a4uAwards Ceremony 2007 - My nominations
OK Paul, Jason and Keith have told us who they are going to vote for at the first annual a4uAwards so now its my turn.
First of all, a big fat hairy disclaimer:
I don’t work with every affiliate program, affiliate manager, agency, merchant or even every affiliate network in the UK. So my votes below are for the individual/companies that I do work with. There may well be some brilliant people in this industry who I have missed off this list, but thats only because I personally don’t work with them. Thats all, no hidden agenda here so please don’t come up to me and say “hey, why didn’t you vote for so and so?”
Innovation in Affiliate Marketing - Merchant Award
Amazon- they have the most comprehensive set of tools available for affiliates to monetise their sites, bar none. From content units to easy peasy deep linking and the new context sensitive links, they have it all covered. One of the reasons why they are ahead of the game is that they are always developing new methods and promotions, I haven’t seen this with any other UK merchant.
Innovation in Affiliate Marketing - Network Award
Webgains. In my opinion Webgains has seen the biggest growth in terms of innovation and reaching out to the affiliate community for the greater good. I gave them the coveted “Network of the Month” award in September and its for much these reasons that I give them the Innovation award for 2007. Strong runner up is the excellent Paid On Results.
Publisher/Affiliates Choice of Network 2007
For me, no other network has consistently delivered excellence and innovation demonstrated both by their technology and staff as Buy.at. They redesigned and rebuilt their affiliate interface in 2007, and brought us the excellent ContentEngine. Not only that but they have some of the most responsive and proactive staff in the business. So hands down, Buy.at should win this. Coming a close second and third are Affiliate Window and Webgains.
Publisher/Affiliates Choice of Agency 2007
Equator. Fiona and Tara are my contacts here and are two of the most knowledgeable, proactive and helpful people in this business. They regularly touch base on new ideas to promote their merchants and nothing is too much trouble for them. I can highly recommend them to any merchant looking for an agency to manage their program. Jess at Affiliate Program Advice is a strong candidate too as is James from Eyefall, and they only lose out on the top spot because we don’t work on enough projects together.
Publisher/Affiliates Choice of Merchant 2007
Zak and the team at Prezzybox. Why? For posts like this on the A4U Forum. If I was a merchant I would look to Prezzybox for the standard of excellence of how to run an affiliate program. If I couldn’t match it I wouldn’t even try to compete.
Best New Merchant of 2007
Getting Personal. Back in May they caught my attention by sending me lots of personalised freebies, I heard other affiliates got them too. Since then they’ve been happy to supply unique discount codes for my site as well as a co-branded landing page. If that wasn’t enough, you can also earn up to 20% commission with them, sweet.
Affiliate Manager of 2007 - Merchant Award
To be honest I’m struggling a bit on this one as most of my contact are with network representatives. But the person who stands out to me for reaching into the affiliate community via forums, blogs and of course direct contact is Zak from Prezzybox.
Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2007
For me it has to be Kirsty’s blog. She has some really good advice for beginners and I really like her laid-back style of writing. She has a great sense of humour and is a genuinely nice person. Runners up are king of podcasts - Fraser, Paul and Jason.
Best International Publisher/Affiliate of 2007
No idea.
Best Agency or Network Publisher Manager
As I’ve already wrote about Equator above I’ll nominate my award for the best Network Publisher Manager here. To be honest there is lots of choice here, few honourable mentions would be Julia from Affiliate Window, Hero and Sachin from Webgains. Warrick and Roz from Buy.at and Matt from DGM. However Julie Wood from Affiliate Window gets my vote. She is constantly badgering me to promote her merchants, gets me loads of voucher codes and special offers and even approves me for programs at 11.30 at night when she is working from home. Thanks Julie!
Industry Champion Award 2007
No competition on this one, it has to be Matthew Wood. Matt is the founder of the A4U Forum and organiser of all the get2gethers and industry events we all enjoy. Without Matt and the forum I firmly believe the Affiliate Marketing industry wouldn’t be as evolved as it is in the UK today.
So there you go, that’s how I’m voting. For more information on the awards click here, and here for some guidelines. Remember you need to vote before 10th September so make sure you do to make your vote count.
What I’m listening to right now: Hed Kandi - “Back to Love 03.04″
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passion, music. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
September 4th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Just sent the guys at Equator an email letting them know of your endorsement. Good call on kirstys blog also.
September 5th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Well, thanks very much Kieron. I’m honoured!
September 10th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
[...] won’t go into details about who to nominate, as that has already been well covered already by Kieron, Jason, Paul, and Keith, and I’d just be re-hashing the same names, as there are not too many [...]
December 30th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
[...] announce who I’m voting for in the first ever A4U [...]