BlogRush Phase 2 rolled out about 6 days ago. I delayed posting about it as I wanted to make time to have a good look at it first.

The first thing you will notice is that they've spent a fair bit of time on improving the graphics in the dashboard. I like the look of the charts, but the buzz meter looks tacky (to me at least) and unnecessary. I feel a simpler more streamlined version with a more professional look would lend more credibility to the system. John Reese created a video that gives an indepth explanation of the features of Phase 2, and while he says that it is important for members to view the video first, my take is you can skip it. The Dashboard speaks for itself.

The screenshot on the left is from the video, showing the stats of Internet Marketing Sweetie, the example blog used by John in the video. The numbers you see in the column with the red line are the number of times each post was syndicated across the network. In other words, this number shows how many times a post appeared in BlogRush widgets all over the network. The column of numbers next to it are the clickthrough (number of times someone clicked on the link to that post).

Members are reporting low clickthrough rates - from as low as 0.3%. Some of my posts are also showing really low CTRs. If this were an advertising campaign and I was getting those figures, I would run out of budget pretty soon and go broke. But to be fair, there are a couple of reasons why we're seeing low CTR :

1. Post titles may not be interesting or "inviting" enough. John has addressed this many times over the last couple of months and while I do feel post titles merit a lot of our attention, there are more factors that play into the low CTR.
2. The widget may seem like an ad or banner to visitors and they pusposely look AWAY from it (banner/ad blindness). I get the feeling that the widget can be improved to seem less "outstanding". Perhaps members can be allowed to fully customize the look and feel of the widget to blend in with their blogs. Although John has added a narrower widget (which I was looking forward to) it's just that too narrow for my blog. So I have opted to keep the original version.
3. Blog posts may be wrongly categorized. There is a new feature in the "My Blogs" section that allows you to specify which category you feel your blog belongs to, so I suggest that you make use of it. I have chosen "Work-at-home" as the category for this blog. However, most bloggers have a myriad of categories and post on wide ranging topics. The ability to specify categories for individual blog posts must be available or we will continue to see low CTRs.
4. Widgets are not in the optimum position. I believe the primary reason for the low CTRs and ultimately if BlogRush meets with an untimely death, will be that bloggers are taking it as a FREE ride. John talked about this in his video and I believe that it is a critical factor. I've noticed many popular bloggers who place the BlogRush widget right at the bottom of their blog. Like it or not, they're expecting a free ride. They're generating tons of credits from the widget appearing on their blog, but purposely placed where people will not click on the links - and leave their blog. In return, they expect that OTHER bloggers will place the widget right smack in the middle of their blogs and click on THEIR syndicated posts.

John says that they will be monitoring the performance of individual widgets. If a blog is deemed top be performing below par (clickthrough that is not within the acceptable range), then they will notify the blogger of the situation and if performance continues to decline, then those blogs will be "removed" from the network. However, I think that this is not going to go down well with bloggers. In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if bloggers start to think that BlogRush is just not worth their blog real-estate.

The next two months will be crunch time for BlogRush . John has to break the vicious cycle. If bloggers don't see the rush of traffic that BlogRush was originally intended to bring in, then they're just going to continue to push the widget right to the bottom of their blogs. And as long as the widget remains at the bottom, folks are not going to find our posts.

So what am I going to do? Frankly, I like the BlogRush concept and I respect John, but after weeks with the widget on my blog, I find it sticks out a bit too much and I find myself even avoiding looking at it on other people's blogs. So I'm going to give it another 2-4 months before I decide whether to pull the plug and let BlogRush R.I.P.