early in the history of blog carnivals, i kept close tabs on what they did to traffic . . . i would say things have changed . . . i routinely got several hundreds clicks when i posted a carnival, which at the time meant my traffic jumped a few hundred per cent at times . . . part of what has happened i think is that in just these short few years the net itself, web 2.0 in particular, has exploded such that we all have less time for leisurely reading . . . and carnivals, despite having the great advantage of putting links all in one place, have fallen to the bottom of the list of things that can be accomplished . . . i started a carnival myself (thankfully still going strong, but under new management) and routinely contributed to several others, this one included . . . now it is a struggle to read the ones that are out there . . . even my own blog has turned from mostly original content to passing on things sent to me . . . sad but true . . .

i would point out one more thing that is difficult to track . . . and that is, of the click-throughs you get how many of them are new to your site, and thus make it a regular stop on their blog-reading tours, or subscribe to a feed so that they know when you post? besides the one time clicks, what you really want to do is build a reader base, and that takes some time . . . i watched my base creep up consistently when i was doing lots of carnivals . . . i've lost some of that recently, but i still have a significantly enlarged group of readers that i attribute to that time period . . . .

just my two cents . . .

tony g