People write blogs for different reasons, and people read blogs for different reasons. There are no “rules” in the blogiverse, which is a good thing IMHO.

The CoRE’s main “purpose” is to honor “the best” of “real estate blogging”. Problem with that is “the best” means different things to different people, and “real estate blogging” REALLY means different things to different people. Heck, we can’t even really agree on whether or not a post belongs in the “consumer content” realm — is it a “hyper local” post? A post with general “consumer appeal”? Who the heck knows.

I don’t “blog for stardom”, and I don’t “blog for business”. At least not intentionally. To butcher Sir Edmund Hillary, “I blog because it’s there”. I enjoy writing. I’m no where near talented enough to write a novel. I might could squeeze out a newspaper column, but I don’t want the pressure of a deadline. I like to write. Some people would rather slit their wrists than write. Doesn’t make one better than the other, just different. And just because I like to write clearly does not make me a good writer.

This blog wanders all over creation. I do some “hyper-local” stuff and I do some “national RE for RE” stuff. Why? Because my mind wanders a lot too and I write about whatever is on my mind. A few times I’ll write something, lean back and say, “Wow, that’s pretty damn good!” Those types of posts I submit to Carnivals of various flavor. More often, I write something, lean back and say, “Wow, that really sucked”. But I’ll leave it posted because it is what it is, and a lot of that is just me. People can like it or leave it, love it or hate it.

Teresa - Interesting thought, and I think you are a good writer. Are you great? No, but I reserve that for only a very small number of people. But you are good — if you weren’t good then you wouldn’t be getting business off your blog. I’m starting to reap the rewards of my blogging and I owe it to people like you — people that made me understand the importance of writing locally.

Sorry to highjack your thread Mr. Jay.

Toby - my blog does bring me a lot of business but I do not consider myself a great writer. My readers come fro my unique content they find me through Google and get what they want. you won’t find any master pieces on my blog which is why I gave up on the carnival you have too even though i totally support the idea and have contacted people and suggested they submit certain posts. They do and they win. I guess part of the deal with me and carnivals in that I don’t blog for stardom I blog for business so I can submit a post that resulted in business but it would not win a real estate carnival.

I mean a couple weeks of hyper local stuff from other places is okay to read, but after that I don’t have anymore interest in reading about somewhere else. When I surf my feed reader >97% of the time I just skip right over a hyper local piece spending less than a second looking at it.

That may or may not be a good thing, but it is reality in terms of how I slice and dice 3-400 posts a day.

I completely understand and agree with the intention behind the consumer carnival, I just get my eyes glassing over…

With me it isn’t about “what you wrote” but how you wrote it. I was dissapointed with some of the entries, but to be honest, I was impressed that there wasn’t more “junk”. By contrast the last issue of the Consumer-Focused Real Estate Carnival had some major trash submitted.

My Statscounter showed that I doubled my hits yesterday, but did I gain any lasting readers from hosting the carnival? Probably not, and to be honest I didn’t do it for that. However, I am not going to change how I write in an effort to win a Carnival contest.

I am preaching to the choir, I know, as I third Athol and Teresa’s comments.

I agree with Teresa that looking outside the real estate blogosphere is where the exposure/traffic/leads likely are.

Local content is always so hard to judge. It may be a great post about the turning circle thats going in that bad intersection in East Bigglesworth, but who the hell cares.

I won #43 and had my winning article linked to just three time - the host, the CoRE page and Trulia Blog. I think I had maybe 10 more readers.

I hosted #47(?) and frankly was shocked by some of the garbage that was submitted. There were some great posts to be sure, but from start to finish it was about 4 hours of effort hosting the carnival.

I think I spend around 6 hours a week doing my Feed Bag posts, which is kind of a Carnival of Athols Short Attention Span, so….

Honestly, I just forget to submit most weeks.