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!

• Getting your readers to think about the posts Blunt Money's take on the Carnival of Personal Finance this week featured a crossword puzzle with words that related to the posts in the carnival.  Very inventive!With a carnival as popular as the Carnival of Personal Finance it helps to have an extra something to get readers involved in reading......
• 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......
• Theme your carnival with unusual holidays Writer's block can come at the worst possible moment, like when it's your turn to host a carnival.  You really want to get away from the InstaCarnival deal and do something special, but what? Check out Holiday Insights.  They have a big list of unusual holidays.  I had no idea......
• Do due diligence with hosts Getting hosts for your carnival can be tough.  It takes organization to keep things moving, and sometimes the hosting schedule gets tight.It's tempting to jump at the first person who offers.  That's fine but be sure to do some due diligence.Meaning check out their blog.  Is it a place that......

• How To Increase Free Blog Traffic When it comes to promoting your site, you must learn how to create free blog traffic! Yes, there is such thing as "free" blog traffic in addition to all the paid traffic you hear so much about these days. However, purchasing traffic for your blog is not always a good......
• Festive Link Love Carnivality #14 Ahh...we made it to Summer! Hey wouldn't you like an extra $100 to start the Summer right?  Check out the Money Life Network's Summer Savings Series for details on how to enter! Also check out Prime Time Money's 5 question interview with me!  Let me know what you think!......
• Vote Free From Broke At Free Money Finance March Madness Free Money Finance is hosting his annual March Madness personal finance competition where 64 articles battle NCAA tournament style to see which is the best article. Today my article A Mother's Struggle Between Work And Kids is up in Game 16. Check out the tournament: Free Money Finance March Madness......
• Attracting Free Blog Traffic There are plenty of ways that you can attract free blog traffic if you know what to do. First and foremost, you should be hosting your own blog to earn free blog traffic, rather than having your blog hosted by WordPress, Blogger or another similar platform. There are stories floating......