Blogging Carnivals: What Are The Benefits?

What Is a Blogging Carnival?

A blogging carnival is a collaboration by various bloggers with posts solely dedicated to answering a single question or focused on a single topic.  This topic or question is usually decided by the blogging carnival's host.  The host can be the same for each carnival or can travel between the different participants.  The host collects all of the posts done by participating bloggers and organizes them into one large post with links to each of the individual posts.  I have participated in many blogging carnivals and I must say that they are an excellent way to network within your niche and are amazing at increasing traffic to your site.

Blogging Carnival Benefits

Carnival participants reap the following benefits:

1. A major spike in traffic on carnival days as your host will be sending many readers directly to your entry post.
2. You get exposure to many readers that many never of found their way to your site without the carnival.
3. The increase in traffic results in an increase in subscribers and returning visitors if your content is good.  You should always submit some of your best content to guest posts and blogging carnivals.
4. Blogging carnivals allow you to find others in your niche and assist with networking.
5. Having seen your work on a carnival, other bloggers may be more likely to sponsor a guest post submitted by a fellow carnival participant.
6. Increased traffic means increased potential for monetization via purchases and ads revenue.
7. Backlinks from the host back to your site.

Carnival hosts reap the following benefits:

1. Increased traffic and returning visitors that come back looking for new carnival topic entries.
2. Building page links that link back to your site as many times participants will put a link to your site describing that they are participating in your carnival.
3. Content rich posts from various authors.

I highly recommend that you start out by participating in a blogging carnival to see exactly how they work.  You will reap many benefits that will continue to help increase your traffic and subscribers long after the carnival is over.  Reach out to your fellow blogging carnival participants and get to know them for increased chances of hosting guest posts.  You can get started by doing a search for "blogging carnival" and the niche that you are in.  This should give you a list of carnivals to look into.  Participating in at least one blogging carnival per month should be one of the goals of your blog.

Can you think of any other benefits for either the blogging carnival hosts or participants?

What has your experience been with blogging carnivals?