I typically do all of that and my submissions at the same time.  All together it takes maybe 20 minutes.

 

Do you have a full list of Carnivals you try to hit up?

The list at http://blogcarnivalhq.com/ is pretty comprehensive.  I have a bookmark for the Yakezie carnival and for the Carnival of Personal Finance, but that's pretty much it.  I try to write four articles a week and I try to avoid a lot of overlap.

I use Excel and just track in columns:

• Date Submitted
• My Blog - I have two blogs so I use MB for Money Beagle and SYT for So You Think You Can Save
• Article I submitted (just a couple words from the title)
• Carnival Name (abbreviated)
• Submitted - I put a Y here once I submit the form.
• Included - I put a Y here once I see I'm included or a N if I wasn't included
• Round-Up - I put a Y here once I've linked back
• Host/URL - The actual URL of the carnival (I removed them so I wouldn't have too many links).  Since I don't do round-ups every week, this lets me easily create the portion of my round-up for linking back.

Here's what it looks like assuming the formatting doesn't get whacked:

 

Date	My Blog	Article	Carnival	Submitted	Included	Round Up	Host / URL
2/2/12	MB	Less Snow	TM	Y	Y	Y
2/2/12	MB	Magazine Subscription	Yak	Y	Y	Y
2/2/12	MB	Costco Credit Card	FinPlan	Y	Y	Y
2/2/12	MB	Resolutions	CoPF	Y	Y	Y

Great idea. I'm terrible at tracking which Carnivals I've submitted to and even worse at checking to see if my post was accepted. I usually have to go back through my emails to look for submission confirmations. 

I am going to have to use something like that.

Do you have a full list of Carnivals you try to hit up?

• Date Submitted
• My Blog - I have two blogs so I use MB for Money Beagle and SYT for So You Think You Can Save
• Article I submitted (just a couple words from the title)
• Carnival Name (abbreviated)
• Submitted - I put a Y here once I submit the form.
• Included - I put a Y here once I see I'm included or a N if I wasn't included
• Round-Up - I put a Y here once I've linked back
• Host/URL - The actual URL of the carnival (I removed them so I wouldn't have too many links).  Since I don't do round-ups every week, this lets me easily create the portion of my round-up for linking back.

Here's what it looks like assuming the formatting doesn't get whacked:

I have tried to organize my submissions with a spreadsheet, but haven't really found a good way to organize.

How do you all do it?  Is there a tool out there for Carnival Submission that makes it easy?

Do any of you, maintain a master-list of sorts of all the PF carnivals out there?

How do you keep track of their submission deadlines, and what (and when) you submitted where?

I know there are folks out there that outsource their Carnival submissions, but I don't have any interest in doing that.

In the meantime, I would love it if some of you could share your strategies around this.

Thanks