Blog Carnivals for Traffic – Interview With a Blogger
I mentioned in a previous post that blog carnivals are an excellent way to get more traffic to your blog, and I promised that I’d write a longer post about it sometime soon. I had the pleasure of interviewing Alaina Ellington of Living Simplistically about her use of blog carnivals and how much of a blog traffic increase she has seen. Here is what she had to say:
How long have you been blogging?
I have had a blog for over 2 years now, but I didn’t start blogging on a regular consistent basis until about a month ago. I tried it out 2 years back and grew impatient as well as found other ways to work from home and gave up for a long time. Then I decided to go back and give it another go, and I’m glad I did 
Where did you get the idea for hosting a blog carnival?
The idea of creating a blog carnival came to me while researching how to drive traffic to your blog. I ran across the Blog Profits Blueprint and that was one of the ways listed there. I was very unsure of even how it works or how to start your own carnival, but I jumped in head first and I’m glad I did that too.
Have you noticed a change in traffic since running your blog carnival?
Definitely, my traffic has grown as has the amount of loyal readers. (Though some of them only read the carnival editions, and that’s fine too.) I bring in around 30 visitors a week, give or take. It really depends on the amount of submissions I receive for the particular edition. Usually the people who submit an article will come check out the edition to see if their submission was accepted or rejected, along with many search engine users also.
What other techniques do you use for traffic?
There are so many! I would HIGHLY recommend Reddit, but do your research first you don’t want to get labeled a spammer or get trolled. I also use Digg, StumbleUpon, Linkreferral, profads, along with commenting on other blogs (and only adding my link when it is needed), commenting in forums, adding my web address to all of my online profiles and linking articles.
Traffic is really a “see what works” kind of thing. Some things work for me that wouldn’t work for others and vice versa. The best advice is just try it all and find out what works. I normally test something for at least 2 weeks most usually a month. The combination I mentioned above has brought anywhere from 70 visitors a day to 2500 visitors a day it depends on the content I am promoting and the avenues I link to on any given day.
How long did it take to set up the blog carnival?
I have two blog carnivals, and setting each one up takes only a few minutes if you are planning to host the carnival on a blog you already run.
(Just a side note: Publishing the edition each week takes anywhere from 2-15 minutes. I create my own banner each week so it takes me about 15 minutes, however if you were to just publish the edition with no banner and no modifications it could take as little as 30 seconds.)
Now that you have it running, would you have done anything differently?
Nope, I am pretty happy with it just the way it is. However, after you create a blog carnival you can go back and change it completely if you want to.
What advice would you give a fellow blogger who wants to set up a blog carnival?
I would say go for it! Do a little research, find out what type of carnival would work best for your blog, and go for it. Don’t forget to add the blog carnival widget to your blog because it does help to bring awareness to the carnival. It’s always good to have a decent amount of bloggers adding articles to your carnival because it brings in more views.
Always make sure that you add a description to your carnival. Submissions (and editions) with descriptions always do better. Also it’s a good idea to limit the number of submissions per person each edition, otherwise your edition gets bombarded by the same user and doesn’t allow for much visibility for the other articles that have been submitted. Be sure to promote the edition as well, so the bloggers who use your carnival will come back.
There are currently 4 editions of the Living Simplistically Carnival for Saving and Making Money Articles
There are two ways to use BlogCarnival.com – you can either host a blog or submit your own blog posts to be included in other blog carnivals. When you go to the website you can browse their list of blog carnivals and sort by category, name, latest edition, or next edition. They don’t seem to care much about removing inactive blog carnivals, so the best method is to sort by category and then make sure that there is a date under the next edition column, otherwise you can waste a lot of time looking through inactive carnivals.
Either method is a great way to increase blog traffic, as exemplified by Alaina’s blog. When you create one, each link should result in a pingback on the featured blog, allowing visitors of that blog to see your site. Additionally, blog carnival courtesy suggests that when you’re featured on a carnival you make a little post about the hosting blog or at least put a link back to it. This way the carnival benefits everyone involved.
Check out these other great blog carnivals to learn more about online business, internet marketing, the outsourcing pros and cons, and much more:
That about wraps it I guess. Thanks again Alaina for being a good sport as always, and with these helpful tips maybe some of you will start turning your blog into a high traffic carnival blog.
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You are very welcome Andrew
Thanks for asking me…I am LOVING the new look! Awesome!
Yeah I wasn’t that excited about the old theme. This one probably won’t last very long either- I just bought HandleyNation.com so I’ll be pouring all of my efforts into getting that up and running. I’m really excited about it.
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