I was just catching up on Twitter (do you follow me yet?) and read Darren Rowse’s tweet about BlogRush shutting down.  What?!  I knew nothing about this and swear I just saw the widgets on my sites.  I immediately clicked on this blog and saw an empty space in the sidebar. So I clicked on over to BlogRush.com to read John Reese’s notice that BlogRush is now indeed dead.  It was exactly six months ago that I recommended BlogRush as it sounded like an interesting concept to filter traffic between blogs. I can’t say I received an increase in traffic from it, and obviously it wasn’t fruitful for others either.

So, it’s time to move on to bigger and better things (and fill up the empty space in my sidebar) -  I’m giving Jim Kukral’s ScratchBack TopSpot widgets a try. Please hold as it says it only takes thirty seconds to sign up…

Okay, that was quick and painless.  I had to rearrange my sidebar to get it the TopSpots widget to fit, but I think it will work.  There were 16 style choices.  Although Style C would have been my first choice for this particular site, I went with Style F to fit the sidebar better.  I could have picked the “Tip me, & I’ll Get NAKED!” style, but you already have to put up with me in my pajamas, and I didn’t want to scare off any more visitors.

I decided to only add 5 spots to start with because if nobody “tips” me, I think I’ll look like less of a loser only having five empty spots available as compared to 10 or 20.  If, I mean when, (think positive, think positive) I sell 5 spots, I’ll open it up to 10 and so on.  Look right. Look right —>

So there you have it.  It’s only $5 to get a “Top Spot” (you get to specify URL, anchor text and mouseover message) which is cheaper than buying me a drink in most places (although locally I can get my Rootbeer Schnapps with Diet Coke for only $2.25). They say money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can rent it for awhile.

Okay, gotta watch Sarah Silverman on Jay Leno. I love her The Great Schlep Video and her Matt Damon video. She’s another one of my girl crushes (right behind Justine Ezarik and Melissa Salas).  G’Nite!

I was reading John Reese’s Income.com blog where he announced TrafficJam.com.  It’s similiar (yet different) to Bloglines. He claims it’s a great source to find blogs in your niche to share those posts with your own readers and discover new blogs in your niche that you didn’t know about.

Another idea I had – search for other blogs on TrafficJam in your similiar niche, and leave comments with a link back to your site.  If it’s “dofollow“, all the better for SE rankings, but you are still apt to get some free traffic if “nofollow”, especially if you are clever with your name/title/url/comment/blahblahblah.

Now that I bookmarked TrafficJam, I figured I want my blogs included in their results!  Well, you have to be a part of the BlogRush Network (free) to be added.  You basically add a snipet of code on your site, and for every impression you give them, they’ll load your last blog post title on another member’s similar site. I’ve tested BlogRush on one of my sites for a few months now, and have been happy with the results/stats so far. 

And now that TrafficJam will essentially bring me even more traffic, I’m adding more sites to BlogRush.com and recommend the same to other bloggers. They manually approve to keep out the bad bloggers.  You should be able to see my BlogRush widget in action in the sidebar of this very blog.

Next up, I think I’ll get rid of the Etology Ads in the sidebar, as I’m not caring for the ads being shown.  I’m thinking of adding Jim Kukral’s ScratchBack widget.  Anyone have good luck with it?  ScratchBack appears profitable for Lynn Terry of Clicknewz. Hmmm, maybe I should buy a link on her site…