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 had a “blog carnival submission service” and asked him to clarify what his service was all about.  For $25/month, he will submit one URL per week to 15-20 carnivals.  I didn’t ask — I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t tell me anyway! — but Xingla Pro 3 would be a great way to make this kind of business really easy.  Select 15-20 carnivals, load up the URL and other information, push a button, and bingo!  Bulk carnival submission!

Or just spamming?

My Carnival of Debt Reduction is one of the easier ones to submit to at the moment.  I don’t require much of anything yet of the submitters, nor of the hosts.  (I’m thinking of asking hosts to link to my latest debt reduction tips because it seems a little less demanding to ask them to link to a post with actual information than to link to the homepage.)  But anyway, I know other managers don’t allow submissions to their carnival to go to other carnivals, and others that require a back link to the carnival homepage from the host.  This makes me a target for less discriminating carnival submitters.

So, is a tool like Xingla Pro 3 good or evil?  I think it does what it does well.  Ultimately this kind of backlinking strategy might backfire, but who knows?  In any case, if carnival managers don’t set the standard for what constitutes a valid submission to their carnival, they probably deserve to be hit with bulk submission tools like this, and they’re setting up their hosts to deal with a lot of junk.

• Screen the submissions with clear rules If there are no rules for what can be submitted to your blog carnival, then just about anything will be submitted!  The overall quality of posts submitted to the Carnival of Debt Reduction had been going downhill a touch.  Lots of automatic carnival submission was happening through BlogCarnival.com, and I......
• Carnival evolution: Broadcasting to Nichecasting Some of the first blog carnivals had a broad subject matter.  Since "carnival real estate" was wide open, general-interest carnivals could stake their claim without displacing anyone.  When one looks at the money and finance carnivals at BlogCarnival.com there are a couple of screenfuls of money and finance carnivals.  The......
• Does it pay to be clever as a host? Putting together a carnival can take anywhere from about five minutes to many, many hours.The five minute version takes advantage of the "InstaCarnival" feature on BlogCarnival.com. The InstaCarnival is a post that has a number of lines with the format:Blogger presents blog post, posted at blog, saying "comment"for each post......
• Do a "best" list to feature posts Organizers of some of the more established carnivals are asking their hosts to feature the best posts they receive.  This is in an effort to help separate the cream from the crop and add some impact to the carnival.Tricia over at Blogging Away Debt had a neat way to feature......

• Carnivals and Festivals In case you haven't checked out the carnivals and festivals: Festival of Frugality #29 at Free Money Finance Carnival of Investing #28 with My Personal Finance Blog Carnival of Debt Reduction #41 at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity Carnival of Personal Finance #54 right here I'm up for the Carnival of......
• Welcome to this week's Carnival Here are this week's debt reduction posts for your reading pleasure (personal debt reduction story at the top!): Personal Finance Journey cut the cable and applied the savings to Operation Destroy Debt. Debt-Tips.com discusses the pros and cons of debt settlement. Free Money Finance calls the mortgage interest tax deduction......
• Roundup for week of 28 August 2006 Some great links for this week from the Money Blog Network and elsewhere:All Financial Matters talks about zero-based budgets.Blueprint for Financial Prosperity lists which mortgage closing costs are negotiable, and those that aren't.Free Money Finance says that homeowners are getting desperate to sell.Five Cent Nickel is keen on NetFlix.Consumerism Commentary......
• Carnivals and Festivals The Fourteenth Festival of Frugality is up at Neo's Nest Egg. I liked Raising4Boys' post on buying Legos on the cheap -- we introduced some of my wife's college friends to the wonders of eBay with Legos. Next week, Free Money Finance hosts! And the Carnival of Investing is up......