Check it out at www.blogrush.com

Thanks for joining us for the ride, everyone!

Please go create an account and get the widget on your blog.

CONTEST: The First 10 People To Add The Code Successfully To Their Blog Wins…

A FREE COPY OF TRAFFIC SECRETS 2.0!!!!

* First 10 to post in the comments in this post and we are able to verify.

GOOD LUCK!

UPDATE: 3:02AM. “How long does it take to upload some files???”

Posted at 2:52AM. Saturday morning. (Early!)

* I was just told by our Lead Developer that he’s giving the 15-Minute Warning!

Let’s hope it’s actually 15 minutes and not another 3 hours. (hehehe. I know, I know cheapshot at the development team.) They’ve been busting their butts and we’re almost there!!!!!!!

UPDATE: 2:33AM EST. The light at the end of the tunnel is coming into view… BUT IN THE MEANTIME… FRANK KERN IS SO DELIRIOUS HE’S RAPPING TO “RUN DMC” ON HIS LAPTOP.

Everyone, we’re almost there… it will be a few more minutes… we’re uploading some changed code. Watch the video if you haven’t already and post your comments below. Or chat amongst yourselves in the comments section. It’s all good.

CONTINUED: Please be patient everyone… we’re like 97% ready. This platform is running on about 10 servers for this “Initial Phase” of public beta. So there’s a lot of code updating and configurations that have to occur TOGETHER properly or everything will POOP-OUT.

——-

Here’s the video that will be on the homepage of BlogRush. When BlogRush launches you’ll notice there’s no long-form sales letter like you’re used to seeing for a lot of marketing-related products and services.

This video does all the marketing work. We will have a text-only version too, but I bet only 5% ever see it.

Check out this video to get the full story behind the POWER of BlogRush.

*** SPECIAL NOTE: Obviously, pay no attention to the end where it’s trying to point to a “Register” button. That’s obviously referencing the one that’s on the BlogRush site. But use your imagination.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Posted at 2:39AM EST. Early Saturday Morning.

HOLDING STEADY… WAITING PATIENTLY FOR OUR LEAD PROGRAMMER TO FINISH HIS FINAL TASKS.

The Income.com Team has been working lonnnnnng hours to get this public beta released, and after a 6-HOUR-PLUS delay from our original launch schedule, we are approaching the FINISH LINE.

I want to thank everyone that has been experiencing this epic journey WITH US! We really appreciate all of you that have been patient and have been standing by waiting for us to open the doors. It really makes all the hard work worth it and we all sincerely appreciate it! I am personally on HOUR *41* OF NO SLEEP. And some people think I just pay people to do all the work for me.

Actually, I thrive on hard work and always have. And my team is full of hard workers that I really appreciate and respect. Here’s a quick photo that was taken moments ago…

You can see me, Johnny “The Zombie” Reese, and then in the background is Gavin (leaning over the person in the chair). Gavin is our Director Of New Media here at Income.com. He’s a master at high-end motion graphics, video and multimedia production. He’s also an amazing artist and designer.

“Goldilocks” that you see sitting in the chair is actually one of my closest friends, and quite easily one of the best marketers in the history of the Internet. You might recognize him if you look really close… it’s none other than Frank Kern. Frank is in Orlando this weekend for a business weekend, and he’s crashing at my house. And maybe later he’ll fall asleep and I’ll draw funny pictures on his face with a Sharpie and post them on the blog for everyone to enjoy.

We’re at my house at the moment working away on our laptops to get BlogRush released to the world. Meanwhile, on the other side of Orlando a bunch of other hard-working team members are hard at work as well. It’s a total team effort.

I really sense that we are making Internet history tonight. Only time will tell what BlogRush becomes, but I just have this inner ’sense’ that we are in the midst of something EPIC. It’s the first piece of the Income.com Network and entire Income.com “Universe” that we are building for you all, and this is just the first step towards providing awesome tools, teaching, and services to help and your business reach new levels of success.

I think one day we’ll look back on this day, and these blog posts, and remember when Income.com hadn’t yet had anything launched yet — but had the first piece of the puzzle about to BREAK LOOSE.

Again, maybe it sounds cheesy, but I know that this is the beginning of something truly HISTORIC or the Internet. And, of course, I have the advantage of knowing what the Master Plan for Income.com really is. But you will discover it all soon enough.

UPDATE: 12:02AM EST. (SATURDAY MORNING!)
@@@@@@@ BREAKING NEWS @@@@@@@

***** WE LAUNCH BY 2AM EST. NO MATTER WHAT! *****

I want to apologize to everyone that has been following this “non-launch” since we were originally supposed to launch at 6PM EST. Unfortunately, BlogRush is a major undertaking and we’ve already had some growing pains before even opening our doors!

THIS IS IT… I promise! (Or you will get to watch me on video lighting 10 high-end servers on fire.)

2AM EST. That’s it. GO TIME. I hope we can release a few minutes before that, but that’s our “last call” point we set to have plenty of extra time for any last minute adjustments.

**** STANDBY FOR A NEW BLOG POST IN JUST A FEW MOMENTS… YOU’LL GET TO SEE A FRIGHTENING SIGHT… ME AFTER 41 HOURS WITHOUT SLEEP!

** We’ll be posting that video I promised you within a few more minutes or so… we’re uploading it to our media server and getting it ready to go…

Stay tuned!!!

OLD NEWS:

***** We’re still dealing with the idiotic email filter problem. We have bumped the launch time until 11PM EST. [UPDATE: AND HAD TO BUMP IT ONE LAST TIME.] We really want to OPEN THE DOORS but we need to solve this issue or many will have difficulty confirming their email addresses. (Because the confirm emails will get filtered into their spam or junk folder and many will miss them.)

We’re getting closer… and no matter what we’ll be putting a cool VIDEO on the blog in a few minutes that goes over BlogRush. You’ll be able to watch that to pass the time if we don’t get the site opened up for a little bit longer.

* The annoying issue we are dealing with right now is that Gmail and Hotmail are filtering our system emails as SPAM. Gmail doesn’t like us using www.blogrush.com in the URLs in email. If we use just hostname.blogrush.com/xxxxx the mail does not get filtered as spam. It’s the weirdest thing. Anyone have any experience with this issue? If so, PLEASE post a comment with any advice. This is driving us nuts.

—–

We are experiencing a minor issue with one of our servers and need a bit more time to fine-tune it. We’re very close.

We are now tentatively scheduled to launch at 9PM EST. (It might be earlier. Keep checking this blog.)

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. I promise, the wait will be well worth it.

It’s better for us to catch all these issues (even minor ones) rather than launch and then have a major problem that keeps you from being able to do anything.

Thanks for your patience.

~John

[UPDATE] Posted at 6:30PM EST. 09/14/07: We are experiencing a minor server issue and we are working on the problem. We are now tentatively scheduled to launch at 9PM EST. (It might be earlier.)

THANK YOU for all the great feedback and comments! We appreciate them.

I want to address some of the questions that have been asked…

“If I refer someone to BlogRush, do my posts show up on their site?”

NO. Well, not unless they are in the same topic category as you are. If you refer someone to BlogRush that gets 1,000 page views a day, you earn 1,000 “syndication credits” (i.e. your blog post title shown that many times) everyday in YOUR CATEGORY. It has nothing to do with the topic of the blog you referred. BlogRush is a “Cooperative Syndication Network.” You are rewarded with network-wide exposure based on what you “contribute” to the network. If you refer someone that delivers “x” to the network, you will also receive similar exposure, regardless of the category that traffic comes from.

“Can I customize the look of the widget?”

Not for our initial public beta, but we have plans to add customization options soon.

“How will you keep people from abusing the system… where normal-looking post titles lead to casino, viagra, or payday loan sites?”

We are implementing several methods to combat this. We will be using part technology and part HUMAN review processes. Obviously, if anyone is caught doing this they will be terminated from the network. We will actually make it very difficult and time-consuming for abusers to try and ‘game’ BlogRush so it won’t even be worth their time to try. Aside from constantly improving the service with the focus on helping our members generate more targeted traffic to their blogs, we will be working very hard to improve our system to squash any and all spam and abuse. If it becomes a problem, we will start manually reviewing ALL member blogs and do whatever it takes to protect the integrity of the network. We are in this for the LONG HAUL and not just some short-term effort.

“How will BlogRush make money with this? Will there be an ad bar added to the widget? Will it contain somekind of AdSense ads?”

The company will primarily make money from the “left-over” blog title spaces across the network. When all the math is calculated on all 10 generations of referrals, it will leave 10% of the spaces (i.e. 5 spaces per widget, so 1 out of every two loads of the entire widget [10 total spaces] leaves 1 empty.) We will most likely add something so users can purchase more syndication credits if they choose to. The inventory that can be sold will be from these left-over spaces.

We will also be launching a ’sister’ site to BlogRush that INSTANTLY benefits every BlogRush member — which automatically creates yet another way for our members to get more traffic to their blogs. And our members won’t have to do a thing. When we launch the new site our members will just start getting more traffic from it.

And I’ll just let the ‘cat’ out the bag and tell you this… this other site is called TrafficJam.com. And that’s all I’m allowed to say at this time. You won’t see anything if you visit that site — for now.

Traffic Secrets 2.0 Update: We’re still working on it. It’s taking a bit longer than we originally planned because we’re developing a new “learning system” for the course. I’ll post something to the blog as soon as there is more news to share about TS2. Thanks for your patience if you’re anxiously waiting for it.

As I said before, this is only The Beginning. The last few months of this year are going to be fast and furious! Buckle up.

~John

[UPDATE] Posted at 6:30PM EST. 09/14/07: We are experiencing a minor server issue and we are working on the problem. We are now tentatively scheduled to launch at 9PM EST. (It might be earlier.)

I apologize for the lack of activity on the blog lately. Our entire team has been working long hours for the past several weeks and you’re about to discover why…

A few weeks ago, I explained how we’d be launching something that would become part of the Income.com Network that we’re building — and then Income.com would launch after that. Well, this mystery service is all set for a public beta launch this Friday, September 14th. We will probably launch around mid-day. I’ll post the exact time soon.

Using RSS technology and some of our own, we’ve built an amazing platform to help bloggers receive “mass distribution” for their content across the Internet. And our system doesn’t spam or abuse the Internet in anyway. And it doesn’t try and ‘game’ Google either.

We’re extremely proud of what we’ve built. It’s pretty darn cool if I do say so myself.

I’ll give you the “Short Version” of how it works…

It’s a completely FREE service. You start by creating an account and place a small piece of code on your blog. (Like in your sidebar beneath your nav links). And here’s what will load:

These blog links will be from related blogs across the BlogRush Network. Each blog in our network gets set to a specific category that defines its content. We’re combining this with proprietary technology that we are developing to help serve relevant posts.

These additional links offer great value to a blog visitor, but the real power of the service is how it helps blogs generate more traffic…

Each time the widget gets loaded on any page of someone’s blog, they’ll have one of their latest blog post titles and a link served inside the widget on another related blog. But it goes wayyy beyond that…

See the “Add Your Blog Posts - FREE” area at the bottom of the widget? And the BlogRush tab? Well, if anyone clicks on either of those areas they will be taken to the BlogRush web site where they can learn about the free service and start hosting the widget on their site. BUT that’s not free advertising for BlogRush. Those links serve a powerful purpose…

When someone joins BlogRush, our system knows exactly WHERE they came from. The originating blog gets permanently marked in our system as the “referrer” for that new blog. And as you may have already guessed, the original blog now earns additional “syndication credit” on all the traffic that the referring blog produces — every single day. But it doesn’t stop there. If that new blog refers another user, that original blog then earns credits based on THAT new user as well. It continues through 10 “generations” of referrals with no limit to the number of blogs and/or traffic that can be produced by any level.

This ‘process’ provides incredible LEVERAGE. You can have a blog that gets just 1 visitor a week, but if that next visitor happens to be someone with a blog that gets 25,000 visits a day, and they click your widget and sign up, you’ll start having your blog posts promoted over 25,000 TIMES A DAY. And that doesn’t even count all the potential “viral growth” that can then occur from that blog referring other blogs. It’s very, very powerful.

There have been some services in the past online that have tried similar “traffic exchange” models. But no one has ever done it with CONTENT — and definitely not anywhere close to what we have developed. In the past, it’s only been done with ADVERTISING. Which as most know, many people tune-out and has little or no value for the visitor to that page.

I believe BlogRush is truly an innovative development for the Internet. So much so that we’re filing multiple patents on some of our concepts and technology.

There’s a lot more to BlogRush… for example, you can setup keyword filters if you never want certain blog post titles to be displayed inside the widget on your blog, for example, that ever mention “iPhone.” Or you can add a filter to completely block an entire’s blog from ever having its post titles shown inside your widget.

You can also add multiple blogs to your BlogRush account and decide how you want to use your “syndication credits.” You can use them all on one of your blogs, or split them up equally. It’s up to you.

If you have a blog, you’ll definitely want to join the public beta as soon as it goes live. There’s a definite advantage to being an “early adopter” of this service as far as referrals are concerned.

As always, feel free to post your comments, feedback, etc. I’ll be posting more news within 24 hours.

This is only the BEGINNING.

~John

This is entry #4 in the What Are You Struggling With? series. If you’d like to submit one of your struggles for consideration please post a comment in this original post. If you want to view all the posts in this series visit the Struggling Series category.

Repeat after me… THERE’S NO MONEY IN DOING YOUR OWN SUPPORT!

This goes for Customer Support or Tech Support. If you are doing it yourself you are keeping yourself from making a lot more money. The real money is made by your marketing and from your business development. Now this doesn’t mean you “do a bad job” at supporting your customers, it just means you hire someone else to take care of them for you — and it can now be done very inexpensively, so there’s no excuse.

Here’s a struggle I see a lot…

FROM: Antone Roundy

John,

I think my biggest need right now is to take the plunge and hire that first employee to take over tech support for me so that I can focus on business development (new products, upgrades to existing products, etc.). There are a lot of challenges involved in taking this step:

* finding the time

* and the courage!

* and explain to my wife that I need

* to find

* and train

* someone who I can trust

* who has the ability to learn my products well enough to answer questions correctly and efficiently (there are some people in my forum who are very helpful answering questions, but occasionally they totally miss solutions that are immediately obvious to me as the developer of the product and one who has used it a lot, so I probably have an eggagerated fear of how much hand holding and training I’m going to need to do)

* but who I won’t have to pay so much that there’s not enough left for me and my family (we’re hovering right around at the level where we’re making enough, but not extra right now)

My primary product right now is CaRP (http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/ — John, you had a link to it for a while from the extras page on your Reese Report website — I used to get a constant trickle of traffic from there, which was much appreciated!) I have plans for some major upgrades to CaRP, with which will come a price increase. I’m working on some other things right now that will lay the groundwork for that, but often stumble a little juggling tech support and development.

I also have a new product, Fast JV (http://FastJV.com/), which I believe has great potential, especially once I get the time to add a few more features to it. I’d also like to have a little more time to put it to use myself! I just need that first employee to offload tech support to to give me the uninterrupted stretches of time that I need to be able focus on other things and really move them forward.

Antone,

First of all, if you’re in a money crunch, the last thing you need to be doing is hiring an actual employee to be doing your tech support or customer service. What you need to consider is hiring a reputable service that will do all of your customer service for you (as well as other tasks, if you wish) economically, and this can include technical support.

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is hiring an employee to a full-time position for a job that’s definitely PART-TIME. Unless you have a massive business, your customer or tech support can most likely be handled in a few hours a day — and it’s okay if you don’t have a 60-minute or less response time. Most people are thrilled if you help them within 12-14 hours of their request; a day at the most.

If you’ve read “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss (which I highly recommend), he gives some great tips on outsourcing your customer service, including the recommendation of these services…

www.yourmaninindia.com
www.b2kcorp.com

Other resources for outsourcing your customer service include…

www.customerservicedoneforyou.com
www.outsourcingdotcom.com/outsourcing.htm
www.outsource2india.com/services/customer_interaction_services.asp
www.elance.com

By using one of these services, you simply pay by the hour for the amount of work they actually do for you - anywhere from $4/hr. on up. Plus, these services train the people who work for them so you don’t have to. You simply provide specifics about your products and services that allow them to do their job, and let them go to work (potential questions with answers, refund info, etc.).

Also, by using a service like this, you don’t have to worry about firing any employees, being responsible for putting food on the table for employees, or any of the other headaches that go along with hiring people for your company.

Furthermore, whether you hire someone to work for your company, or simply hire a service to handle it for you, what would make life much easier for you would be to fire up Camtasia studio, record yourself as you teach people ONE TIME all about your product, how to handle tech support requests, where to find your FAQs, how you want them responding to people who need help, and so on.

You can take the time ONCE to gather all of the pertinent information that’s needed to train people to perform your tech support for you, and simply create your own video training that any new support person can watch from their own computer WITHOUT having to continuously waste precious hours of your time!

Most entrepreneurs ‘fight’ hiring someone because they don’t want to have to train them. The other reason is that they want to be a CONTROL FREAK and do everything — I know this all to well as I did this for many years and it probably cost me a small fortune. I started to see major growth in my own business when I finally learned to just LET GO.

Hire a service to help you — just give it a shot. You can always stop using them if it doesn’t work out. But I promise you, once you find the right service (or individual) to take over some work for you…

IT *WILL* CHANGE YOUR LIFE. (And your business.) And you’ll be A LOT happier.

I promise.

~ John