Joe Kissell

Although I’m usually on top of the latest trends in the online world, for some reason, the notion of blog carnivals completely escaped my notice until a couple of months ago. A blog carnival is basically a single blog posting containing annotated links to other posts on a certain theme or topic. Carnivals on particular subjects tend to recur every week or two, and bloggers take turns hosting the carnivals. For example, if I’ve got a blog about writing implements, I might volunteer to host the Carnival of Fountain Pens one week. That means anyone who’s got an interesting post about fountain pens can send it to me that week; I’ll review all the submissions and, on the designated day, post a list of the best and most interesting ones. Then, the following week, another blogger (who, perhaps, focuses on calligraphy) does the same thing—with his or her own perspective on what’s most interesting.

Blog carnivals give valuable exposure both to the individual contributors and to the host, especially when the carnival is on a hot topic. There are hundreds of ongoing carnivals, ranging from the very serious (Carnival of Hurricane Relief) to the banal (Carnival of Drinking), along with everything in between. As long as you’ve got a post that’s genuinely relevant to a carnival’s topic or theme, it’s relatively easy to get yourself mentioned, and every additional link is valuable both for the traffic it generates directly and its positive influence on search engine rankings.

So I’ve been submitting Interesting Thing of the Day articles to a bunch of carnivals, and I’ve been very pleased with the results. Here’s a sampling of mentions that have appeared so far (last updated on July 1, 2006):

• Oil from Garbage appeared in the Carnival of Cars on June 2, 2006.
• Superautomatic Coffee Machines appeared in The Coffee and Tea Festival #6.
• Brain Machines appeared in The Synapse, Issue 1 and All in the Mind III.
• Global Energy Network appeared in the 32nd Carnival of the Green.
• Synesthesia appeared in All in the Mind II: The Psychbloggers Carnival.
• Robots that Smell appeared in Tangled Bank #56.
• Tiki appeared in Retro Carnival, Edition 1.
• Style Guides appeared in the About Freelance Writing Blog Carnival on June 14, 2006.
• Sedona’s Energy Vortexes appeared in the 37th meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle.
• The Bodleian Library appeared in the Literature Carnival, Fourteenth Edition and Carnival of the Infosciences #40.
• Bad Fiction Contests appeared in the 13th Literature Carnival.
• Membership Libraries appeared in Carnival of the Infosciences #43.
• Pedometers appeared in Carnival of the Walkers #48.
• Pilgrimage to Santiago appeared in Carnival of the Walkers #51.
• On-Demand Publishing appeared in the About Freelance Writing Blog Carnival – June 19, 2006.
• Personal Flying Machines appeared in Carnival of Cars on Friday, June 23, 2006.
• Crows that Make Tools appeared in I and the Birds of Idaho, the 25th edition of the “I and the Bird” Blog Carnival.
• Cascading Style Sheets appeared in Carnival of the Web #1
• Designer Pets appeared in Mendel’s Garden #2: The Best of Genetics Blogging.
• Extinction of the Yámana appeared in Carnival of Genealogy, 2nd Edition.
• Kopi Luwak appeared in The Coffee and Tea Festival #5.
• Edible Gold appeared in the 36th Skeptics’ Circle.
• Vegetable Oil as Diesel Fuel appeared in Carnival of the Green #31.
• Zeno’s Paradoxes appeared in Philosophers’ Carnival XXXI.
• Operation Migration appeared in I and the Bird #26.
• Living Streets appeared in Carnival of Cars on Friday, June 30, 2006.
• Optical Painters’ Aids appeared in Early Modern Carnivalesque.
• The Beale Ciphers appeared in the 33rd History Carnival and the Carnival of Bad History #6.
• Breathing Liquid appeared in Tangled Bank #55.
• Highgate Cemetery (by Jillian Hardee) appeared in History Carnival XXXIV.
• The Beale Ciphers and Project Habakkuk appeared in Carnival of Bad History #6.

(This list is continued in Blog Carnivals, Round Two.)

The extreme Web makeover is complete, and Interesting Thing of the Day is finally back up and running. There were, as I fully expected, a number of little glitches in the new system that I’ve had to work through, but for the most part, the transition was pretty smooth. If I do say so myself, I’m quite pleased overall with the new site.

This little publishing project, which is now, incredibly, entering its fourth year online, has taught me all sorts of valuable lessons, but what has astonished me more than anything else is the seemingly complete disconnection between the site’s income and the amount of effort I expend on it. Revenue from ads and affiliate links generated significant money, month after month, even when I didn’t touch the site at all or add any new content. Conversely, times when I’ve worked around the clock for days at a time to add features or write new articles have had hardly any financial impact.

Of course, the majority of traffic to the site (and thus, by extension, the majority of income) has been driven by search engine referrals. So what the statistics tell me is that if I want the site to succeed—as in, provide me with a reasonable paycheck for my efforts—I should focus less on creating lots of new articles and more on making people aware of what’s already there. So that will be one of my biggest ongoing projects in the coming months.

Nevertheless, I do have a healthy list of topics to cover, and I’ve already begun receiving submissions from several guest authors. I would love to have other people write, say, half the content, and that’s yet another thing I’ll be pushing for.

My fantasy remains, as always, that at some point the site would bring in enough income that I can treat it as a full-time job and post a new article every day. I don’t expect that to happen soon, but I’m hopeful that the new, more relaxed publication schedule—along with help from other authors—will enable me to keep it going indefinitely while trying to build a bigger audience.