Bizosphere

Not Rocket Science: The New CotC

Apparently there is some confusion about how Carnival of the Capitalists has changed in an effort to save it, and perhaps benefit from all the effort I’ve put in over the years.

Preface

Blog carnivals as a concept have run their course, in the original definition.

A well-done periodic collection of quality links is not necessarily obsolete, though it’s easy to find and filter stuff these days, compared to, say, 2003 when CotC started.

Carnival of the Capitalists does have some brand recognition, presumably some value, and some modest no-matter-what following. It had developed a quality problem, and had long been bleeding readers.

The theory was, it was worth saving, but would need to change.

Goals included getting more traffic by staying put and being better, getting built-in traffic by staying put on a site that self-generated traffic, not relying on heavy hitter links each edition, and being able to monetize site traffic that happens to include CotC. More ambitious possibilities included being linked or picked up by a mainstream publication, after stabilizing and growing again.

Changes in Content and Submissions

Submissions through Blog Carnival will be phased out. The official e-mail address is different: bizosphere@gmail.com. Entries are expected to be hand-generated and include a link and a brief description/justification for inclusion. Anyone may enter a great post they liked.

Inclusion or exclusion starts with whether or not it’s on-topic and so forth, but beyond that is completely arbitrary and up to the host, who also hand-picks posts that were not entered. Items that are included, while we encourage the obscure and the might not see otherwise, can include articles or posts from mainstream publications or their adjunct blogs.

Entries are pre-screened by me, so the host only sees the better ones, or ones about which I am on the fence.

Entry cutoff remains 3 PM eastern time Sunday.

On-topic still means the same. Some other elements are technically more flexible, like whether you could submit two posts, or have two included, though the preference would still be for one, and they are expected to be especially compelling.

Changes in Hosting

CotC no longer migrates from blog to blog.

Each host acts as a guest editor, with the post published here.

Hosts get to put their imprint and spin on an edition, and are promoted heavily. So far, a large proportion of out clicks each edition seem to be people checking out the host, so that actually seems to work, for relatively modest values of traffic.

As mentioned, I forward the host pre-screened entries. This is complete by sometime Monday morning, and usually Sunday evening. I forward them regularly during the week.

The publication day is now Tuesday, rather than Monday, allowing longer for the host to finalize an edition and, if needed, locate and include more good links. Plus Monday was too crowded with carnivals and, well, being Monday.

The host logs in directly to this WordPress account and saves the post as a draft.

I review it, tack on an intro or ending as needed, making sure the host has been appropriately credited, publish it and check all the links, fixing as needed any that are wrong, malformed or missing from their anchor text.

I announced it for CotC Twitter followers.

I announce it on the mailing list.

I update the edition lists, past and future.

I no longer update at Blog Carnival, because it’s been changed to not a carnival, except in brand name and as a matter of history and spirit, perhaps.

Finally

My big concern centered on whether it would be worthwhile for people to host, and whether I would attract any hosts. I believe the answers so far have been “reasonably so” and “not really any harder than it had become under the floating carnival model.” It’s just that it had become challenging.

I’m not so concerned about attracting entries, because we are less reliant on and less likely to use them, and instead of random blogs, it’s always on a known quantity blog of decent page rank (the only PR5 I have that isn’t a retired blog). Entries may be excluded freely, but it’s more meaningful when they are included. There has been a reduction, because people mostly failed to follow along when I changed things, and are less prone to drive-by submissions on Blog Carnival when no new upcoming edition has been listed. The overall quality of what we get has improved.

I’d like to keep it going, even with a continued few hours of work a week involved. It’s just that doing the entire thing myself adds to the time involved, and it’s reaching a tipping point. If the new concept doesn’t attract guest hosts most weeks, it’s going to have to end, or become an irregular feature by the same name at this blog.

Are there any questions I didn’t answer?

Update:

Political Calculations has a great discussion of blog carnivals as an early form of social media. I couldn’t have said it better. Included is a comparison between the current traffic charts and Ironman’s CotC traffic experience back in 2005.