Blog Carnivals Experience

[The Envoy]

Has anyone here ever hosted or participated in blog carnivals before?
What were your experiences doing it?
Any positive or negative outcomes?

[FutureConscience]

I'm interested to know this as well - I just recently posted two stories, but the categories don't seem to have 'carnivals' too often...

One of them should happen on the 30th Sep. though, so I'll let you know. Do people tend to have a lot of success with them? Interested to hear about hosting carnivals as well...

[Nathan]

I have hosted carnivals before, most recently I hosted one on Inkweaver Review. The key to getting good results from a blog carnival is to do a good job with it.

For example, notice how I laid out my recent carnival on Inkweaver Review:

Book Review Blog Carnival #24 - Inkweaver Review - Book Reviews, Reports, and Cover Art Blog

I put several hours of work into reading each post, weeding out spam, and making sure the carnival would be useful. As a results I got several hundred hits on it within a few days after posting. I also got quite a few PR helping backlinks simply because the contributors liked the way I laid out the carnival.

So the key is doing a good job so that the contributors want to link back to it. You can't force them to link back to you, but if you do a good job they are more likely to.

[stephen todd]

Originally Posted by The Envoy

Has anyone here ever hosted or participated in blog carnivals before?
What were your experiences doing it?
Any positive or negative outcomes?

yes I've submitted blog posts to various blog carnivals

results were OK

worth submitting to blog carnivals to build up backlinks to your site

[ishan]

No. I have not hosted any carnivals!

I had submitted to some of them and results were just OK.

[The Envoy]

I see. How "well-known" must your site be, before attempting to host a blog carnival?

[Robin]

I never participated in blog carnivals before，but I want to try it.

[QuirkyMomma]

I've submitted articles to 4 blog carnivals so far and I've seen my number of original visitors increase. I think it's important to have a post that fit's their theme, or it won't help you. Thanks to all of you who have hosted these in the past. I might consider hosting one in the future.

[The Envoy]

I've participated in three so far....with varying results, one sent a ton of traffic my way when it was published...and still sends the odd visitor now and then to my blog (Just google weird japan matsuri), another had mediocre success (several visitors after publication but just that) while another brought me no visitors at all. Am going ot try participating in more before attempting to host one of my own.

Thanks for sharing your experience in carnival hosting, Nathan.