I am officially never hosting a blog carnival, ever again.
I read a really good blog post a while back detailing the ways in which hosting blog carnivals sucks, but can’t find it now. But I’ll share with you my experience.
This carnival I just posted tonight ended up with a grand total of 4 links. Pretty piss poor for a carnival, and I readily – no, happily – admit that. There were over 30 submissions. The vast majority of them had nothing to do with debt reduction, which is the topic at hand for the Carnival of Debt Reduction. DUH! Out of those 30, I narrowed them down to 7 or 8 that were decent and focused on debt reduction in one way or another. Of those, the ones I didn’t include were either commercial in nature, were more than a week old, or had already been included in another carnival. One really good submission I actually did include in my draft, with a nice little write-up, until I saw a trackback from another carnival.
Am I a hard ass? Yes. But the rules and the theme are pretty freakin’ simple, and that’s pretty much the best way I can put it. I don’t include random personal finance entries, because there are other carnivals for that. I don’t include entries that are already in another carnival, because that’s the rule and you’ve gotten enough promotion for that post already, and you’re just being greedy now.
Over the 2 year lifespan of this blog (yes, Debt Sucks recently turned 2 years old and I didn’t tell any of you, because I don’t care much for self promotion, so bleeehhhh 
), I’ve probably been included in maybe 3 carnivals. I submit only my very best posts to carnivals, and I submit them to the proper one. There are other bloggers, however, that seem to think that they need to submit posts every week to several different carnivals. That appears to me that they’re far too focused on traffic more than anything. I, on the other hand, am quite satisfied with my current traffic and readership levels, and would prefer to get out of debt more than anything, documenting my journey for whoever just so happens to swing by.
To anybody I offend… well… I’m, pretty much a professional at that, so don’t expect any apologies from me.
Popularity: 69%
Jake, I don’t blame you a bit.
Actually, I have no problems whatsoever with only four posts in the carnival. Carnivals in general are getting way too big anyway. And yes, there are bloggers that spray their links everywhere.
I don’t ask hosts to do everything that you did, but thanks. I’m not the slightest bit offended, and I run the carnival.
(By the way, was the post over at Blog Carnival Tips?)
Why yes, yes it was! September 6, 2008: “An unfortunate reality of hosting a blog carnival”
For everyone else, the post in question is at http://blogcarnivaltips.com/2008/09/06/an-unfortunate-reality-of-hosting-a-blog-carnival/
The thing that really amused me was how many submitters mentioned debt reduction in the remarks section of their submission, but then I went and read the post and there was no tying it in to debt reduction at all.
I think 4 posts is better than 25, personally. Then I know it is only the good stuff. I have participated in one carnival and found that my post just got lost amongst the other 45 posts that were included in that carnival. I haven’t submitted an article to one since.
But I’m with you, I’ll only submit the REALLY good stuff – not just my best article for the week. (Should it tell me something that in the year history of my blog I’ve only thought one was good enough?)
SS4BC, it tells me that you’re as critical of your own writing as I am of mine. In the two years of this blog, I’ve submitted 3 or 4. I’ve been editor’s choice I think twice, so that’s a pretty good batting average, eh?