Managing a blog carnival can be really easy if you have great hosts.  Great hosts write inventive posts for the carnivals and help to promote the carnival.  It’s their edition of the carnival, so a good reflection on them is a good reflection on you.

My Carnival of Debt Reduction is no exception.  I have great hosts.  I’m not the most organized person in the world, and they keep me in line and make sure the carnival’s covered if I fall behind a little bit.  It’s a great position to be in to have that kind of support from your hosts.

I hope that part of this support stems from me basically letting them do what they want.  I try very hard not to micromanage and to empower them to put together their carnivals however they see fit.  Some of the hosts are pretty liberal with the topics of posts accepted into the carnivals, and others really want the posts to be closely tied to the carnival’s theme, which is on debt reduction resources and stories.  Most things are fine with me.  Why?

• It’s my carnival, but it’s their blogs.  Bloggers absolutely have to have control on what goes up on their blogs.  If I demand which posts should be included, then I take that freedom away from them.
• It removes any barriers that I might impose.  If hosts have to seek approval from me, it slows them down, and things don’t go as smoothly.
• They have different opinions than I do on the topic.  It’s this diversity of viewpoints that keeps the carnival fresh.
• I don’t like remembering a lot of rules.  This is a personality trait of mine, but a lot of rules give me hives.

Empowering your hosts means trusting them to put together a good carnival and to ask when there’s a question.  The carnivals are wins for everyone, and most hosts already know this, so it’s easy for me to just let them do what they want, and let everyone reap the benefits.

• How tightly does one need to control a carnival? As blog carnivals get big and well-established, the traffic gets pretty substantial.  This attracts more posts, both good and bad.  The good posts, because it's a good, long-standing carnival that bloggers want to submit to.  The bad posts, because it's an easy, high-traffic link for not that much work.Initially, when......
• Try scheduling hosts in advance This is a rule that I don't follow all the time, and it adds a lot of stress having to find a host from week to week. The Carnival of Personal Finance has come to ask for hosts quarterly. He asks for hosts about a month in advance, then decides......
• How effective is this carnival for anyone? I was catching up with the blogs in my reader and ran across this Carnival of Future Millionaires in my reader.  It was posted this week, and honestly I had forgotten that I had.  (I did not receive an e-mail from the host asking me to link back to the......
• Powerful backlink tool, or spammer in a box? One of the sidebar ads within BlogCarnival.com showed a blog carnival submission tool called Xingla Pro 3. Honestly, I thought submitting articles to different blog carnivals was pretty easy, but this tool appears to make it ridiculously easy.  Maybe almost too easy. I asked a question of a guy who......

• Belated Weekly Roundup It has been a few weeks since I've given my fellow personal bloggers some love with my favorite reads of the week. I've been slowly plodding along with a site redesign, which has been taking up a little bit of my time, so stay tuned for some upcoming changes! MLR......
• Equinox week money carnivals A bit snowy for the week containing the first day of spring, but no matter ... Here are some of this week's money carnivals! Carnival of Personal Finance XL -- very well organized, by the way! -- is at Money Blog Network member All Things Financial! My post on the......
• Two Monday Carnivals ... ... and a Partridge in a Pear Tree. The blog at You Need a Budget hosts this week's Carnival of Debt Reduction! Next week it's hosted at Savvy Saver! The Carnival of Personal Finance this week is hosted at Political Calculations. Very nicely organized carnival! Next week the Carnival......
• Running Out of Time? How to Catch Up Financially Before it is Too Late Whether you are pushing thirty and trying to get your first home or your retirement is staring you in the face, there are times when you may feel as though you’ve run out of time financially. We don’t always make the best decisions when it comes to saving money and......