The Sneaky Truth About "Award Programs"

In recent years the so-called Award Programs that have been popping up across the Internet has taken a drastic flip-flop for the worse. What might have started out as a few good award programs to reward top quality sites for all the right reasons has now turned into merely a link exchange program. Awards can be given out to anyone and by anyone. The parties involved merely exchange links and often do it without the website owner really knowing the hidden motives of the award presentor. And for those who like to boast, we have even heard of people who present themselves with awards to appear to have a popular site! {snicker}

In all honesty and without further hesitation, Award Programs these days mean absolutely nothing, nadda, zero, zilch. In fact, seasoned Internet users find pages socked full of award buttons intrusive and it literally shouts "newbie" at them. If you are a website owner that sells anything from your site, we strongly advise chucking the awards pages. This is especially true for web designers. Why? If you want your site visitors to take you seriously and know that you have good business ethics, presenting pages full of awards that are merely "link exchanges in disguise" is NOT a viable way to convey that message.

If you are an award presenter, regardless of how serious you might be about your program, you might want to reconsider an alternative measure to reward sites that appeal to you or you feel is a worthwhile resource for your visitors. In 1999 we spotlighted one site per month whom we felt was an asset to the web and graphic design community on one of our network sites. We were scrupulous about the site we chose given the fact that our name was on the award and our reputation on the line. If we chose a site that was horrid, it would not have a good reflection on us. Our award program was short lived, however, when the overall Award Program system throughout the Internet started to develop a reputation for an unethical means of a sneaky link exchange. We didn't want labeled with such a reputation even though it was far from the truth.

If you are an award presenter who gives out 100s of awards to simply exchange links, you might want to seriously reconsider stopping this unethical behavior. Once your site visitors discover this sneaky way to get traffic, you develop a bad reputation and lose customer trust. If you are selling anything from your site, this could be quite devastating. It also is not a good reflection on you if someone finds your so-called "Award" on a site that should obviously be presented with a "Web Pages That Suck Award". Why not simply ask the other party to exchange links with you rather than try to fool them into thinking that you like their site? Where is honesty these days?

If you have been fooled by a sneaky award presentor, don't feel bad. Millions of people are fooled every day. But it's never too late to chuck those awards and show the sneaks that unethical practices never pay off in the long run. Developing sincere trust on the Internet from an ecommerce web site owner's point of view is vital for survival. Presenting sneaky awards will guarantee you the loss of trust from your site visitors.