UPDATE at Friday, October 5th. 9:12AM EST. We are rolling out piece-by-piece of the NEW Beta V2.0. It’s going to take a few more days until the completely new network is online. Thanks for your patience. Thank you.

STATS ARE BACK UP! We’ve enabled some temporary account summary statistics that appear at the top of your Dashboard. This was a “quick fix” for now as we are preparing to roll-out BlogRush Beta v2.0 and an entirely new Dashboard and network by the end of the week. (Thanks for your patience!)

All BlogRush “Dashboard” statistics modules are currently offline for all users. We had to take them down temporarily as we are rolling out a “system-wide” upgrade to the Dashboard (it will have more charts, graphs, and data reported).

And we’re also in the process of rolling out “Phase 1″ of some of our major changes — like moving to the 100% Manual Review process which is going to greatly improve the QUALITY of blogs in our network which will also raise the click-rates for everyone. (i.e. more traffic!)

We’re also applying the first wave of our new security measures.

So we’re doing some massive upgrades to the system and we’re dealing with a lot of data — so this isn’t some simple “upgrade.”

Please rest assured that everything else is functioning normally — referral activity, syndication credits, syndication impressions/clicks, etc.

We hope to have the new Dashboard up and running as soon as possible. Right now we estimate it will possibly take until the end of the weekend. I’ll post more news as soon as it becomes available.

For now, ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND!

UPDATE: Many people are asking if they can repost this letter on their blogs. The answer is “YES” that’s fine but please make sure to leave the entire letter intact. Thank you.

This is a “letter” I just sent to all BlogRush members. It contains some very important BlogRush developments so I wanted to be sure and post it on the blog also.

Many ISPs have email delivery issues and not all emails go through so I wanted to make sure everyone will read it, if possible..

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 bear 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

It’s been a crazy first week since the launch of BlogRush. Actually, it’s been about 9 days now.

As you probably noticed, buzz about BlogRush truly exploded across the Web — it seems like it was everywhere. There were tons of positive posts made about the service, but there were quite a few negative ones too. We definitely did a lot of things right with our public beta launch, and we did a lot of things wrong.

This project has already been a tremendous learning experience for me, and I want to share some of those lessons with you — so they can, hopefully, help you with your own business and success. I’ll also give you an update on what we’re doing with BlogRush.

Before I continue and list several “lessons” that I hope you take-away from this post, I want to point out something. Our team welcomes ALL feedback and criticism - good or bad. Without feedback and insights from our users (and from others) there’s no way we could ever improve our service to make it the best it can be.

Lesson #1: If You Don’t Ever Try, Nothing In Your Life Will Change

A lot of people have seen a few of the really anti-BlogRush, negative comments on other blogs. And, unfortunately, many of these people have contacted us and expressed that they're so glad "it's not them" that has to deal with such negativity because they go on to explain how they don't know if they could handle it.

I'll be honest... when our team first started to see some of the negative (and some downright nasty) posts and comments being made about BlogRush, it was a real mood killer for us. It got us a bit 'down' and bummed out. After all, we've been busting our butts on BlogRush for several months, and the sole purpose for developing the service was to help bloggers drive targeted traffic to their blogs. Yes, we're a business that hopes to eventually generate revenue from anything we do, but our focus has always been on DELIVERING TREMENDOUS VALUE to our customers. And BlogRush is no exception.

Yet after all of our hard work, and finally being able to release a "first version" for others to try out, we were hit with some negativity that really ripped on what we had worked so hard to create. And I can tell you, having "your baby" attacked by anyone is never any fun.

Some people are trying to say that BlogRush is something that can never succeed. I, of course, disagree 1,000,000%... but even if they turn out to be right...

You know what? At least we had the ‘guts’ to try.

If you never just “go for it” and try some of your ideas (no matter how crazy they might be) something is guaranteed…

YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER CHANGE.

You cannot be afraid that other people might yell and scream, “your idea is stupid!”

Because the worst thing that can happen is that you just move on to another idea. So don’t be afraid to make a new product, or to try out some new marketing strategy you’re thinking about, or just to TAKE A CHANCE at something that others might not be willing to do.

If I continued to listen to other people (which I did for many years) I would still be where I was when I was in my early 20s… in over $106,000 of debt, an insomniac with horrible health, and completely depressed. My life did not change until I was willing to take a chance and stop caring about what other people thought of my ideas — or if I even knew they’d succeed.

FEAR and INSECURITY are two massive factors that can really keep an entrepreneur from building wealth. So please make sure you have a “conversation with yourself” and find a way to get past these mental barriers if you have them. Most people do.

Lesson #2: Gradual Improvement Is Where All The Money Is Made

As many of you know, I’ve had a mantra of sorts for years, “On any given day your marketing is the WORST it’s ever going to be.”

Too many entrepreneurs think too much in terms of “all or nothing.” As if something doesn’t work perfectly then it’s time to throw in the towel. Many of the BlogRush naysayers act like we should just throw in the towel and give up now. This, of course, would be idiotic.

You have to understand that ANYTHING in your business can, and should, be improved over time. Your marketing, your products, your customer support, your vendor relationships, your organization, your personal skillset, etc. Gradual improvement is what can ultimately make you rich. So you must get out of the mindset that anything is “all or nothing” or simply “success or failure.”

Even your biggest apparent failures can make you rich. I know, that I’ve personally made more money from doing things that failed (and what I learned from it) than from things that did well right away.

So always keep that in mind. No matter ‘where’ something is on any given day, you should be focused on gradually improving it. If you want to “give yourself a pay raise” every week in your business, you simply must tweak and fine-tune things to produce greater and greater results — even if they are in small increments.

Lesson #3: Turn Your Biggest Mistakes Into Your Biggest Positives

With BlogRush, we made a huge mistake — we underestimated how many unethical people would try and ‘game’ and cheat our service. We had some security measures in place, but we’ll be the first to admit we didn’t have enough. We were naive to think that there would be a lot less abuse that would occur amongst people with blogs; we underestimated how many people would setup a blog just to use it to abuse our system.

But this major mistake is going to turn into a major positive for us. Not only are we going to be able to crackdown on these abusers, but it’s also made us decide to greatly increase the quality control for our network. We’re going to be reviewing all of our member blogs and rejecting a lot that don’t meet our strict quality guidelines — which will increase the overall value for anyone using our service.

Lesson #4: The Longer You Wait To Release Something, The Longer It Will Take To Discover What You Need To Improve

Many people said BlogRush was released too soon, that it should have had more work done to it before making it public (even as a BETA version). And YES, BlogRush definitely needed more work done to it, A LOT more that we now realize. But we could have waited INDEFINITELY to launch it. We, literally, could have been working on it another two years before we thought it was a “perfect” and ready to go.

There will ALWAYS be more work to be done on any product, service, or project you are working on. There will ALWAYS be more things you can do to it. But until you just “get it out there” you’ll never be on the road to growing and improving it. And, sure, there’s a fine line with releasing something that breaks or just doesn’t work, but you need to find a way to just say, “good enough is good enough” and let it fly. Because just like we are finding out now, there are many things that we are now working to improve and add to BlogRush that we never originally had planned.

So don’t wait until things are perfect, because a “near perfect product” that never launches never makes you one penny.

WHERE BLOGRUSH IS HEADED…

We have TONS of stuff in the works and will be releasing a lot of changes very quickly… new widget colors and design, more categories to improve relevancy and click-rates, purging our system of the cheats and making it nearly impossible for them or others to come back, moving to a manual review and quality control process for ALL the blogs in our network, and releasing “the next phases” of our master plans for BlogRush that focus on helping our members get even more traffic for their blogs.

We’ve already received some awesome feedback from some of our users — many positive things about BlogRush (even with some of its problems) that many people are overlooking. For example, most people don’t realize that most of our users pay attention to what other blogs load in the widgets on their blog and are discovering other great blogs in their niche. They are discovering great posts that they then write about and link to on their own blogs. (The nature of the blogosphere.) And this is creating incoming links and traffic for that other member — which can also improve search engine rankings. So the ‘traffic’ benefits of BlogRush go way beyond just the clicks that the network syndication creates.

And it’s only going to get better. We’ll be releasing a ’sister’ site to BlogRush in the very near future which will drive more traffic to our members — without them doing anything.

OH… and one more comment I want to make… some of our critics are saying that BlogRush only helps and favors “the bigger blogs.” This is totally untrue. In fact, we’re making additions to BlogRush (like with our bonus credit allocation) that will be weighted heavily towards our low-traffic members because they need it most. And once our ’sister’ site gets launched, it will be obvious that it doesn’t matter how big or small someone’s blog currently is; the additional exposure will be equal.

I want to take a moment to personally THANK our users that have been patient with us and are allowing us to fix some of the problems that we’ve had, as well as for us to quickly make other improvements. We really appreciate it and want you to know that we are all busting our butts to drive more targeted traffic to your blog.

UPDATE: “Zybron” made a comment asking about “negative credit balances” that some users are seeing. This is a small bug that we are working on and hope to have solved very soon. We apologize for the temporary inconvenience. Just pay no attention to it for now please.

We’re hard at work improving BlogRush — thanks to your suggestions!

We’ll soon be adding A LOT more categories to our network — Fitness, Fashion, Crafts (and specific hobbies), MMA (and other individual sports), specific religions, political types, and much, much more.

UPDATE: I’ll add categories that others post in the comments (along with the ones I mentioned above) that I am pretty certain we will add:

FITNESS
FASHION
CRAFTS
SELF HELP
WORK AT HOME
MMA
GOLF

Want To Suggest A Category? Let Us Know (Post A Comment)

By adding more specific categories we’ll be able to serve more relevant blog headlines and thus increase the click-rates across the network — which increases the traffic for everyone.

Bonus Traffic Reporting

We’re working to add “Bonus Traffic” to the Dashboard. Right now many users are getting a lot of bonus credits and clicks and you’ll soon be able to view that data.

This is only the beginning… we have TONS of improvements in the works. Stay tuned.

I meant to edit the previous “we need feedback” post and instead deleted it. That’s what I get for having 3 windows open at the same time and trying to do some clean up… anyway, thanks to everyone who posted their feedback. I was asking people’s opinions about widget placement and should we require everyone to place it high or have no requirements. The majority of comments leaned towards not having any specific requirements. So as of now, that’s the direction we’re leaning towards. We may, however, issue bonus credits for anyone that gives the widget higher placement.

You’ve asked and we’ve listened!

Introducing, BlogRush Flavors. (They’ll be available in a few days.)

You’ll be able to choose the color of your choice so it more closely matches the design of your blog.

MORE NEWS…

It seems that some people are trying to call BlogRush a “pyramid scheme” or stating “there’s just no way the future impressions will ever be able to be served based on the promises of what referrals will bring. The math is impossible like other schemes of this kind.”

Anyone that is saying this doesn’t understand how BlogRush works…

EVERY SINGLE IMPRESSION GETS REWARDED FOR *THAT* IMPRESSION AS IT HAPPENS. There is no “promise” of future rewards based on referral activity today. Each and every impression of the widget (and impression of the 5 headlines per widget) is rewarded AS IT HAPPENS. And when all the math is said and done, it also leaves 1 out of every 10 headline spaces left-over for BlogRush to use to monetize the service. So apparently some people think it’s all based on false promises that the network will eventually “catch up” and pay rewards in the future. This just isn’t the case. Every single impression that occurs is calculated and rewarded to the generations ‘above’ — that’s how the math has to work.

We’re working hard to move to the 100% Manual Review Process as quickly as possible, and other improvements.

As I’ve now said many times, our SOLE FOCUS is helping our members generate quality, targeted traffic. So we’re hard at work to make that happen.

We’re about 5 days into the launch of BlogRush and its growth has been nothing short of EXPLOSIVE. We’ve served over 40 MILLION blog headlines (i.e. blog post titles and links to the full post.) And each day that passes is serving more than the previous day — it’s truly growing virally.

By now you’ve probably seen write-ups and discussion about BlogRush all over blogs, discussion forums, and in email newsletters. Many have raved about the service while others have been very critical of it. We certainly welcome ALL criticism and feedback, good or bad. It’s the only way we will be able to improve the service to help our users generate more targeted traffic to their blogs.

Now I Know How Google Feels

Unfortunately, the bozos have come out of the woodwork and are trying to cheat the BlogRush system. We have quite a few users that are abusing the system — from running scripts to auto-load the widget, to other fraudulent methods to earn syndication credits for their account that they do not deserve.

These ‘cheaters’ are hurting the overall network and dramatically lowering the click-through rates for our good users. It’s obvious since their “impressions” are not even seen by humans and therefore are not sending any traffic to other users.

There have also been concerns about the QUALITY of blogs in the BlogRush network. Some poor quality blogs (I wouldn’t even call them blogs.. more like pages of junk and ads) have been added to BlogRush and it’s creating a problem.

What We’re Doing About These Issues

1. We’re moving to a MANUAL REVIEW process. No more automation. We will be reviewing ALL blogs submitted to BlogRush. If the quality of the blog is poor, they will not be allowed to participate. We’re going to start reviewing ALL the blogs that are currently in our network and will be disabling the accounts for poor quality blogs.

2. We’re continuing to add security measures to our system and we will be mass-removing any and all cheaters that we discover. We will not rest until the cheaters are WIPED OUT and kept from abusing our network. The manual review process will help eliminate most of them as legitimate bloggers that have put in the time to create a decent blog aren’t the types that are going to be abusing the system.

All of these changes will only benefit our users — it wil increase their click-through rates and drive more traffic to their blogs. It will also make sure that the blogs their widget links to are only quality blogs.

For everyone that has signed up for an account and has been testing BlogRush on their blog, thank you for your patience. Please know that we are working as quickly as possible to improve the service.

I was finally able to get a few hours of sleep…

When I woke up I took a look at our stats and was BLOWN-AWAY by the viral explosion that BlogRush is having across the Internet. I have “Google Alerts” setup to notify when anyone writes about BlogRush and the alert notices are flying in left and right. It truly is INCREDIBLE.

As many of you know, I’ve been marketing online “since the beginning” even in the early days of AOL & CompuServe, before the Web really took off. Well, in my 15+ years of online marketing experience I’ve *never* witnessed ANY marketing-related tool or service explode so fast in growth as I am seeing for BlogRush.

It will be downright ’scary’ (I mean that in a good way) to see where BlogRush is in 6 months from now.

AND WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN!

We have so many awesome additions and new features planned! As I ‘briefly’ mentioned in a previous post, we’ll be adding a ’sister’ site to our Income.com Network called TrafficJam.com. This site will help ALL BlogRush members automatically generate even MORE traffic. Just wait and see.

Our SOLE FOCUS is to continue to work hard to drive even MORE targeted traffic to our members’ sites. That’s it. Because with out that, nothing else matters.

Thanks so much to everyone for their valued support, feedback, and encouragement!

I wasn’t kidding when I posted last night that we were “going to make history!” at 3AM or so in the morning when we finally we able to launch.

~John

UPDATE: 9:30PM EST, Saturday, Feb. 15th: Thank you to everyone that offered to help out with this! We’ve selected some people from the comments and we’re going to see how they work out. If we still need additional tutorials made we will be contacting more people. THANK YOU!

Unfortunately, we had a slight mishap with one of our team members that was supposed to be creating “How To” tutorials to show people how to add BlogRush to different types of blog platforms… WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, TypePad, etc. It was pretty much just a misunderstanding as this person didn’t understand the blogging stuff as we original thought — no biggie, it happens.

SOOOO… I’m looking for someone that wants to make some extra cash. I will reward you handsomely. Not only will we pay you a nice bit of cash, but I’ll also throw in a copy of Traffic Secrets 2.0 (as soon as it’s completed.)

Here’s what I need:

- I need someone to make some short, but thorough and truly step-by-step Camtasia videos showing how to successfully add the BlogRush widget to several different types of blogs… Wordpress, MT, Blogger, etc. etc. The more you can demonstrate, the better. And/or (if Camtasia isn’t possible) to show step-by-step breakdown (showing little screenshots of each step) of how to add the code successfully to many types of blogs.

I’m looking for someone that is a good teacher and will make it simple and easy for anyone to understand how to sign up for an account and then to get the code to load on their blog. * We have a lot of newbie users that really need the step-by-step hand-holding. Unfortunately, we were supposed to have all of this for our launch but our team member ran into some personal issues.

SO… if you are interested in helping me out and doing this work, please post in the comments below and use your real email address. Please explain in detail what you can do (i.e. how many blog types you can demonstrate, etc.) and how you would do it… Camtasia videos for each, just a written tutorial with screenshots or (ideally) BOTH. If you can express your “qualifications” or at least WHY you think you could do a good job, that would help — i.e. you’ve used a lot of the different blog platforms, or you’re just a whiz with that stuff anyway, etc. etc.

Also, any tutorials to help people create RSS feeds if they don’t have one. And/or how to setup an RSS feed on a blog platform that provides it, if they didn’t set one up yet.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS! You’d really be helping us out.

Thank You!

~John

UPDATE: 4:41AM EST. YOU CURRENTLY *DO NOT* NEED TO CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO ACTIVATE. IGNORE THAT MESSAGE. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO GO BACK TO THE SITE AND LOGIN! POST HERE IF YOU ARE GETTING AN ERROR MESSAGE PLEASE!

Thanks to everyone who made a ‘run’ for the contest. I’ll be announcing another similar contest in a few days. Make sure you’re on our email list. The top 10 listed in their actual posting order (last post) were the winners!

IMPORTANT MESSAGE CONCERNING EMAIL ISSUES

If you are not receiving your confirmation email, make sure you look in your “Spam” or “Junk” folders. Some users have reported that Gmail and Hotmail auto-filtered those messages. Other ISPs might have also. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do us a huge favor… if you locate your email in your Spam or Junk folder, please find the appropriate link or button that says “Not Junk” or “Safe” or whatever the label is for your mail system. This will no only help you continue to receive our emails in your InBox, but it will help other users possibly not get filtered too. (THANK YOU!)

HAVING PROBLEMS?

Please post in this post’s comments section if you are having problems. And DETAIL your issue so we can try and help you.

WE ARE WORKING AS FAST AS WE CAN TO FIX SOME OF THESE BUGS. WE APPRECIATE YOUR FEEDBACK AND CONSIDERATION! PLEASE KEEP REPORTING YOUR PROBLEMS! Thank You.

-John Reese