Okay, So I'm pretty much done working with BlogRush.com. It's just not stacking up for me. So I've been looking for an alternative.
In order of priority, here's what I looked for in a 'near' perfect alternative to BlogRush.
1. Relevant off-blog Syndication
I want my headlines/posts to feature on relevant blogs.
2. Relevant on-blog Syndication
I want syndicated headlines/posts featured on my blog to be relevant to my audience.
3. Quality Over Quantity
I'm place my prerequisites for relevancy (covered in points 1 and 2) over performance. My most recent BlogRush data shows just 8 click through's from 16,665 impressions.
The while the fact that I don't write short and snappy headlines, that use no more than 40 characters (as advised by BlogRush), may have an impact on my click through rate, I'm inclined to think that the headlines/posts on my iPod/iTunes/iPhone blog would receive more attention if they were syndicated on OTHER iPod/iTunes/iPhone blogs.
I'm absolutely convinced that just 2 or 3 iPod/iTunes/iPhone blogs working together would generate more than 8 clicks for each blogger.
So that's what I was looking for in an alternative to BlogRush, but what about the issue of popularity/traffic and the fact that my blog may receive more visitors than the other blogs?
Well, I simply refer you back to the points above, and specifically the point of 'Quality over Quantity'. My main objective is to attract new visitors to my blog, while giving my own readers a more relevant experience.
Following my recent experience with BlogRush, I'd welcome the opportunity to feature your headline 100 times, in exchange for just 10 of my own.
Get to the alternative already!
Well, this is going to be a bit of anti-climax. Because many readers of The UK Bloggers Guide are already using it. It's Bumpzee!
ALL Bumpzee communities have an rss feed. Example: http://www.bumpzee.com/ipod/rss/ - Blogs submitted and accepted by the community manager will have their posts featured in the feed. The headlines from this feed can be syndicated on your own blog.
My own blogging platform, TypePad allows me to have the headlines of up to 5 feeds per blog, per account.
I'm not suggesting that I'd use the rss feed to feature the full post or a snippet of the post, but I'd be more than happy to feature the headlines to your blog posts. Aside from writing the article myself, I can think of no better way to provide my readers with the quality of links I'm looking for, than to go to blogs that talk about the same stuff as I do.
'Near' Perfect
Bumpzee is near perfect, but there are limitations. While BlogRush is a 1 for 1 exchange of headlines, with a Bumpzee rss feed it will always be the case that a blog with more frequent posts will naturally have more headlines shown on the participating blogs. No way to get over that.
Finally, Bumpzee has yet to implement it's filtering option within communities, but I'm keeping the pressure on them to have this addressed sooner rather than later. Currently it's a manual process carried out by the manager of the community that is vcery limited.
The alternative to the 'near' perfect alternative?
I guess that the alternative is to do nothing. Don't bother with syndication at all. Many commercial bloggers feel syndication would have an impact on click throughs on their advertisements. I personally don't follow that line of thinking. If I take care of my readers, the revenue will take care of itself.
So, I'm done with BlogRush. I'll be putting the pressure on Bumpzee to enable the filtering of blogs within their communities, but as soon as I get round to removing the BlogRush widget I plan to hunt down 3 ipod/Tunes/iPhone blogs and invite them to join the iPod community on Bumpzee. See if I can't start my own BlogRush :)
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