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What Blog Carnivals and Memes do You Participate In?

Posted By Darren Rowse 4th of November 2008 Blog Promotion 0 Comments

A year or two back ‘blog carnivals’ were all the rage as a way to put yourself out there and promote your blog. I know that they still exist and many bloggers still get into them – but I’m wondering how many bloggers use them these days?

For those not familiar with the concept – a blog carnival is an event where a group of bloggers all blog on a certain blog topic and where those posts are all listed in a central place (which is usually promoted by all those participating).

There are many variations on exactly how these ‘carnivals’ are held (sometimes the central page moves from week to week to give everyone a turn, other times they centre around a single blog each time) – but carnivals can be a good way to interact with other bloggers and get your blog noticed by others.

Of course there are other similar types of ‘memes’ or ‘projects’ that are not called blog carnivals. For example here at ProBlogger I’ve held quite a few ‘group writing projects’ which are quite similar to blog carnivals.

You can learn more about blog carnivals at BlogCarnival.com (a site that lists current carnivals to participate in).

  • So – do you participate in blog carnivals (or other similar types of projects on blogs)?
  • Have you hosted them on your own blog?
  • Do they bring you traffic?
  • What other benefits have you had from participating in them?
About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. As a new blogger I haven’t heard of blog carnivals. However I was ‘blog tagged’ last week by another blogger (in the form of a meme) and I in turn tagged a few more blogs. So far it has paid off…I’ve gotten some new readers!

  2. I did a few “memes” to see if it would improve traffic. It didn’t because I think many others were doing it for the same reasons. Or maybe beer is too niche…

  3. I run my own meme at Maternal Spark. It’s called Monday’s Muse http://www.maternalspark.com and I link to those who participate.

    I know many Mom bloggers use carnivals still – Bloggy Giveaways is a big one that’s going on now (or maybe just ended) and people have said it brought a lot of traffic. I didn’t participate myself but may in future.

  4. I participated with a Bloggy Giveaway Carnival at the beginning of this year with another blog that I had.

    There were literally thousands of participants in this carnival and even more web surfers that wanted to win free items.

    It only ran for 1 week, but I saw 2-3 thousand new visitors in that one week.

  5. I don’t know much about blog carnivals, nor have I ever participated. I’m interested though and if it’s a way to gain some readership and stumble upon new blogs, I’m all for it. Thanks!

  6. I don’t do as many of them now as I did a year ago. Back then I did the Carnival of Family Life regularly, and also the Mother-Daughter Blog Carnival, but I’m not sure if that one’s still even around anymore. I do several of the weekly memes – Wordless Wednesday, Thursday Thirteen, Aloha Friday, Photostory Friday Tackle It Tuesday – and again, used to do more of them. I just felt like my blog was becoming too meme-oriented and I missed doing ‘regular posts’, so I had to let several of them go.

    I did start one of my own a few weeks ago, called “I Remember When”. It’s meant as more of a writing prompt with a weekly topic focusing on your childhood memories. The kind of things that are one of the reasons I started my blog – for my kids to be able to read when they get older. :)

    On my product review site, the only carnival I participate in is Works For Me Wednesday, from a product standpoint (no paid or sponsored products, just ones I really love and want to share about). And I only participate in this one when I have a product I want to share about, so not every week.

  7. I’ve participated in two blog projects or carnival-like events, and I’ve only had success from the ProBlogger event. The other was much larger, but I got no traffic from it.

  8. Blog Carnivals are basically dead, the only people using them still are SEO’s.

  9. At Middle Zone Musings, I run a group writing project every month called “What I Learned From…”. I set the topic and folks write a post and send me their links.

    We’re in the midst of our 18th one. Largest participation to date has been 44 entries. Come join us if you like!

  10. Blog carnivals bring in links which over time increase traffic from the search engines. I haven’t received a lot of traffic from any carnival as of yet. The most I’ve ever seen was 22 visitors from a single carnival, in a month.

    The carnivals is also a great way to get to know other webmasters in your niche +_+

  11. I’ve participated and hosted them and I don’t do it often but I feel like it builds community and helps to connect my readers. Me with them and them with each other. I have a DIY home decor blog so we love sharing our ideas!

    I get a little more traffic just for that day but nothing to brag about.

  12. I participated in a group writing project at http://createabalance.com/how-do-you-practice-the-art-of-life-balance/

    It was all about finding balance in your life. That is about it though. No carnivals or anything like that.

    – Jack Rugile
    Simple Sapien

  13. Wordless Wednesday is a staple. It’s a super easy way to fill space and get blog exposure.

  14. I host the Carnival of Overdue Thanks (http://cot.clkl.com) and frequently participate and avidly read Haveil Havelim (http://esseragaroth.blogspot.com/2008/11/haveil-havalim-189-elections-edition.html) and the Kosher Cooking Carnival (http://me-ander.blogspot.com/2008/10/post-shemitta-kcc-35.html)(which I hosted once last year). I also like JPix (http://www.leoraw.com/blog/2008/11/02/jpix-20-post-sukkot-edition/), though only as an observer, not a contributor.

    BlogCarnivals build community and allow me to discover other bloggers, or articles by some of my favorite bloggers that I might otherwise have missed. For some of the “regulars” it feels like a house party.

    I’m generally shy about blog promotion, but I don’t feel as timid when submitting a link via the blog carnival form. Since I’ve had the experience hosting, I know that the host probably appreciates the help, and, worst case, since I’ve done the effort of getting the link formatted, if the host doesn’t like the link, she/he can just delete it.

    As long as it’s on-topic and a good link, it doesn’t feel spammy to share, since by definition, it has been requested.

  15. I use to participate in carnivals, but they all seem to have died off in the past year. None of them ever brought much traffic, but they did provide a way to network with other bloggers.

    Now it seems like social media has taken over the networking and traffic generation that carnivals used to provide.

    I will occasionally participate in a meme or group writing project that I find interesting. Blog Action Day is by far the largest one I’ve done. I try to avoid all of the lists of stupid questions (What is your horoscope sign?) that seem to circulate endlessly. I don’t see how they add any value for my readers and I certainly don’t enjoy them.

  16. My friend LadyJava started Monday Music meme last week and the respond not bad, more then 30 sites join the meme.

  17. I participated to the Fabulous Festival’s latest edition, as I heard a lot about blog carnivals and wanted to see what benefits it had. So far, it hasn’t dramatically increased my traffic, so I suppose I won’t be using it for this. However, it was a good way to discover blogs I didn’t know about.
    In the future, I don’t think I will be participating much anymore, but I will definitely read the carnival posts, to discover new blogs.

    I created a carnival myself for Fashion blogs called the Fashion Carnival, in the hope to aggregate interesting fashion related content, but most of the submissions so far have been really poor and I am thinking of cancelling it.

  18. I’ve participated in numerous Blog Carnivals. I’ve also hosted three on my blog. Blog Carnivals can still be an excellent means to meet new bloggers, increase subscribers, and gain links. The key to participating is to only submit your BEST articles. The key to hosting is to be creative, unique, and perhaps humorous.

    I had great success and found good traffic when I hosted the Festival of Frugality: Bare Necessities Edition

  19. I came over to plug Robert Hruzek, and he beat me to it. Figures. Memes don’t work for me. Neither do blog carnivals per se.

    I’ve seen blog book tours raise visibility (with limited success in converting that to measurable sales). But I’ve seen group writing projects like Robert’s build some real community amongst bloggers.

    Does community turn into traffic? I don’t know. I guess in the long run it probably does.

  20. As a new blogger, I do participate in carnivals. I agree with some comments; traffic from the carnivals is not great, but the links are good. I do not mind the exposure. I do participate in multiple carnivals every week.

  21. I regularly participate in Haveil Havalim, the Jewish/Israel blog carnival.

    Participating has helped me network with other Israel bloggers and hosting has driven traffic to the site.

    My first hosting of HH introduced by blog to the J-Blogosphere and led to a handful of repeat visitors. My second hosting of HH happened to coincide with my first time going high on the Reddit list, so the results were hard to discern. There was a lot of traffic into the page though.

    I think the marginal benefit of hosting a blog carnival decreases as time goes on, but it is worth it to help new bloggers in the sphere.

  22. Carnivals have never really been my thing. I try to spend that time/energy spreading word about my blog via social media sites. Honestly carnivals are just too time consuming and they end up being counter productive for me.

  23. I haven’t participated in a blog carnival, but I have done similar things (ProBlogger group writing projects; Blog Action Day; NaBloPoMo; Blogathon). Those activities bring me a bit of traffic, but the traffic always eventually returns to normal levels. They are still a lot of fun, though. :)

  24. I’ve been running a Fall Color Project. Since it is fall in the northern hemisphere I’ve been encouraging bloggers to write about their fall colors. My blog is garden themed and trees certainly fit into that. In exchange for putting up a post and advertising the project I put a link to each post in my sidebar and write a short summary of their post designed to hopefully direct traffic to their blog. <a href=”http://thehomegarden.blogspot.com”The Home Garden: Garden Blogger Fall Color Project

    It’s been fun. I don’t care much for the memes that ask you silly questions, but if it pertains to the blogs purpose/goal I’m all for them.

  25. Oops, sorry I messed up that link, here’s a second go at it! The Home Garden: Garden Blogger Fall Color Project

  26. The repetitiveness of blog carnivals has turned them into link dumps that few people follow any more. The magic now is in group writing projects like Robert Hruzek’s above. Coming soon will the first Twitter Group Writing Project ever…

  27. I was in an assistive technology blog carnival. What I like about carnivals is reading the other similar posts on a particular topic. It’s a great way to find other niche blogs! (book & librarian type blogs, disability blogs, etc…)

    I’ve been invited to memes, but never really had time to do them yet!

    Talking Books Librarian
    http://talkingbookslibrarian.blogspot.com

  28. We have participated in some great frugal and bargain saving carnivals. They have been fun! And yes, they have definitely brought traffic to the blog. (and it helps if you submit a really useful post) It’s also a fun way to meet other bloggers.

    Momma
    Feature Blogger at Engineer a Debt Free Life (bringing you lots of freebies, bargains, and money saving tips) at http://engineeradebtfreelife.blogspot.com

  29. I manage and participate in the Festival of Stocks. It’s one of the only blogcarnivals on the topic of my blog. I’ve hosted it on my blog and find it a nice source of traffic and a great way to find new readers.

  30. I use them from time to time and have seen little traffic from the blog carnivals I have participated in. Although traffic has not been the best they do sometimes provide backlinks to my website and increase my technorati rankings.

  31. Most of my blog posts are “how tos” on DIY, craft, and green living so blog carnivals do increase my traffic quite a bit. However, I seem to get better traffic if I participate in a carnival listed on Blog Carnival than when I participate in some of the weekly well known Mommy Blog carnivals that have almost a hundred entries per week.

    I hosted the Green It! http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_3855.html with good success. It was good experience if I ever want to start my own blog carnival to generate traffic. Which I’m not sure if I want to do right now. I think I’ll stick to guest hosting carnivals every once and awhile because it is a lot of extra work.

  32. I seem to go in fits and starts. Every now and then I’ll go through the blog carnival website and enter relevant posts into some carnivals. Mostly for my personal blog. I don’t do it as often as I used to when my blog had less traffic. Although that’s mostly a time thing more than a perceived value thing.

    I do participate in a couple of Mr Linky meme’s from time to time. Again, on my personal blog. I also run one called Smiley Saturday (http://www.lighteningonline.com/smiley-saturday/) which I find good for building backlinks (participants link back to my blog).

  33. I don’t really care for blog carnivals.

  34. Not sure if it qualifies as a carnival, but I love Wordless Wednesday! I do get traffic from it, and lots more comments than usual, and I like the challenge of being creative in a different medium from the rest of the week. I have picked up some regular visitors from participating in WW, and have also discovered some new blogs for myself.

    Now I’m off to check out Home Garden from one of the comments above! Thanks for this post, I look forward to learning about other carnivals and group writing projects out there!

  35. As a momblogger, I currently participate in the following carnivals/memes:

    * Contesting Monday
    * Tackle it Tuesday
    * What’s on Your Nightstand
    * Wordless Wednesday
    * Works-For-Me Wednesday

    However, I must say that I received the most new subscribers from the “Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival”.

  36. I participate in something similar to a carnival, but so far it is quarterly, not weekly. I’ve gotten a couple of new readers both times I’ve participated.

    I take a lot of photos and they are often on my blog. I recently decided that I would spend the month of November taking photos in black and white. When one person expressed interest in joining me, I opened it up to everyone and have been pleasantly surprised at the response. I have a very small blog, but I have had double the hits over the past week, in large part due to this b&w photography project. It’s been a very good experience for me, especially since I have only just started reading info on how to gain more readers/subcribers.

  37. I’ve been asked to host the Music Education Blog Carnaval (a monthly feature that moves from blog to blog) for January 2009. As to whether it generates traffic and interest, that is something I aim to discover in a few months.

  38. Since my niche is so narrow — mental illness and the Anxiety Disorders — I have not participated in blog carnivals much. There’s not much leeway to blog on off-topic subjects. I don’t have anything against blog carnivals, it’s just that I can’t participate without violating the trust of my readers.

    I did participate in Blog Action Day and was pleased to do so. I did not realize much if any extra traffic, but it was gratifying to work with so many others toward erasing poverty.

  39. I haven’t had too much success with blog carnivals. :(

  40. I’ve participated in a Green Travel Blog Carnival since I had a post on green travel that I was publishing. Traffic directly from the carnival was minimal but my traffic increased quite a bit that week, could be a fluke. I’ll be trying it again coming up since I’m planning on writing about collapsible chopsticks and titanium sporks.

  41. I don’t participate in blog carnivals but would be very interested in joining them. Email me at my blog (click my name) if you know of a few good blog carnivals.

    I write about internet marketing and in particular my adventures with them.

  42. I run OrbitalHub, a space blog, and I participate in the Carnival of Space every week.
    > have I hosted a carnival on my blog? yes, and I have to admit that it had increased my traffic… the day I hosted it, g-analytics reported me 10 times more hits than in a normal (what is normal? :D) day;
    > do they bring traffic? definitely yes if I host a carnival, not that much if I just submit a post… it makes me wonder why! Darren, maybe you have an answer for this.
    > benefits? you get your name out there and make connections…

  43. I have participated in the Book Review Book Carnival (http://bookcarnival.wordpress.com/) twice now, and each time got a bit of traffic off of it. It’s nice for me, too, because I’m relatively new to the book review community, and it gives me exposure to other book review sites.

    I’ve also participated in a ‘meme’ on Semicolon (http://www.semicolonblog.com/) called the Saturday Review of Books. That’s much less formal, but is still a great resource for me to find other sites, and it’s brought me quite a bit of traffic.

    I haven’t hosted a carnival yet, but I’m still building my readership. Once I have something to offer, I’m sure I’ll host one.

  44. Actually I wasn’t fully aware that these were called “blog carnivals”. I think I might just research into it more. I like the concept of bloggers interacting with each other in such a good and positive way.

  45. I do several weekly memes on a semi regular basis. Self Portrait Sunday, Give Me Five Monday, Booking Through Thursday, and Four Foods on Friday. I have done Wordless Wednesday and Thursday Thirteen in the past. I don’t hold myself to every week on any of them.

  46. When I looked into them several months ago for A Blog about Nothing I decided not to join. My reasoning is that I wanted to expand my readership beyond other bloggers and a Blog Carnival seemed counter intuitive to that goal.

  47. An interesting question on which I have written often, after hosting a carnival for many months.

    I now participate in Law of Attraction Carnival which has become selective and only posts that are on topic are included.

    Here is a comment I wrote a few months ago on Lightening’s blog.
    Thanks for including my post, I am so glad I raised the topic- besides getting fame, it seems there are lots of bloggers wondering. I am planning to keep thinking out loud.

    Great Carnival, just the way I believe a carnival should be done. I was going to write a comment earlier on the post you had about carnivals at you Blogworld but never got around to it, so maybe this will start some discussion.

    This carnival is an example of how I believe a carnival should look and be, not what most carnival are: just link farms.

    Congratulations! You have actually read the posts and included your own comments, I just love the pink I would be curious to know if you selected the posts, rather than as most carnivals do, just drop in what you get from using Blog Carnivals instacarnival. There are carnivals out here that seem to accept anything which I believe lowers the value of a carnival.

    I know I started the Abundant Thinking Carnival after doing Wendy’s 10 Days to a better blog course. She suggested just finding carnivals in your niche, there wasn’t much on abundance or LOA , so I started Abundant Thinking, was great for a few months, then I was getting 40 plus entries , maybe 10 worthwhile,and sometimes that was pushing it. I was also looking for entries that were different, added color,light and movement. Then I joined forces with Carole Fogarty and we decided, so we thought to simplify it and focus and specific areas, the first ones were okay and then the standard dropped to the extent that last month I closed it
    you can read about that at http://www.abundancehighway.com/the-carnival-is-over/

    I remember when I first started Colin Campbell ( who by the way always presents a high quality carnival) saying carnivals were a lot of work! I took that with a grain of salt, now I would agree with him. I also closed the carnival as it no longer was fun and wasn’t bringing joy to me, so I doubt that it would inspire my readers.

    Some people put anything everywhere just to get links and I have discovered recently that you can pay $97 a month and the guy who runs it drops anything and everything in- I was getting at least 1 or more a week from him that had nothing to do with LOA or abundance. Some people do it for the 20 odd link back they get each week. It was through someone I know who writes great articles on blogging tactics that I discovered this. I was finding at least 2 posts a week coming in, so I emailed him to ask if he had read the guidelines?

    I then realized why I was getting so many off topic entries.

    Would be interested in others views, as I know I no longer read carnivals that are just lists.

    I have also taken to submitting to carnivals that have maybe only 10 posts, yes I may not get selected, that’s okay as I know the standard has been high.

    Do carnivals bring you more traffic? Carole found after a month or so of submitting to many carnivals, that no it didn’t.

    Lightening, hope this answers some of the questions you posed at http://www.lighteningsblogworld.com/2008/03/31/blog-carnivals/. off to leave a comment over there to link back here.

    I now do participate in group writing projects adn blog action day etc.

    Have a deliciously abundant day

    Suzie

  48. Hmm. Interesting. I’ve never heard of a blog “carnival”, but it seems like a neat concept.

  49. I recently hosted the Life Balance Group Writing Project (thanks Simple Sapien for the mention up above). It brought a lot of new traffic and I met many new bloggers during the project. It also created a sense of community for the bloggers that regularly contribute to my blog.

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