Monday, October 07, 2013

Looking for thoughts and insights on the Carnival of Homeschooling

Almost eight years ago my wife and I started up the Carnival of Homeschooling. I think it has been a net positive benefit for the homeschooling community.

At first many of the carnivals had 25 to 50 entries. We even had a few that broke 65 entries, in a single carnival! It was a bit crazy to try to handle all the submissions. For the first four to five years this level of activity held pretty strong. But recently the submission rate has dropped off. This year the average number of entries per carnival has been more in the 10 to 15 range.

I have talked with some organizers of other blog carnivals and they have experienced similar trends.

I don’t want anyone to worry, for now I plan to keep the carnival going. While the traffic has died down I think it is still a positive influence for homeschooling.

I do have a few questions:

Are you finding the carnival entertaining, educational or useful?

Do you have any suggestions on how to generate more interest in the Carnival of Homeschooling?

Thanks.

4 comments:

Denise said...

I have been trying to remember to send in CoH entries, but it's easy to get too busy. Have you thought about switching to a less-frequent schedule?

One thing I've noticed is that several spam blogs (online education, hire-a-nanny, etc.) have been getting through, which tends to lower the overall quality of the carnival. I may be hyper-sensitive to that, because I also run a blog carnival (on teaching math), and we get hit by those same spam bloggers. Grrr.

I don't know how you feel about this, but I encourage my carnival hosts to keep their eyes open for good posts and share their favorites, not relying totally on the carnival entries. That can help fill out a skimpy carnival, and it may also help build awareness, as some of those featured bloggers may contribute again in the future.

Mama Squirrel said...

I like Denise's suggestion about including non-submitted posts; The Common Room blog did exactly that in this week's CoH.

But yes, I have noticed in general that carnival submissions are way down...even the spammers. Someone suggested that the Linky-type features have probably become more popular.

Geneviève said...

I think you are right about the linkies, easier for bloggers to submit, I think. But here I am, a lowly reader with no blog. I love this carnival and hate linkies. I appreciate the short description of the article. It helps me decide what to read and what to skip.

Keep up the good work, I would be sad to see this carnival go down.

Henry Cate said...

I apologize for taking so long to respond to the comments. My wife and I have been very busy with foster care.

Thanks for the feedback. For now I do plan to keep the carnival going. And I've encouraged the hosts to look for posts to include in the carnival.