The fact that James Little has moved from Affiliate Future to head up a new London office for TopCashBack is indicative that if you’re involved in the higher echelons of affiliate performance marketing then you need a foothold in the Capital.

However (yeah you knew that was coming), two things did cross my mind when looking through the A4UAward 2011 Winners Lists!

Firstly, what happened to the gaming category?

We didn’t enter this year but were surprised to see that there was no award for either a publisher or merchant. In some ways it’s disappointing – in many ways understandable. Gaming/Bingo/Casino affiliates tend to have their own awards and conferences etc. and it may be that publishers/merchants don’t see an A4UAward in the same light as those involved in other sectors?

Secondly, how as an industry do we recognise new talent?

By new talent I mean small/medium enterprising affiliates. The one or two man bands who to even get a foothold in this behemoth of an industry now have to do something pretty special for any degree of recognition. A SME affiliate earning a decent income will still be eclipsed by the big cashback, voucher code and search players, so they’re probably not going to bother with A4UAwards.

What I’d like to see is a collaboration between A4U, The IAB, agencies and the networks (perhaps even the larger affiliates) whereby – perhaps six months after the main event – a selection of small/medium new affiliates are recognised by the industry. It doesn’t have to be a grandiose event like A4UAwards, it doesn’t even have to be an event… just some kind of public acknowledgement of good work by affiliates.

There must be, on radar, of every affiliate manager, merchant and agency – an affiliate or company that’s doing some cool stuff within affiliate or performance marketing. By recognising that in a public domain, that might just help them take the next step forward?

The A4UAwards did include a “Hot Shot Rising Star Award” this year, but I’m not sure if it was for affiliates? If it was then perhaps the question is are there any good SME guys coming through?

Anyway, that’s just an idea!

A big congratulations to all winners – hopefully A4U will have sent you your little icon to stick proudly on your website by now… and you don’t have to wait over a year to get one

I’d hoped that it was because Matt and the A4U crew realised nothing could better this blog and therefore opted to rest the award in much the same way football teams rest shirt numbers, but alas that’s not the case.

Matt crushed my theory in an instant and explained why it was time for a change: “Ultimately due to the lack of active bloggers in the space we decided to replace a number of categories to acknowledge some of the great work taking place and to encourage greater adoption is newer facets of the industry such as social and mobile. If we see a resurgence of blogger activity which we do encourage by enabling areas of affiliates4u.com at the pool we will naturally revisit”.

Taking it’s place (or at least coming closest to it) is the new “Best Use of Social Media” award and Matt went on to explain what the judges will be looking for in this new category.

“Despite a slow start by some publishers and advertisers we’ve seen a growth in smart adoption of social marketing by both parties. We will be looking specifically for smartly executed campaigns from both advertisers and publishers, utilising a range of social media platforms to drive revenue”.

In many ways it’s sad that the affiliate blogger award is no more, but it makes sense to explore new areas and freshen up the roster of awards. Of course had they done this last year I’d have been spitting plenty of duck feathers and saying it was a total travesty!

Joining Best Use of Social Media this year is Best Use of Mobile (Vouchercloud perhaps?), Best Managed Affiliate Programme (!), International Award (U2 – oh that’s The Brits) and Hotshot Rising Star Award. The latter will be “given to a person who the judges feel has, above all others excelled within the sector over the last 12 months”.

So what now?

Well, get youself over to the A4U Awards 2011 site and get yourself put forward. There’s no point complaining come the end of May 2011 that Vouchercodes.co.uk have won everything again, even Hotshot Rising Star and Social Media, if you’re not prepared to put yourself up to be judged.

Thankfully that’ll be done by a panel of your peers and not Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd, although the latter may be a tad quicker and a lot more fun. “Your entry was awful, you have been judged…” etc.

Anyway look at the categories, think what it is you’ve done well this year, structure it well, demonstrate it well and get working on your entry. I was a judge last year and it was obvious which sites had put effort in and which ones hadn’t. The ones that won usually put in a good entry with supporting evidence.

Remember that the judges don’t need novels nor do they need twitter length entries! Your entry doesn’t have to be pretty either.

There’s plenty of information on the awards site so give it a go. Personally I’d love to see the awards spread out next year amongst a number of winners – and for there to be stiff competition in all categories (although if I’m a judge again I may live to regret saying that).

Submit Your Entry or Duncan Will Win Them All ;o)

I have never shaken so much in my life. The distance from seat to stage seemed like a mile. I did wonder whether I could safely collect each award without passing anyone who I’d upset on this blog. No wonder Duncan Jennings and the eConversions team took at least 60 people up for every award they won – there’s safety in numbers.

In all seriousness, thank you!

For the blog award I’m especially pleased as it’s a community choice. Thank you for voting and for reading. Thanks for the comments too made last night at the event and also today via Twitter and Facebook.

Big hand too to the other shortlisted blogs – KirstyM at AffiliateStuff, who was Highly Commended and who sent me a lovely message via FB, and the eBay Partners Network Blog.

I thought the only way OLD was ever going to win this award was to try and outblog everyone else. Most affiliates give up blogging after a while, so I was banking that by around 2015 award they’d be just me left and this award would be a shoe-in!

I only started blogging because it’s cheaper than therapy and it saved Jude hours of earache about what I thought of affiliate marketing. So, a big thanks has to go to Jude who gets to read things before they’re published and for her love and support (ooh Gwyneth Paltrow moment *sob*).

As well as the blog award, Loquax also picked up the Best Casino/Gaming Affiliate award from the amazingly talented Mr Chris “Tubes” Johnson. In 2008 we were the only affiliate shortlisted for this category when there was no merchant/affiliate split so this year’s win kind of makes up for that.

Our background has always been competitions and so we know more than most that “you’ve got to be in it to win it”. The award is a nice accolade for the company and it’ll give us a boost for the next 12 months.

However, what I hope the Loquax win will do is encourage other affiliates to have a look at entering the A4UAwards 2011. Putting together a quality entry doesn’t involve that much time and it’d be nice to see more affiliates getting involved. I’d also like merchants/networks encouraging their affiliates to have a go.

There must be campaigns where merchants/networks know a particular affiliate has done well, perhaps on limited means, or been outstandingly innovative?

Vouchercodes thoroughly deserve their plaudits in 2010, but in 2011 wouldn’t it be great to see a range of winners across the whole affiliate spectrum? Or at least more affiliates giving them a run for their money? They’ve set a high standard for this industry which can be competed with in terms of innovation and inventiveness if not in monetary scale.

A big congratulations to all A4UAward Winners 2010 and also to all those who made shortlists.

And a massive well done to Matt, Chris and the Existem team for the event. It’d have been brilliant whatever the outcome of the awards… but the two wins just made it that bit sweeter. And being on a table with Jude, long term affiliates like Kieron, Dave, Elaine, Ray and original Buy.at guys Mal and Paul just added to the night.

Thank you.

This year the awards have taken a small leaf out of The Oscars and increased the number of nominations in most categories – not quite to 10 – but at least six! Only the Publisher of the Year remains on five nominations, which is bizarre as you’d think this should generate more nominees? Two 100% cashback sites (Quidco and Topcashback) will battle out with Vouchercodes.co.uk and Skimlinks (who won everything last year) for the award. The fifth nominee is Shopstyle and it’s nice to see something different in the group.

There are 8 nominees for “Affiliate Manager: In-House or at an Agency” including Naomi Brown from Firebox, Hannah from Existem AM and John Jupp from Affiliate Program Advice. Daniel Austin and Chris Worthy from R.O.EYE, Karen Clayton of Azam Marketing, Joanna Halstead of i-level and Joshna Patel of Red Letter Days complete the group.

Best Account Manager at a Network has 7 nominees and they include James Little of Affiliate Future, Darren Newmark from LinkShare and Aga Marchewka of buy.at! Helen Collins of affilinet, Chantal Williams and Julie Wood of Affiliate Window and Anne Budden of Affiliate Future are also nominated.

Both those categories are just about impossible to call! If Ladbrokes had a book on this they’d probably do better than they do with The Oscars where there’s always a 1/40 nailed on favourite for each of the main categories.

The Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2010 is possibly slightly easier to predict.

I’d be surprised if Kirsty doesn’t take top place again. However could we have an Avatar vs The Hurt Locker situation as the nominations bring up two surprises. Firstly well done to David Fiske who thoroughly deserves his nomination and also well done to eBay for their Partner Network Blog. I think that’s the first time a merchant blog has broken through in this category? Joining Kirsty, David and eBay are Lammo.net and previous winner Kieron. Plus there’s of course OneLittleDuck.

Finally there’s the best Affiliate Marketing Network. Affiliate Window, Affilinet, Affiliate Future, Commission Junction, LinkShare and Paid On Results will battle it out for this one. I think it’s fairly obvious which way this one will go but you never know do you? It’d be a surprise to see Awin not (A)win again.

All in all it’s quite an interesting set of nominations. The changes made by A4U this year most certainly have resulted in two fiercely competitive awards (Affiliate Manager and Account Manager) that you could really pick any one nomination as a deserved winner. Only one voucher code site in the publishers group could be seen as a surprise but it’s nice to see ShopStyle in the mix. No Loquax though – boo, hiss etc. It’s good to see a merchant in the blogs group though.

A big well done to everyone who’s been nominated and thank you if you nominated/vote for this blog, it’s really appreciated.

You can cast your Community Award votes over at A4UAwards from the 22nd March.

Awards are funny things and are often the focus of some heated debate. Take the big bingo portals for instance. Every year they compete to offer bingo merchants an award for best site or newcomer. The merchants lap this up and encourage their users to vote and/or plaster links back to the portals on their site and newsletter with absolutely no regard for their other affiliates. Do I want to send my users to a site that has “Go to XYZBingo and vote for us” on it?

No I don’t! It’s understandable why it’s done, although imo it’s the bingo portal getting the most benefit with extra traffic and backlinks – but I guess that’s my cynicism coming through there. It’s a tough situation to work round with the only solutions being that bingo sites don’t add links or every affiliate runs an award set up each year and everyone gets treated a bit more fairly.

Staying with gaming, last week was the IGB Affiliate Awards. Loquax was nominated as best bingo affiliate, but had little chance of winning (or even getting to the final shortlist), but we were in there somewhere. The good news was that the awards were streamed live, which was an interesting experience.

The presenters weren’t exactly Ricky Gervais at The Golden Globes (or even Jason Manford at A4UAwards 2009), more Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood at The Brits after a few drinks. Hopefully they came across better ‘live’. Still the dance group interlude was good and perhaps streaming is something A4U can look into for 2010?

One more point about IGB! I guess it’s not good form to question winners, but for the life of me I cannot understand how Ladbrokes took the bingo affiliate awards. There must be a The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe type door on their affiliate system that takes people through to Narnia that I’m missing as what I see isn’t that impressive on numerous levels. Still, well done to all winners there – opinion and debate are always a close second aren’t they?

So awards and controversy go hand in hand, and that takes us back to this year’s A4U Awards. Who will win? Who won’t win? And how much blog mileage can we get out of questioning the judging, the voting, the vote for mes and the who I voted fors! To get the ball rolling head on over to the 2010 A4U Awards and make your nominations.

The 4th Annual a4uAwards will be held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, Mayfair on the 9th June 2010.

Nominate Now for the 2010 A4UAwards

The Affiliate Guru Award
This could could to the person who’s knowledge of affiliate marketing is so immense they’ve no time to actually do anything other than be a guru and tell other people how to do AM or online marketing. To qualify the nominees must have loads of followers, be well known and demonstrate what it is they actually do or have done – ah, so that’s why this award won’t work then!

The Ethical Affiliate Award
We should be celebrating those affiliates who are whiter than Snow White, Mr White from Reservoir Dogs and Gandalf the White at a Winter Wonderland Party at White City all being serenaded with White Wedding by Billy Idol. They must be clean, transparent and can sit up and boldly say “we’ve done nothing wrong”. Any suggestions for this one?

Pushing The Boundaries Affiliate Award
This could go to the affiliate who’s looked (or not looked) at the terms and conditions of various affiliate programs or networks and then bent them in to a boat like shape so that they can sale as close to the wind as is possible. Some in AM insist affiliates should stop moaning and start innovating… so perhaps it time to reward those who are really pushing the boundaries and challenging the very foundations of the marketing channel?

The Brand Bidder Award
What better way to expose the best in brand bidding than with an award? Of course those affiliates who are allowed to brand bid wouldn’t be able to qualify for the award. On awards night when the nominees and winners announced everyone would be made aware of who the naughty brand bidders are! Hooray!

The Doctor Who Network Regeneration Award
David Tennant’s Doctor is about to regenerate into Matt Smith’s version and it could either be brilliant or a pigs ear… hence the title of this award. It could be awarded to the network who have gone from pants to brilliant in the last 12 months, or as in the case of (put in your own suggestion) has turned into such a Turkey they’re actually worrying about ending up on the dinner table on the 25th December.

The Champions League Agency Award
Once upon a time to qualify for the Champions League you needed to be the Champions of the First Division or Premiership. Now you can win the overall title by finishing fourth. As Existem AM will most likely win “Best Agency” this award is an opportunity for other agencies to get their hands on something. Whilst essentially they’ll be second, they can still claim to be first.

The Affiliate Duck/Latin Brand Name Award
Why this never made the cut I’ve no idea. Seems a perfectly reasonable idea!!

Of course all the above are purely tongue in cheek and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.

Fortunately for the affiliate industry there’s a nice bundle of sensible awards on offer including Innovation Awards, Best 3rd Party Affiliate Application (ECU please), Best Advertiser Incentive, Best New Entrant in Affiliate Marketing, Best Paid Search Partnership and Best Lead Generation Campaign.

Find out more and submit your entry at A4UAwards!

So there was I all togged up in a tuxedo for nowt…

Nowt but a good time that is (nice things being said on OLD = plan to win Blog Award for 2010).

Firstly a big thanks to the three time award winning agency Existem AM for inviting myself and Jude to their table. You guys are really deserving of the accolades you get and it was also great to see Hannah honoured as best affiliate manager. Very well deserved.

It might have been the copious amounts of red wine I’d drank and slight delirium brought on by Lemsip, but I thought all the awards seem to go to those that deserved them. I was especially pleased to see DGM amongst the highly commended although everyone has a battle on their hands to topple Affiliate Window as the top network.

The vertical awards, at least in my opinion, need a slight tweak – just to encourage more involvement from the affiliate side of things. I’d like to see merchants and networks putting forward affiliates next year for the shortlists as in one case there was just one entry (so well done Bingo Hideout for making the effort).

Whilst these awards most certainly, and quite rightly, celebrate the whole industry it would be great to see more affiliates on those shortlists and being recognised.

The comedian Jason Manford was entertaining, Johnny Vegas on keyboard looked a bit bored though but it was cool that Alan “The Voice of the Balls” did the voice overs for the awards.

Personally I’d have happily sacrificed “the balls” for a bit more veg and a spot of gravy at dinner. Perhaps duck, spuds and broccoli is a big favourite in Bristol, but the plate was screaming out for carrots and to be drowned in something wet.

All in all it was an enjoyable evening and it was great to catch up with some of the real “old school” people like Malcolm, Tyson and James Cooper (he’s on telly you know – 1pm Channel 5, not that he mentioned it) as well as the usual suspects who make being in the industry a lot of fun.

Nice one as ever to Matt and his Existem team for a great event and a very big well done to all winners, highly commended and nominees (not even a bloomin’ graphic to add to the site… sob).

Other blogs about A4UAwards 2009

Photos of the Event
Hannah’s Paltrowesque Thanks
Kirsty wins Best Affiliate Blog (humph – must add spiders – lol)
Lee is Second Best Blogger (double humph – must mention Barbados – lol)
Webgains are highly commended
DGM are highly commended
Prezzybox want someone else to win next year
Skimlinks get 3 awards
Awin Celebrate with Skimlinks

As you might imagine that news topped off what was already a memorable day.

So a big thank you to everyone at Bigmouthmedia for the prize and also for running the initiative. Thanks go to the judges, to the people who nominated and of course all those who read the ramblings of an affiliate here on One Little Duck.

I’m still in shock but genuinely pleased to have won.

Of course I don’t write this blog for awards (or for money come to think of it, d’oh), but it is nice to get some recognition. The last award I personally received was in 1997 and that was for geochemistry! The upside of all this is I’m over the moon and yes for once affiliate’s Mr Grumpy is as happy as Larry.

The downside is it does mean that I’m going to have to carry blogging on OLD with my views on affiliate marketing.

Thanks once again to Bigmouthmedia…

… the week could only get better if there was some positive news about the fortunes of Southampton FC…

… well what do you know?!

If you think that this is the best UK affiliate blog then why not vote for One Little Duck? That’d be cool, but whoever you choose in this category they’ll be a worthy winner! Just make sure you vote in all the other categories too and a big well done to all nominees!

This year I’m going to make the effort and be at the Awards. I’m not a great lover of being tarted up in a tuxedo, but this might well be the last time OLD is nominated as there are so many new affiliate bloggers coming on to the scene! The bad news is that the duck bow tie, last seen at Awin’s event in September 2008, won’t be making an appearance! I’ll be sensibly attired in a proper black tie!

Now how do i get two tickets?

Find out about the A4UAwards

There are several ways to be in with a chance of bagging the award including getting your friends to nominate you, by blogging about the awards (*cough*) or by having a bit of a twitter about B.A.B.E. The awards are limited to UK residents only. Hopefully that won’t mean that Kirsty’s Affiliate Stuff is not able to take part?

Will the B.A.B.E’s give us the same result as the A4U Blog Awards?

It could well be that one of the favourites for the A4U Blog Award, (e.g. Kieron, Kirsty, Lee or even John) picks up this £1000 prize, and all would make well deserved winners. To win an A4U award bloggers first need nominations and then have to hope to pick up the most number of votes. The B.A.B.E winner needs to pick up nominations and then impress a panel of judges.

The Bigmouthmedia panel will be looking for what the blog gives back to the affiliate community, whether the affiliate blog has got original, thought provoking content and if the blog features useful new marketing or design ideas! Ah well, there goes OLD’s chance of winning then LOL!

Interestingly Bigmouthmedia say “Do we expect you to say nice things about the B.A.B.E. Award if you’re blogging about us? No”.

Which is good as here’s the bad things: (1) i’d like to see it open to affiliate marketing bloggers – as is I’m not sure if blogs say for example from Matt Bailey and Paul Wright are excluded; (2) £1000 is a nice price, but split it up and share the wealth – e.g. £500, £300 and £200; (3) Get some nice glass awards sorted for best affiliate blog with a duck in the title!

Apart from that, it’s a great gesture from Bigmouthmedia and is something that perhaps will give the affiliate blogging community a bit of a boost. Aside from the usual suspects, affiliate blogging in the UK is something that many start but few maintain in terms of consistency and quality. It’d be great if this incentive encouraged more bloggers to share their affiliate experiences and ideas with the rest of the affiliate world.

One and only request… if you do like this blog then please nominate One Little Duck. Thanks!