Free Money Finance has started up a new blog carnival that turns its back on quantity.  The Best of Money Carnival, by definition, is limited to only ten posts each week.  FMF even throws in some perqs:  $1,000 donated to charity for the best post of the year and for the best host of the year, plus ten automatic entries into his wildly popular Personal Finance March Madness competition.

This is refreshing.  A lot of blog carnivals are becoming nothing more than link dumps.  Hosts have had it, and managers have had it.

Some of the advantages of a limited-post, quality-based carnival:

• Filtering. The host has filtered out the riff-raff and the mediocre.
• More traffic for those accepted. Being one of ten posts is better than being one of a hundred.
• Less wasted time. You may miss a few good posts that didn’t quite make the cut, but it’s unlikely that you’ll sit through any bad ones.
• Self-selecting.  After getting turned down a dozen times, spammers might turn to greener pastures.
• Construction of the carnival is easier and faster. Less typing.

If your niche is being overrun with link-dump carnivals, consider starting your own Best Of carnival!

• An unfortunate reality of hosting a blog carnival The larger benefit goes to the people who submit to the carnivals rather than to the people who put forth all of the effort to host them. A number of bloggers I respect have figured this out already, and they're fairly reluctant to host a carnival anymore. They understand the......
• Empower your hosts 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......
• Adding content to a carnival when you host There are many good ways to get your carnival to stand out if you're the host.  Typically the inventiveness is evident in the presentation of the posts.  But what about adding a well-thought-out introduction to the carnival?Most of the carnivals I've hosted just say something to the extent of:"Welcome to......
• 5 ways to promote your blog carnival when you host Here are a few tips on promoting your edition of a blog carnival that you've slaved away at: Ask the bloggers who submitted articles to share the carnival with their readers. This probably is only fair, and some carnival managers are requiring that submitters link back to the carnival or......

• Save Time, Money and Space in Over 80 Ways If you're looking for handy gadgets, tools and various items that can save you time, money or space (or all three!) this list of more than 80 top products is just what you need. Everyone's got saving money on their minds these days. Some of us are always looking to......
• Free Money Finance March Madness Round II With your help I was able to get through Round I of FMF's personal finance March Madness.  Well now I'm in Round II and it's really tight! The March Madness competition pits some of the best personal finance articles from 2008 against each other to see which is the best. ......
• Money Hacks Carnival #24 at Greener Pastures The Money Hacks Carnival #24 was hosted at Greener Pastures. This “The Dog Days of Summer” editions is hosted by Lisa and her dog Pete -- a 7.5 pound Yorkshire Terrier. It's a great carnival with a lot of interesting photos of Pete. Lisa’s and Pete's picks include: FIRE Getters......
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