For those interested in participating in the Disney Blog Carnival, here's a whole bunch of information to help you understand what it is, how it works, and why you might want to participate.

What's a Blog Carnival

A blog carnival is simply an online "event" to which bloggers in the same topic area submit a post. The carnival then provides a link to all of those blogs that should be of interest to carnival readers. It provides some good exposure to all participating blogs.

Click here to hear more about the benefits of participating in or hosting a blog carnival.

How Does It Work?

Here's a quick breakdown of how the process works for those unfamiliar with it:

• Each contributor writes a post and submits it to the carnival using this form.
• The host, who will likely be a different blogger each week, creates a new "official blog carnival" post on their site. This post has a link to all the carnival submissions and summaries of their posts.
• Once the host's post is up, all of the carnival entries now link to it.

We're done! Now everyone who reads any of the carnival posts can follow the link to the central post to learn about all the other carnival posts.

By doing this, each of the participants gets exposure from all of the other participants as well as the host. It is also beneficial from a search engine ranking perspective.

Hosting the Carnival

DisMarks will host the first carnival(s). As soon as we have enough consistent participants, we'll do a rotating hosting schedule. If no one wants to host a particular carnival, DisMarks will host. We'll also link to all the compilation carnival posts from here, so we have them all stored in one place.

Great, How Do I Get In?

Use this form to submit a post you'd like to be considered for the next carnival. Right now we'll do free form topics, but once we have it rolling we may start doing a "suggested topic" for the week.

The First Carnival

We'll have the first carnival on Friday, April 2nd. This means all submissions should be in by Tuesday, March 30th. If you're' not ready, don't worry you can catch the next week's carnival. We'll update this space to let you who's hosting each week and when your submissions are due.