduced the phone at $599. To make the early buyers feel better, Apple offers a $100 store credit to all the buyers.

The early adopters must have been hurt here then?
Oh yea... Angry rants popped up all over the country right after Steve Jobs announced this in an Apple's event last week.

What's behind this?
No one can give the definite answers on this except Steve himself or the Apple PR who have been tight-lipped. Expectedly, they're not going to say anything. Some of the hypotheses are:
1) Apple wants to boost the Christmas sales.
2) Similar to 1), they want to wow investors with Q3 and Q4 numbers, which they will.
3) They are doing price discrimination by time, letting people who are willing to pay premium buy the phones first, then broader mass which intends to pay cheaper prices will jump in after the price cut.
4) They want to release the inventory, preparing for the next revisions with 3G and other updates.

Do you think they made any mistakes from the beginning?
From economic perspective, there's nothing wrong with this logic. Early adopters naturally have suffer from the high early acquisition costs. Everyone who bought the iPhone knows about it and accepted it. Otherwise, they wouldn't have paid $600, which is three times higher than other average smartphones in the market.

$100 seems to be quite cheap for a compensation for a loyalty fan. If you're Apple, would you do anything differently?
No... I'm sure most people who own the iPhone love the devices. They're happy with it for the past couple of months, and can be a little angry to themselves for paying more than they should have. Offering money back for this reason is very unusual in this industry. Offering Steve Jobs' apology in the last paragraph of their open letter is even more unusual.

Some people are talking about Apple's fanboys. If I'm Apple, I wouldn't even worry about them. Apple has done this to the fans so many times with the iPods, laptops, and the desktops. Apple has done an incredible job in fading out and in their products. The distributors can senses a slight demand shortage, and before they realize, boom... new products are on the shelves. The fans are so used to buying Apple's gear, and then seeing the new devices in the same line at cheaper prices released a week later.

More importantly, their stock has already rebounded. People will forget about this price cut and the stock is going to make all time high again after the next earning report.

What do you think will happen to the iPhone?
The price has reduced to the point that mass is willing to pay so it's going to flow out of stores like water this holiday season. Price will not drop lower than this. For the longer term, Apple will make faster, thinner, prettier iPhone with larger storage and more features and gradually launch it at the similar price even with the carrier's partnership.

So AT&T is and will be pretty happy, huh?
Not exactly. Although they have switched, upgraded, and broken cellphone contracts of a million wireless users, they haven't really enjoyed the benefits and cross-sales of iPhone services. For example, Apple offers a tool to make ringtones from iTunes purchased songs. Or the access to iTunes music store through Starbucks' T-Mobile Wi-Fi network. AT&T will sign up at least a couple of million more users over the next two contracted years. However, I don't see this partnership lasting very long - Apple is so dominant in the relationship which can upset AT&T, Sprint has advanced AT&T in terms of technology (WiMax iPhone, anyone?), etc. After two years are over, Apple will see who can allow them to make most money. If no player stands out, they're going to unlock the iPhone.

As a consumer, what would you do?
Well... Quite hard to say. First thing is that, don't buy Apple's devices because they're cool. Apple's products are better than gorgeous most of the time. But think of it more on the features. Don't buy an iPod if you love staying home and spend five minutes driving to work every day. Then, if you think you really need a device, buy it early. I bought my 30 GB video iPod from the first month. Now it's not even outdated and I feel it worths my money. Finally, having a price protection credit card especially for buy stuff from Apple is not a bad idea.

M-velope Video - Final Cut

Remembered the clever marketing campaign that Google asked Gmail uses to submit the video of them passing the M-velope?



See below for all the featured videos that people at Google has edit into a single.



Once again, Google rocks. Not that they just asked their customers to create a video that is, in my opinion, good and fun to watch enough as a TV commercial for free, they have with a nominal efforts identified the Gmail die-hard fans around the world. These people can potentially in the future spread out the words about new marketing campaign or product features to their network, helping to boost feature adoption. Lastly, they promoted the submissions of homemade, creative, copyright-free, video, in YouTube. Of course you know, YouTube is also owned by Google and dies to build strong community that regularly posts fun videos.

10 points to Gmail marketing team, or probably it's an engineer who has this great idea and makes this happen during his/her 20-percent time.

Freakovideomics

During the part of our house-buying, I was reminded about buyer and listing agent's incentives mentioned in one of my favorite books of all time--Freakonomics.

Then, I wondered how the author, Steven D. Levitt, looks like. I thought he shared a lot of qualities, e.g. getting Ph.D. and being successful at young age, interested in economics, with my favorite professor. So I looked him up on YouTube and found his video below. I'm sure you'll find it hilarious. And this is just a very tiny sample of his book. If you like it, I guarantee you're going to love the book too.