Tips for Participating in and Hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance
I’ve found a few articles by bloggers that will be helpful for others who would like to participate in or host the Carnival of Personal Finance, or any blog Carnival for that matter. I’ll be keeping this list on a separate page for more Carnival resources.
Here are the first three that I’ve included, but if you know of more, please leave a comment here.
- 25 Steps To A Wildly Successful Personal Finance Blog on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, which I’ve mentioned already.
- Five Questions (and Answers) About Blog Carnivals on Five Cent Nickel.
- How to Get Your Blog to 100,000 Visitors and Beyond, Step 13; Participate in Carnivals on Free Money Finance.
If you have any to add, please leave a comment. And don’t forget to participate in Monday’s Carnival of Personal Finance!
The Carnival is One Step to a Wildly Successful Personal Finance Blog
Recently, Jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity mentioned the Carnival of Personal Finance in an article outlining 25 steps to a wildly successful personal finance blog: “Participate in the personal finance related blog carnivals each week and sign up to be a host…”
Jim assembled a number—25, in fact—of great tips for the personal finance blogging rookie or newbie. Check it out when you get a chance.
Tips for Hosting Great Carnivals
Everyone wants to host the Carnival of Personal Finance, but few first-time hosts realize that putting together a quality Carnival is a good amount of work. At the very least, there are a few guidelines to follow. However, the best Carnivals are the ones where the host puts in the extra effort to develop something unique or bring part of their personality into the presentation.
Punny Money’s #68 is a great example of a fun metaphor. For another creative example, take a look at Carnival #47 at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.
One idea, to make things more interesting, is to highlight some of your favorite submissions like I did for Carnival #53.
At the very least, read all the articles that were submitted and exclude spam and scams. As the host and editor, you have the prerogative to exclude any submission you think is inappropriate. However, it’s important to show respect to all submitters who are participating in good faith. In other words, don’t take the attitude like the one exhibited by okdork in #42. The host did highlight his favorites, but all others were shown little respect, and that’s not what this Carnival is about.
It’s tough because we all know that bloggers should be submitting their best of the week to the Carnival, but sometimes the quality is sub-par. In this situation, it’s best to highlight the best at the top or provide other notation, but don’t just blow off the rest.
By the way, when I host, I do not include all submissions, particularly those from who I know submit their articles in bulk to a multitude of Carnivals. I suggest all hosts perform some kind of editorial review, and at the very least read the submissions.
For further reading and some great tips, take a look at Be the Host With the Most over at 10,000 Birds. Free Money Finance also has some tips for hosting Carnivals.
Feel free to add comments with this post with more tips or links to articles you have written about hosting a Carnival successfully. Here are more resources:
Writing Better Articles, Tip #2: Beware Misleading Statistics
Statistics can been used to persuade people to believe in an idea especially when the statistic is combined with fear. Yet, some statistics are misleading or exaggerated, even in leading publications. As bloggers, we should be careful in understanding what the statistic really means by asking the question, Why?
For example, a leading newspaper once reported that the average college undergraduate student loan has increased from $12,100 to $19,130, up nearly 58% in the past decade. However, 1/2 of the increase is related to basic inflation which is also reflected in higher starting salaries, which help to pay off the higher loans. So, the statistic is correct, yet misleading. The article could have said the average college loan has increased by 29%, after reflecting inflation, over the past decade. Yet, this may not have caught the readers’ attention (and fear) as much.
In addition, some statistics relating to cause and effect can be due to a coincidence or to a weak/strong correlation. For example, we can find (and quote) a statistic that poverty is tied to poor academic achievement. So, a reader may think that money will solve the achievement problem. For this example only, let’s assume that the modeling of parents’ behaviors are really the primary factor that leads to both poverty and to their children’s poor academic achievement.
Thus, the coincidence between poverty and poor education achievement would mislead the reader when the attention should be on behavior. As bloggers, we should ask why is the statistic the way it is, in order to uncover the real issue. This way our readers can address the real issues instead of focusing their energy on coincidences.
Pete blogs at My Financial Awareness and has worked for over 15 years as an actuary.
Writing Better Articles, Tip #1: Cite Your Sources
I don’t normally write about writing on my blog, so I suppose I could use this forum as a way to help fellow bloggers. No, no one asked for help, and I’m no expert when it comes to prose and research, but there are a few important points that I’d like to share.
The first tip is, as the title of this post says, cite your sources.
If you’re writing to tell me that 50 million Americans are in debt, how do I know this is true? Most likely, you did not do the primary research yourself. Where did the numbers in your blog post come from? How do I know if the numbers come from an independent or biased source? The only way for readers to begin to know these answers is to be able to go directly to the source of the information.
As educated readers, always look for references for data. If references aren’t provided, there is no way to know if the number aren’t simply fabricated. You could argue that even with references, you still won’t know if the author performed adequate research, but at least you can begin to have a clue.
By the way, I completely made up that “50 million Americans” statistic.
Flexo has been blogging at Consumerism Commentary since 2003 and on other blogs for many years prior. He recently completed his Master’s degree in Business Administration.