Carnival Questions

[khorrell]

As I enter more carnivals, some questions have come up. I would love to hear from more experienced carnival goers and especially hosts...

When is the cut off for Festival of Frugality? I'm sure it is posted somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it.

At the Blog Carnival site, sometimes it rolls over to the next carnival before the submission deadline. What's up with that?

If your post is not included in a particular carnival, how would I know if it just wasn't selected or if it was somehow pushed into the next week? I want to avoid double submissions.

I'm sure I have more questions, but they aren't coming to me right at the moment. I'll add them to the thread when I think of them, and y'all add your questions, too.

Thanks for any help.

[hermione]

Hi Kate,

According to the Blog Carnival profile page for Festival of Frugality, the deadline is 9PM EST Monday.

http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_162.html

I usually find that if I submit when the form says it's a certain host, it usually works for that host.

Also with most blog carnivals, the submissions go to an email account of its own - usually gmail - and hosts are given the login information to access that email account the week they're hosting. They can see in the inbox what time a submission was made and determine if it was on time for their edition or not.

I know it's hard to always remember, but the best practice is to submit before the last day. Which I forgot to do this week. And last week.

One reason is when you submit at the last minute, your entry is often added to the very bottom of the carnival if the host doesn't split the carnival into categories, which some don't do. This can be both good and bad - if your post is the very last one before the comments rather than in the middle of a long list, it might get more views/clicks.

But that's not always the case. Submitting early might get you better positioning in the carnival, but it's not guaranteed. However, when I host, I arrange all posts by category and even if a post comes in later, if it's good, I usually put it in a more prominent place.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Frequent Last-Minute Submitter

[khorrell]

Thanks, Hermione. Why I couldn't locate that FoF cut off is beyond me.

I try to submit my entries early too, but sometimes it sneaks up on me And I'm always hoping that I'll come up with some hot new piece before the next deadline.

[hermione]

No problem. The way the blog carnival site is set up, it's hard to find the profile page for carnivals. The easiest way is to google it - something like "blog carnival [carnival name]" and it should show up within the first few results. There will be a link to the carnival profile page (with deadline and organizer info) and another to the submission form which will have "submit" in the URL.

I'm like you. I often hope to eke out a new spectacular post to submit to a carnival and then forget to submit.