Can’t Get Rich

A few weeks ago, nearly every blogger on the entire Internet added the BlogRush widget to their sidebars. This teeming mass of slack-jawed Neanderthals gave up a chunk of their viewable page space for one of two reasons: Either (A) they sincerely believe that BlogRush will dramatically increase traffic to their site or (B) Some A-list blogger told them to.

You’re fooling yourself

Before you add BlogRush to your site, ask yourself:  Why isn’t anybody reading my blog in the first place?  It’s probably because, like most blogs on the Internet, none of your content is new or unique.  If people thought your site was worth visiting, you probably wouldn’t have to rely on a widget to draw them in.

The widget itself

Sure, it looks pretty, and the concept is sound, but who actually looks at it?  Look, I’ll stick one over on my sidebar.  There, doesn’t that look nice?  It’s not clashing with my theme, and it’s not hideous like Google Ads, but who’s really going to look at it?  I read somewhere around 10 blogs every day, and if you were to ask me which ones have BlogRush widgets, I’d honestly have to go back and check.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think people tend to tune out advertisements that contribute nothing to the overall site.

The bottom line

Sure, BlogRush may drive a few people to your site, but they’re not going to stay there unless you have something to catch their attention.  To put it bluntly:  If your site sucks now, adding BlogRush isn’t going to make it suck any less.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!