Toby Boyce knows how to host a Carnival of Real Estate - both "regular" and "consumer" varieties.
For the 50th edition, Toby used a great match-play golf theme. We didn't make it past round two, but given the level of play in this tournament, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Jeff Kempe, a Bloodhound contributor whens the tourney with an interesting post on divorcing the commission.
Carnival Participation Rate Down?
The Carnival of Real Estate has grow up a lot in the 50 iterations it has enjoyed. Over the last few weeks, I thought I had noticed a drop off in submissions to the Carnival. This week, there were only 19 entries…. Hmmm. Is participation in the CoRE dropping off? There were 33 entries when we hosted in Week 33, and 28 when we hosted Week 37. I thought at the time Easter weekend might have been responsible for the drop in Week 37. Week 49 had 36 entires, but due to the July 4 break, that was a two week Carnival. The last Carnival that had a "Link Post" on the CoRE site was Week 45, with 18 posts….
I understand it's about quality, not quantity. But the drop off in entries is somewhat curious. Perhaps as the Carnival and real estate blogging in general matures, we have come to realize the CoRE is a place to showcase the best of the best. I know that I've skipped a few weeks of submitting to the Carnival when I looked back and found what I wrote during the week was mostly crap and not worthy of bothering the host with. On the other hand, maybe the lower submittal rate is just a cyclical thing and/or a summertime thing.
Or maybe it's nothing at all. It would be interesting to a data nut like myself though to see a chart of CoRE submittals by week. Most of the data is out there, either in the weekly host's post, or the CoRE site wrap up.
Regardless, I don't think the Carnival of Real Estate is going anywhere. Entires of late do seem to be at about half of the peak rate, but the quality of posts is often incredible — and that's what it is all about.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to this blog via email or RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Thanks for reading! We value your thoughts and opinions, so please feel free to leave a comment. Please contact us if you have any questions or need help. You can also get automatic updates for this blog free via:
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Toby & Sadie 07.16.07 at 8:16 am
Jay - I have to admit that I was thinking the same thing, when I got the posts. Spent a few minutes making sure that I hadn’t accidently deleted some entries. My thought, is that the carnival is cyclical, we are in prime selling season and maybe that is limiting the submissions as people are not creating enough “worthy” posts. Personally, I know that I’m not submitting as many as other times because I don’t feel that I’m creating at Carnival quality.
Thanks for the kind words, your post was better than a round two entry, just bad luck on the (mostly) random draw.
Keep up the great work!
- Toby
Athol Kay 07.16.07 at 3:43 pm
Actually I’ve been thinking the Carnival has been in a low point for a couple months now.
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.
Teresa Boardman 07.17.07 at 11:56 am
I stopped entering real estate carnivals a few months back. I occasionally enter marketing or small business type carnivals, and have had some successes. The type of content on my blog is not a good fit for the carnival of real estate because of it’s local nature. The one time I did enter my post. I was one of the winners and there was some fall out over it, so I never bothered to enter again. Jim Cronin of the Tomato sometimes enters my posts and they have placed but they are not real estate posts, but posts about blogging. For the consumer content carnival of real estate I guess the idea of consumer content is up for interpretation. As for blog traffic the small business and marketing carnivals give me better exposure than real estate carnivals do.
Athol Kay 07.17.07 at 12:33 pm
Well winning the Carnival is always a bit of a lucky dip. It’s not that hard to place, but wins are always a roll of the dice weighted by what you submitted, what everyone else submitted and the personal peeves of the host blogger.
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.
Toby & Sadie 07.17.07 at 6:02 pm
But who the hell cares? Everyone that lives in East Bigglesworth. I guess that is my problem with the whole CORE and what my goal was for the consumer-focused carnival, which hasn’t taken off. We need a place where the “real estate” bloggers understand the importance and of those placebloggers that are the ones getting leads and making money off blogging … not just gaining online “stardom”.
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.
Athol Kay 07.17.07 at 6:29 pm
Hi Toby, I wonder if the very nature of the consumer carnival ideal content is almost designed to kill interest in the consumer carnival off.
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…
Teresa Boardman 07.17.07 at 6:39 pm
Athol - I guess when I said place I should have sad win. I was trying to be polite.
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.
Toby & Sadie 07.17.07 at 6:58 pm
Athol - I think you are right in one respect, and on the other side I think it is a hard sell. How do you promote a consumer-focused carnival? I’ve come close to killing it on a couple of occasions, but then someone gets interested — this month its Kevin Boer and revitalizes me a little bit.
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.
Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy 07.17.07 at 7:30 pm
I don’t consider it hijacking at all Toby! I’m enjoying the conversation. Heck I sort of hijacked the post from the get-go when I brought up the participation rates.
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.