Blog Carnival Quick Q's

A blog carnival is a round up of links to posts on a given topic. There are carnivals in a number of niches and some are regularly occurring.

I've participated in a number of blog carnivals - none IM related, though.

Each blog carnival has slightly different submission rules, but all require you to submit a permalink to your post.

The ones I've participated in allow you to submit your own posts.

However, you need to be sure that the post you submit actually is relevant to the carnival and has quality writing. In one carnival I hosted I got posts submitted that had nothing to do with the carnival topic, which was pretty annoying.

The advantages:

- back link from the carnival post page

- traffic from people who decided to click the link to read my post

- some of those people who read my post liked it enough to also link back to it

- increased the number of regular readers on my blog, some of whom linked to subsequent posts on my blog

- "met" other people in my niche

It's even better if you host a carnival, because then you get lots of links (and visitors) to that post.

The key is to submit a quality post, one that the carnival editor can feel good linking to, and that will make readers of the post want to come back to your blog for more.

Here is the main site that lists carnivals and their submission information:

Blog Carnival - Blog Communities Publishing Magazines

The link will go to your submitted post (not site). The editor of the carnival decides what the link text will be.

Your link gets included in the post for the edition of the carnival you are in.

Normally the editor of the carnival includes a snippet of text or some explanatory information about the posts.

Go to the Blog Carnival site that I linked to and read some recent Blog Carnivals to see what they are like.

Here is one example (that I have no affiliation with whatsoever - it's just from the "recent carnivals" list):

a real estate investing carnival - August 30, 2010 : The Income Blog

When you participate in a carnival, you will get at least one back link. It's impossible to know if anyone else will link to you - but the better the post you submit the more likely that will happen.

I'd say it's best to not think of participating in Blog Carnivals as a source of back links. Rather think of it as a way to have new readers find your site. The back links are like a bonus.