A reasonable backup plan to handle submissions is to post an e-mail address to send the submissions to, and ask for blog name, blog URL, post name, post URL, blogger name or screen name, and any remarks about the post.  That covers most of the important things a host would need to put their carnival together.

This will work, but it can suffer from being a little bit too free-form.  A better solution is to set up a submission form on the website with specific fields and with form validation.  This requires a bit of scripting to pull off, but I found a great Wordpress form generator that let me roll my own submission form for the Carnival of Debt Reduction.  It’s the Secure PHP Form Mailer Script by Dagon Design.

Here’s what I did to put together the form you see here:

• I downloaded the script, unpacked it, uploaded it to my wp-content/plugins directory, and activated it.  Standard plugin installation.
• I signed up for a Recaptcha account for my spam retarder.  This gave me the two keys I needed for the plugin.  I selected the Recaptcha option and entered the two keys in the  Plugins -> DFFM-Main section in the Settings tab of my Wordpress admin section.
• I edited the submit page and added the code <!– ddfm1 –> to that page where I wanted the form to appear.  
• I clicked on the DFFM1 tab to customize the form.  For what you see on that form, this is what I put in the Form Structure portion:

type=text|class=fmtext|label=Your Name|fieldname=fm_name|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Email|fieldname=fm_email|max=100|req=true|ver=email
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Blog Name|fieldname=fm_blog_name|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Blog URL|fieldname=fm_blog_url|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Post Title|fieldname=fm_post_title|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Post Permalink|fieldname=fm_permalink|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Post Trackback|fieldname=fm_trackback|max=100|req=false
type=verify|class=fmverify|label=Verify
type=textarea|class=fmtextarea|label=Remarks|fieldname=fm_remarks|max=1000|rows=6|req=false

• And here’s what I put into the Message Structure portion:

Someone has submitted a post to the Carnival of Debt Reduction!

Email: fm_email
Blog Name: fm_blog_name
Blog URL:  fm_blog_url
Name/Nickname: fm_name
Post Title: fm_post_title
Post Permalink: fm_permalink
Post Trackback: fm_trackback
Remarks:  fm_remarks

Thanks!

• Those two points above are what define it as a carnival submission form.  I think the rest of the options on the form customization page are self-explanatory and they’re best learned just by playing with them.
• One slightly-tricky thing I did was to change the text in the button to “Submit” rather than the default.  The fix is to change one of the identifiers in the lang/English.php file:

define(’DDFM_SUBMITBUTTON’, ‘Submit’);

And that’s mostly it.  This is a decent way to get a carnival submission form up and running on Wordpress.  Hope this helps you manage your carnival better! 

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.

Interspersing a few interesting facts about a timely topic, regardless of whether that topic is closely tied to the particular blog carnival, dresses it up substantially.  It’s way better than a bare list of links.

Here’s how I’ve done it:

• Choose the topic.  Around this past Independence Day I did an American Flag themed Carnival of Personal Finance.
• Go to Wikipedia.  This is often a great place to get general-interest information on a particular topic.  This topic was no exception.
• Read the entry and pick out four or five somewhat connected pieces of information.  Write a few sentences on each piece of information.  (Don’t just cut and paste from the article!)
• If there are images available, great!  If they’re public domain, even better.  That’s how the flags were.  I uploaded them to my server.
• Break up the posts with the themed pieces.  This makes the carnival read a bit more like a story, for a fraction of the effort that it would take to write the entire carnival in story format.
• As an added touch, tie in the theme of the carnival to the e-mail you send to the participating blogs.

Themeing your carnival this way is a low-cost way to get a fair bit more buzz.

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!

The Carnival of Personal Finance has come to ask for hosts quarterly. He asks for hosts about a month in advance, then decides over the next couple of weeks who to have. The schedule is then ready to go for three months, and it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there.

My Carnival of Debt Reduction isn’t quite so big yet but here’s what I did the last time:

• I asked for hosts in a forum that is read by a lot of the bloggers in my niche. I received a number of requiests to host just from one post in the Money Blog Network Forums.
• After I assembled a bunch of interested hosts, I sent an e-mail (bcc to all of them) with a tentative schedule that took all of their requests into account.
• As people respond back to me, the hosting schedule takes form.

If your blog carnival has been around for a while then it makes sense to streamline how you set up your hosting schedule.

• 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 run the risk of being blacklisted.
• Use any trackbacks you’re given and find the ones that you’re not. Trackbacks are similar to permalinks but they are used to automatically post a comment linking from the trackback link’s post to the site that initiated the trackback. This places a few links back to the carnival on the submitting bloggers’ posts.
• Use StumbleUpon to bring some juice to the carnival.  If you think that Stumbling your own posts is shady, then try this: Stumble your Editor’s Picks, and then let those bloggers know that you’ve done this and ask them to Stumble the carnival for you.  This way it looks more natural.
• Use social networking avenues like Twitter, Del.icio.us, etc. to announce the carnival.
• Ping the BlogCarnival.com sidebar widget.  Quite a few bloggers have a running list of posted carnivals on their sidebar.  Pinging this service will display the link there and might send you some traffic.  

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.

It gets annoying after a while.  BlogCarnival.com has enough safeguards that the “spam” is limited, but as of now there’s nothing to prevent someone from going down the line of carnivals and submitting the same post to every single one, or from submitting multiple posts to a single carnival edition.  Here are a few ways to handle these kinds of unwanted submissions:

• Leave it up to the host to use editorial discretion.  This has worked so far with the Carnival of Debt Reduction, but some of the hosts are beginning to complain.  And rightfully so, I suppose.
• E-mail the offending poster and ash him/her to post more normally.
• Ban the offender if the submissions get bad enough or if s/he doesn’t take the hint.
• Move the submission form off site.  The Carnival of Personal Finance did this, and the submissions still seem to be up.  The last time I hosted the spam was pretty moderate if not non-existent.  This might cause a hit in the number of submissions initially, but after a while the posting should get better.

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 you’d want to have the carnival posted at?  Is the blog ready for the carnival (assuming it’s a popular carnival)?

I didn’t check out someone’s blog for the carnival that I manage.  There were some questionable advertisements (almost not safe for work) in the sidebar, but I had already asked the person to host.  I had to apologize to the person I asked to host and eat a lot of crow.  If I hadn’t, I might get someone fired who checked the carnival at work on break, which wouldn’t be good at all.

Word to the wise:  Don’t do what I did, and check your hosts’ blogs out before extending the invitation to host.

Once in a while, though, life gets in the way, someone forgets, someone gets kicked down by a really bad cold, someone dies, etc.  The carnival may (rightfully) take a back seat for the moment while things get sorted out.  A week ago the host for the Carnival of Debt Reduction got really ill and didn’t post.  I finally saw her online and asked where the carnival was.  She told me that she was sick, and I stepped in and did the carnival for her.

Now, I was pretty sure something was wrong because this particular host was on top of things in previous editions of the carnival.  Even though I had to approach her as to why the carnival wasn’t posted, the day of the carnival was the first time that I actually tried to remind her.  This was a mistake.  I should have checked before then.  Here are a few tips to keep on top of your carnival hosts (in an unobtrusive way):

• A few days before the carnival, check the e-mail account where the submissions go.  If it’s a Gmail account, then if the host has read them, they’ll be marked read unless the host (a) hasn’t read them yet or (b) deliberately marked them unread again.  It’s a positive indicator if they’re marked read, but inconclusive if they’re not marked read.
• Email the host to remind them of the carnival and ask for a response.  It’s important to ask them for a response to make sure it’s still in the cards for them to host.  I’ve found most hosts will respond if you ask them to.
• If the carnival isn’t posted on time, politely look for an answer.  It’s common sense to me not to dump on your hosts, but it’s always better to assume something’s wrong than to accuse.
• Pinch hit if necessary.  It may be that you end up dressing up an InstaCarnival just to get the carnival edition out the door.  If this is the case, then definitely be sure to e-mail all of the participants so that they know where the carnival is, because they’ll be expecting it somewhere else.  I found it was helpful to explain why the carnival moved at the last minute, and folks had sympathy for the sick host.

It’s definitely better to communicate more with your hosts.