Blog Carnival: Its Beauty and Benefits
Written by Naren on November 14, 2008
What is a Blog Carnival?
Blog Carnival is a site where bloggers can submit their articles in several different categories popularly known as “carnivals.” Each carnival is organized by another blogger(s) or host who provide an opportunity to new bloggers as well as the established pros to have their articles or posts featured. The host looks over all the posts submitted in the particular topic, and later publishes them in his/her own blog post. Hence, each carnival in the end becomes a compilation of several posts revolving around the same topic. And yes, the blog carnival travels from one host to another usually weekly or monthly, but sometimes they stay with the same host until another host wants to take over the carnival.
Benefits of Blog Carnival
I like blog carnival. I think it is a very smart and appealing idea. The concept of the different carnivals dedicated to a myriad of categories, makes it convenient for fellow bloggers or writers to post their articles.
Is it easy to get accepted? Well, it’s quite easy to post an article, but can be bit competitive to get featured in the carnivals; however, if your article has valuable and meaningful content that contributes to the readers somehow, then there is no doubt that your article will be accepted.
Here are some of the benefits that Blog Carnival offers:
- First, if your article gets accepted and featured, not only will it bring lots of traffic to your website or blog but also you will be rewarded with back links, which is also an important factor in drawing some Google juices to your page.
- Secondly, if you get actively involved in Blog Carnival, you will not only make new friends but also you can gain huge exposure for your website or blog. Remember that words of referral can still be highly effective in garnering popularity. So, never underestimate the power of “referral.”
- Third, your submission is not limited to just one carnival. You can submit your same article to several carnivals. You just have to find the right carnivals for your article. It would be senseless to make a submission to an irrelevant category, so make sure the article you are posting fits properly into that carnival.
- Fourth, blog carnival contributes to the enhancement of blogosphere by encouraging the fellow bloggers to communicate with each other, acknowledge their efforts, and publish blog posts on topics of awareness, information, interest, education and others.
Blog Carnival and Its Fading Beauty?
Recently people have been noticing a decline in the popularity and charm of blog carnival. I don’t exactly know the specific reasons; all I can do is make some speculations. It is possible that people have lost faith in its potential or may be people are not actively participating in it. I have heard that it takes quite an effort to host and organize the carnivals compared to the efforts it takes to submit an article. So there may not be enough contributors to hosts the carnivals. Also, there is buzz in the blogosphere that these days blog carnival is not bringing as many visitors as bloggers have expected. This is a topic definitely worth discussing.
Here, let me raise a few questions that have been swirling in my mind for some time.
- Do you really think Blog Carnival’s beauty is waning?
- Do you think it is because of all the social networking sites that have sprung up like mushrooms in the web world?
- Are people more attracted to these networking sites such as Digg, Stumble Upon, Twitter, or others because they can send a huge amount of traffic in a very short period?
- Is this really hurting the beauty of Blog Carnival?
Please feel to share your experiences via my contact page.
My Own Experience with Blog Carnival
Like I mentioned earlier, I like the idea of blog carnival. Not only does it provide an opportunity to have your posts reach to many people, but also it motivates you to be grateful to the hosts who put tremendous effort in organizing the carnivals. It also encourages participating in some thoughtful, meaningful, and interesting conversation in the blog world. But, there are a few things about Blog Carnival that have been bothering me lately. One is not being able to spot the right categories for my articles. Though Blog Carnival offers an ocean of categories, still I have experienced difficulty in finding the right one, and then when I find the one related to my article, it’s missing an upcoming edition. I have found this quite disappointing, and maybe it is something that the blog carnival’s organizers need to work on. The other thing is that I haven’t found a surge in my traffic from Blog Carnival, but again I have only submitted one article so far, which fortunately got featured. I guess the volume of traffic depends on the richness of the carnival itself. If the carnival is popular and has a huge amount of subscribers then for sure you will experience new visitors on your website or blog.
Final Words
In summary, all I can say is that Blog Carnival is certainly a place worth checking out. If you have just entered into the blog world and struggling to create your own unique identity, then I would highly recommend you to participate in Blog Carnival either by hosting or by posting, whatever you think would be the best for you. I am simply making a suggestion, the rest is up to you, and please note that I am not being paid by Blog Carnival to write this post, I am just sharing my own experience. As my very first submission to Blog Carnival got accepted, I got encouraged to write this post. I would be soon devoting a page to post all the Spiritual Pub articles that get featured in the blog carnivals to offer my gratitude to the hosts.
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