Why not?

Clever Dude has done this as a way of rounding out the year and for highlighting his best work.  Today saw the 2008 Carnival of Clever Dude, with all of the best and most clever things on the topic of, well, Clever Dude.

This is a cool idea to do once in a whle.  Once a year certainly isn’t too much.  Maybe even once every six months.  Much more often that and you risk appearing like an egotist.  Strangely, though, it seems like bloggers can get away with reviewing their best work more often if it’s billed as “digging into the vaults” or “one year ago today.”  Other bloggers do this to good effect.  But there’s something about spotlighting yourself in a Carnival that is a bit over the top, and gets old if done too often.

Anyway, consider whether it’s worth your while highlighting a Carnival of You.  It could be fun!

A number of bloggers I respect have figured this out already, and they’re fairly reluctant to host a carnival anymore.

They understand the benefit of regular submission to blog carnivals: free backlinks.

The host gets a few things out of the carnival, mainly a little bit of traffic over the course of the week that they host the carnival, and a bit of exposure for their blog.  The people who submit to the carnival get a permanent benefit of a backlink that usually means an incremental amount of SEO benefit.  If their post is really good, they may get additional traffic if the host makes that post an editor’s pick, but that is small compared to the long-term benefit of the backlink.

I see hosting as becoming more of a small blog’s game, and this is unfortunate.  My main blog is reasonably old by personal finance blog standards, but I’ve gotten on board to host a number of carnivals over the next three months or so.  Some of my colleagues who have gotten a bit bigger than myself (currently at 3,000 subscribers) seem content to submit to several carnivals, sometimes with posts from several of their blogs, and rarely host any on their main blogs anymore.  And, frankly, I don’t blame them!  That’s the smart way to game the blog carnival system.

Some carnivals strongly encourage backlinks to the carnival from participating blogs; others require it.  I applaud those who require backlinks as a contingency for participation in future carnivals, mainly for the reason that it keeps the hosts from feeling like they’re being used too badly.

I still have some interest from people who want to host the Carnival of Debt Reduction but for some reason it seems to be a little bit harder to get people to step forward than it used to be.  Maybe folks who host the carnivals see the diminishing return for the effort they put out.

This seems to be an issue that carnival managers need to take on.  Some managers have implemented a "terms and conditions" clause in submitting to their carnival in order to establish some accountability for linking back.  For managers reliant on BlogCarnival.com like myself, the best we can do at the moment is to add a clause in the submission instructions.

A key ingredient of blog carnivals is the hosts, and convincing potential hosts of a carnival of the benefits of hosting is getting more difficult.  It’s necessary to put measures in place to keep people from taking advantage of the hosts too badly.

If you repeatedly submit spam or overly commercial posts and the manager says that these types of posts are not appreciated, then you risk getting blacklisted.

If you are required to link back to the week’s carnival if your post is accepted, and you blow it off, then you risk getting blacklisted.

If you badger the hosts enough, they’ll get back to the manager, and you’ll get blacklisted.

If you complain to the manager too often, he/she may get really sick of it and blacklist you for sport.

Pay attention to the manager of the carnival, follow the directions, and nobody will get hurt!

Some things to note about this particular carnival:

• There are 275 posts in the carnival (it’s posted once every four weeks) and nineteen of them were by one author.  Sometimes the Carnival of Debt Reduction doesn’t have 19 posts in the entire thing!
• I didn’t receive any notification that the carnival was up.  As a host, it’s a good thing to ask your submitters to share the carnival with their readers.
• This is clearly a direct cut-and-paste of the InstaCarnival that BlogCarnival.com provides to hosts near the end of the submission period.  Little, if any, editing was done.  The InstaCarnival is a good start but it really looks like an InstaCarnival if that’s all that’s done.
• There’s a lot of white space in between the posts.  This is an artifact of the way the InstaCarnival comes out of the box.
• There are no comments posted on the carnival as of right now, and it’s been up for over three days.  Ouch.

This seems to be an example of “you get out what you put into it.”  Getting the carnival ready to go probably took all of ten minutes, if that:  Log into BlogCarnival (or open up the e-mail with the link to the InstaCarnival), find it, CTRL-A, log into Blogger, New Post, CTRL-C, Publish, done.  But, it looks like the blogger spent all of ten minutes on it, too.

This edition of the carnival is really of minimal use to anyone involved.  It’s not really useful to the host, because no one has even commented on it.  It’s not useful to the people who submitted because their links are buried amongst nearly 300 others, many of which look like some authors submitted everything they ever wrote to that carnival.  And it’s non really useful to the readers because it’s not at all engaging.

I have said before that InstaCarnivals do serve a purpose and that they can bring lots of traffic for little work.  I might amend that a little by saying that InstaCarnivals can bring a lot of traffic if they’re already popular.  The carnival in question here is a new carnival, so it doesn’t have its audience built up.  Unfortunately, InstaCarnivals are not the way to build up a lot of traffic.

I hope How to Make a Million Dollars (the only host of this carnival so far) dresses up the next one a little bit.

Flexo, maintainer of the Carnival of Personal Finance, had been making some rumblings about getting away from BlogCarnival.com and using his own submission form, which is here.  This form had been up for months, but I had been holding out and using the BlogCarnival.com form because it filled in more of the information for me and was a little faster.  But this ease of use was the same reason why lots of irrelevant and spammy articles got through.  This was the main reason, I think, that Flexo wanted people to stop using that form and start using his.

For the popular carnivals, spamming is likely becoming an issue, because popular carnivals are, well, popular, and therefore posts that make it in get quite a bit of traffic.  So they’re targets for lots of free links by everyone and their brother.

Going “off the grid” like Flexo may have done might kill smaller carnivals.  BlogCarnival.com does provide a lot of oxygen to newer carnivals because it is a sort of hub, and, spam or no spam, it’s a traffic source that’s hard to ignore.  I guess removing this kind of dependency is a sign of growing up.

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 submitted through the BlogCarnival.com interface.  This is a perfectly valid way to put a carnival together.  It’s straightforward.  It’s clear.  It’s also pretty cookie-cutter.  (This isn’t a slam on BlogCarnival — if computers start writing as well as, or better than, humans, we’re in trouble as bloggers!)

I’ve started with the InstaCarnival template with a few carnivals I’ve hosted.  I massage the text a little bit, but it sure is helpful if you’re away from your high-speed internet connection and you have a carnival to put together.

The many, many hours version involves not only reading the submitted posts (!) but also putting together a kind of show.  These are labors of love for the hosts.  Sometimes you get the carnival in verse, with an old video game flair, with a podcast, with celebrities, or even with a Renaissance faire!

(These are just a few examples!  If you have a great one to add to the list, post a comment!)

Now the big question:  Which kind is better?

The InstaCarnival type (a list of posts and not much else) is clear but unimaginative on the part of the host.  It saves the host time.  For a big carnival, the return on investment for the host is pretty good: lots of traffic and lots of trackbacks without much work.

The SuperCarnival type (like the ones linked to above) are really cool to look at and will probably get more link love (links in posts) and more buzz than the InstaCarnival.

If it were just backlinks and buzz, the well-put-together carnival would be a hands-down winner.  But I don’t think it’s that simple.  For all of the flash of these carnivals, how much time did you spend clicking through to the posts?  Was dressing up the carnival a service or a disservice to the people who submitted to the carnival?  Sure, the good-looking carnival gets more traffic, but does it get more click-throughs?  And if hosts did this week after week, calling more attention to the carnival than to the posts, would the submitters keep submitting?

I don’t really know.  But I do think that the “dull” carnivals put the spotlight on the posts more than the “exciting” ones.  It’s easier to find what posts you want to read in the simple carnival than in the ornate one.

So I wouldn’t feel slighted with a drab carnival if the little chunk with my post was easy to understand and encouraged readers to click through to my article.  On the other hand, I also wouldn’t feel slighted if a really crazy cool carnival drew a bunch of traffic and gained a wider audience, a few of which clicked through to my blog for the first time.

What’s your opinion?

This carnival enjoyed a few months by itself before a troublemaker (I won’t mention any names!) cut his own slice of the blog carnival pie by creating the Carnival of Debt Reduction, which was aimed at highlighting personal debt reduction stories.  The initial posting of the guidelines and schedule for the Carnival of Debt Reduction acknowledged the existence of the Carnival of Personal Finance with the hope that things wouldn’t get too crowded:

Why start up one [carnival] on Debt Reduction when there’s already one [carnival] on Personal Finance, you might ask? Debt reduction is part of personal finance — no doubt about that. It’s a very important part of personal finance, though — important enough to have its own carnival. Successful debt reduction stories and good debt reduction advice needs more exposure, and people need to see that debt is not forever. Many inspiring debt reduction stories make their way into blogs, and it is encouraging to everyone involved — bloggers, carnival hosts, and readers — to have their successes and insights highlighted on a regular basis. It is my feeling that there’s enough room in the blogosphere for both a Debt Reduction carnival and a Personal Finance carnival. We’ll see!

In short, I felt there was enough room for a blog carnival that was a sub-topic of an existing carnival.  A year and a half later, the carnival still has regular contributors and people still are interested in hosting.  Also, the Carnival of Personal Finance still thrives, and if anything, gets more posts than it did before!

Following this carnival there was the Carnival of Investing and the Festival of Frugality, which arguably are also sub-topics within personal finance.  And more division of personal finance, like the Carnival of Taxes.  Then, there was even more specialization of investing, like the Festival of Stocks and the Carnival of Real Estate Investing.  Today, there are four other real-estate-related blog carnivals listed, and four other blog carnivals specializing in credit and debt.

Once one gets a foot in the door, lots of others can get in.  But the more that come in, the more specialized they have to be.

While the new specialized carnivals have to struggle to find enough posts to piece together a decent edition, the older, more general carnivals run into the problem that there are too many posts for each carnival.  The specialized carnivals have to define themselves, whereas the older carnivals may have to re-define themselves to avoid becoming unwieldy.

Blog carnivals are a great way for newer blogs to gain some exposure, and having a highly specialized blog carnival that is directly related to the content of the post may be just as effective in gaining exposure than if it were submitted to a bigger, but less specialized carnival.  This is because the readers of the specialized carnival are more targeted than the readers of the broader carnival.

I think if one is going to participate in blog carnivals, submitting to the more general ones and more specific ones is a good idea.  And if an appropriate specific one hasn’t been started up, maybe it’s time!  As the blog carnival scene evolves, odds are someone will take it upon themselves to fill in the vacuum.