Guidelines for Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate

Searchlight Crusade is the home of the Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate.

The Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate is a moderated carnival, intended to showcase the very best articles in real estate from a consumer point of view. Submissions may be made here, or via email to the moderator (dm (at) searchlightcrusade (dot) net), or directly to the host for a given carnival. In the latter two cases, please use "Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate" or something similar as the subject.

The Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate is currently running every two weeks, and volunteer hosts are being solicited. If we get the quality and quantity of articles to justify raising the frequency, it may be done in the future.

There is a limit of one article per website or author per carnival. In the event of multiple submissions, that carnival's host will choose one, and only one. This is supposed to be your best work of the previous two weeks. Exceptions may be considered for particularly high quality work written by two different authors at the same website, but never the same author writing at different websites.

Articles should be written from a consumer-centric point of view: How does this benefit the consumer, how does this hurt the consumer, how does the consumer do this, etcetera. They should not be insider talk about the business of real estate.

Articles should be date stamped within not more than three weeks prior to the deadline. It will be strictly up to a given host's judgment whether to reject or accept an article that is unstamped. It is conceivable that an older article that is of truly superior quality may be accepted.

The subject matter is real estate. Buying, selling, loans, affording it, planning it, what does and does not make a good investment, etcetera. Articles that have nothing to do with real estate will be rejected.

UPDATE: I would have thought it was understood, but evidently I was mistaken: direct solicitations of any kind are discouraged, and if something is submitted, which in the host's opinion, is spam or commercial in nature, it may be rejected for that reason alone. The same thing applies to entries which appear to be submitted in hopes of getting a link from a "real" site. END UPDATE

Please do not resubmit articles that have been rejected for falling outside the guidelines.

Submissions that make material factual errors will likely be rejected. If you want to deliberately question orthodox thoughts on one point or another, such articles are welcome, but don't just assume you're correct and orthodox thought is wrong. Furnish some evidence as to why this is so. If you don't take tackle the issue head-on, your article may be presumed to have been written in ignorance of it, which is hardly a recommendation.

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate is a moderated carnival. This means it is up to the host's judgment as to whether a given article is worthwhile. We would rather have a short carnival that people want to read than a long carnival that no one will bother with.

UPDATE: (January 11th, 2008): I am so tired of getting the same crud time and time again that effective with the submissions for the Carnival for January 30, 2008 (everything submitted after January 13th, 2008), I'm going to be starting a section entitled "Spam and Other Ridiculous Submissions" There may or may not be links, depending upon whether the host believes the public shame will offset the search engine value of a link in a given case. I'm just tired of getting the same things that are solicitations for business based upon ideas that are incorrect, poorly researched, and often, just plain wrong. I'm not intending to use it for anyone that I believe might have been made in good faith with attention paid to these guidelines, but the submissions I've been getting just cry out for some kind of answer. You're willingly submitting this garbage, or having your agent do so. Deal with it.