Review: Blog Carnival Submitter

Regular readers will know that recently I've become a fan of blog carnivals as a way of generating more traffic to a blog. I blogged about the subject earlier this year in this post.

So when I heard about a new piece of software called Blog Carnival Submitter that promised to automate the process of finding blog carnivals and submitting links to them, I had to get a copy to check it out.

Blog Carnival Submitter works in conjunction with the BlogCarnival website, which opens by default in the lower panel of the software (see screengrab below). The BlogCarnival site acts as a kind of central clearing house for blog carnivals, although there is of course no obligation for carnivals to register with them.


Most of the things you can do with Blog Carnival Submitter you can also do on the BlogCarnival website, but Blog Carnival Submitter makes the process quicker and simpler, especially for multiple submissions.

You start using Blog Carnival Submitter by clicking on Find Blogs in the upper left-hand panel. This enables you to search the BlogCarnival site by keywords. You can search for a number of different keywords to produce a longer list (using the keyword 'writing' produced fewer carnivals than I expected, so I added other terms such as 'author' and 'work from home').

Once you have a list of suitable blog carnivals, the software will check if they are valid or not. You can delete any that aren't, and save the list for future use if you want.

You can then choose any posts you want to submit to these carnivals from your own blog/s, using the panel at the top right. It takes only a moment to add the necessary details, and you can then set the software to automatically submit all your chosen posts to all your selected blog carnivals (or select what to submit where manually if you prefer).

Blog Carnival Submitter also has a range of additional features. In particular, as the BlogCarnival website for some reason blocks users from certain countries, Blog Carnival Submitter lets you submit your blog posts using an anonymous proxy server. This is a very useful feature if it applies to you, although thankfully for me in Britain it isn't an issue.

Overall, I think Blog Carnival Submitter is a neat, if not earth-shattering, piece of software. It will be most relevant if you regularly submit links to a range of blog carnivals, or you plan to. If you just want to test the water with a single post, you may as well use the BlogCarnival website itself. But if you get serious about this method of traffic generation, in my view it's well worth paying the modest fee for Blog Carnival Submitter. I shall definitely be using it myself from now on.

Get More Visitors to Your Blog from Blog Carnivals

Image via WikipediaIf you read this blog, there's a good chance you're a blogger as well.

And if that's the case, did you know that you can generate links and traffic to your site by contributing to - or even holding your own - blog carnival?

I only found out about blog carnivals towards the end of last year. The concept is that someone who owns a blog announces that they will be holding a carnival on a particular topic and date, and invites contributions.

Any blogger can then submit a recent post they have made that is relevant to this topic. If your post is accepted for the carnival, a link to your post is included when the carnival is published. Note that some blog carnivals accept all submissions, but others are quite selective.

Being included in a blog carnival creates an inward link to your blog post. This can help improve your blog's search engine ranking, and also generate extra traffic to it. Bloggers whose work is featured in a carnival are expected to help publicise it, so a busy carnival can attract a lot of traffic for all the participants.

The best way to get started in this field is to visit the website BlogCarnival.com and search for carnivals in your niche (e.g. writing). In many cases you can also submit your post to a carnival via the BlogCarnival.com website. The video below explains how to go about doing this:


If you are receiving this post by email, you will need to visit my blog to see the video.

If you would like to see a published blog carnival, click here to view a recent issue of the Write Anything Creative Carnival. The next issue of this wide-ranging carnival is due out on 14 February 2009 - so if you want to make a start with blog carnivals, it could be a good one to submit to now.

I would just add a couple of tips from my admittedly limited experience of blog carnivals. First, if you choose to provide any additional information about your post on the BlogCarnival.com entry form, bear in mind that it may be published word for word in the carnival, so think carefully how best to phrase it. And second, choose your post carefully. It should be something reasonably substantial and original, that visitors to the carnival will find genuinely worthwhile and interesting to read.

Good luck, and see you at the carnival!