John Reese has announced Phase 2 of BlogRush at his Income.com blog.

He's using a carrot-and-stick approach to improve the quality of the BlogRush performance across the network.

Here's the carrot:

A cool new Dashboard that shows per-post statistics and adds a nifty “Buzz Meter.” As John says:

"Now you’ll be able to see how many times each of your posts is syndicated across the network and how many people clicked to read that individual post.

"Next to the statistics for each post you’ll see a “Buzz Meter.” This new meter will tell you if that post is HOT, COLD, or somewhere in between. The meter ‘temperature’ is calculated based on the average click-rates per headline for your blog’s category.

"This data, if used properly, can be extremely valuable for your blog — you’ll be able to know what types of posts are getting the most attention in your blog’s niche."

Here's the stick: widget performance monitoring:

"One of the biggest contributors to some of our low, average click-through rates (i.e. less traffic for our members) is due to some of our members giving the widget POOR PLACEMENT on their blogs. Some of our members have placed the BlogRush widget at the very bottom of their blog templates, or very low where most of their visitors don’t even see it.

"THIS IS ABOUT TO COME TO AN END.

"The BlogRush system is based on TWO things: QUALITY and FAIRNESS… If a member’s natural widget performance (the rate at which visitors click headlines and other factors we aren’t making public) falls far below the average activity of other members in their category…

"THIS MEMBER WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE BLOGRUSH NETWORK."

I've moved my widget up above the fold. He's not saying this is necessary (read his entire post), but I kinda like the look of it where I put it.

Hopefully it'll do its job and drive more traffic to my blog.

I'm looking forward to munching on my carrot.