I received an email this morning from BlogRush letting me know that my blog had passed their strict guidelines. However, 10,000 blogs apparently didn’t get approved and among those that weren’t approved were valid blogs that were following the guidelines without any problems. Some of those blog authors that owned a valid blog that was removed from the BlogRush service have published rants against the service and John Reese himself.
After reading quite a few of these rants on various blogs and reading the responses of John Reese, it would appear as though that most of what was complained about is not true. First of all, if your blog fails to pass the strict guidelines by BlogRush, your account is moved into an InActive state which is considerably different than being banned.
Secondly, it has to said that the blogs were reviewed by humans. There are going to be mistakes made and each human being may interpret something differently than the next. This is apparent because John Reese himself has commented on various blogs that were deemed InActive when in reality, that particular blog was following the guidelines.
It is really easy to jump on a THIS COMPANY SUCKS bandwagon but come on, put a little sense into your post and stop jumping to conclusions before the real story unveils itself. I believe the best example of how this situation was handled correctly was by LocalSEOGuide. Although the post content is questionable, the way Andrew handled it in his comments section with John Reese is a good example of how to solve the situation. Believe it or not, Andrew mistyped his BlogURL which came up as “locaseoguide.com” which when reviewed, the site wouldn’t load causing the reviewer to mark his site as inactive.
Just remember something people, nothing is usually as it seems.
As for myself, my blog passed the guidelines but I have since removed the widget from this site. I am now a fond supporter of CLIQ which I reviewed here ( Share Blog Traffic Via CLIQ ) and I go into detail as to why it may one day kill BlogRush here ( Why CLIQ May Kill BlogRush ) Calm down bloggers, being InActive on BlogRush is not the end of the world.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 
The problem is that the so called ‘quality evaluations’ of blogs were done so poorly. It is a slap in the face to people who work hard on putting together a decent blog to ‘inactivate’ them while allowing ‘blogs’ that exist only to gather zip/email submits for affiliate offers to stay in the system.
What they should do is rescind the recent inactivations and start over again with clearer guidelines and rules and allow a better appeals process.
Hi Jeffro,
Thanks for the link. I think the whole Blog Rush Inactive episode is a good example of how complicated customer interaction can be. While some may think I jumped the gun on criticizing them, my reaction was purely a result of how I was informed by them about the situation.
While a company is free to think its customers are boneheads for making mistakes with their products, treating them as having done something wrong instead of helping them correct the problem is not a very good business move.
In my case the matter was easily rectified – although it wouldn’t have been if I had not brought it to their attention via my blog. As I have said, I have no problems with Blog Rush. And I respect the way John Reese followed up with me personally.
That’s my long-winded way of trying to defend my blogging ego against the “questionable post” thing :). (And man I hate that smiley face but how else do I tell you I am not a pissed off blogger :))
Honestly, I don’t think there are that many bloggers receiving that so called rush of traffic. Perhaps being inactivated on BlogRush is a blessing in disguise.
BlogRush, despite its name, isn’t meant for Digg-style like traffic. Its traffic is meant for more StubleUpon like.
@Zac Davis Thats true Zac, but it doesn’t even compare to Stumbleupon traffic. At least with SU, you actually get a RUSH of traffic once an article is submitted. With BlogRush, you never see any sort of rush of traffic.
@Local SEO Guide Hello and thanks for stopping by. I linked to you because after I read a number of blog entries concerning this problem, it seemed as though you professionally handled it with John rather than cutting his throat like most of the other bloggers did.
Now that I think about it some more, your content is not really that questionable anymore. I suppose if I were banned from a forum for no reason that I thoroughly enjoyed visiting, I would probably be up and arms and posting like nomad telling them to go to hell without first trying to resolve the issue with those that matter.
Glad your situation was rectified and it was fitting to see John stop by and handle the situation himself.
I have gotten 50 visitors via BlogRush so far, whereas I’ve gotten around 10 from StumbleUpon.
@Zac Davis Interesting. I have yet to see figures like that posted by any other user of the widget. Perhaps you have a knack for writing good headlines?
Well, I have a publisher who SEO optimizes my blog for me, this includes for BlogRush. So, all I have to do is write, and then he will change the titles, add tags, and whatever is needed. I’m doing this until I learn all the tricks of the trade.