Award Type and Format

Format

There are a very few awards programs which present non-computer graphic awards to some or all winners.  This may be presented in addition to or instead of a computer graphic award.  We have seen trophies, paper certificates, artwork and even cash presented to winning sites.  (Most of the programs who give these types of awards have entry fees, but a few don't.)

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Types

Stand-Alone Awards.  These are typically the only award given out by a program.  Applicants are good enough to receive your award, or they aren't.  It's all or nothing.

Competitive Awards.  Web sites which apply during a specified time frame (one month, three months, a year, etc.) compete against each other for the awards.  Typically First Place, Second Place, etc. is awarded.

Tiered Awards.  Applicants are usually scored on some type of point system.  The award that they win depends on how many points they score.  Some typical tiered award programs designate awards by metals (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Platinum, etc.), by gemstones (Ruby, Emerald, Diamond, etc.), by stars (1 Star, 2 Stars, 3 Stars, etc.) or by some other arrangement.  Many tiered awards programs also offer some type of Merit Award, given to sites that don't quite qualify for the lowest tier, but are still worthy of recognition...sort of an "honorable mention."  There are a large number of methods for determining the winners of a Merit Award.

Best Of The Best Awards.  These are usually selected from previous winners of an award and granted special recognition, such as Site Of The Month, Site Of The Year, etc.

Category Awards.  These are awarded to applicants according to the theme of their site (Best Dog-Related Site, Best Book-Related Site, Best Education Site, etc.).  We have seen awards programs which offer more than 25 different category awards!

Honorary Awards.  These are not the same as giveaway awards (below).  Usually it is not possible to apply for the honorary award.  They are presented by the awards program to certain web sites or individuals for specific special achievements of some kind.  Their presentation is usually a rare event.

Voting Awards.  A site must receive a particular number of votes from its visitors in order to win your award.  (This type of award is not looked upon favorably by many in the world of awards, since the award results from a popularity contest rather than any skill on the part of the webmaster. In fact, unscrupulous webmasters have been known to trick their visitors into clicking on a link to vote for them!)

Giveaway Awards.  Anybody who wants an award from you gets one, whether or not they even have a web site.  We have seen several sites that say something similar to, "If you think you deserve an award, copy this graphic and put it on your site, linked to my site."  (This, too, is frowned upon by most in the world of awards.  It is considered a rather shameless attempt to get links to one's site, and is a practice to be discouraged.)  Some sites use autoresponders to send awards to every single application they receive.  (Presumably, a lot of spammers receive awards from these sites.)

Awards by Spamming.  This is the practice of sending out your award graphic to a large number of sites, hoping that some of them will put the graphic on their site and link it to your site.  This is considered by most awards masters to be an unethical practice, and will destroy the credibility of your awards program.

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Nominee Badges

The design of a Nominee badge may be similar to the actual awards, or may be a different design and/or a different size or shape.

An advantage of offering Nominee badges for your awards program is that it's a way of getting extra links for your site out there.  Some people who apply for the award but don't win forget to take the Nominee badge down, or may intentionally leave the badge on their site, so you may have a long-term link.

However, there is a major disadvantage to the use of Nominee badges.  It is a given that people who can't possibly win your award will apply for it.  This means that your Nominee badge may be displayed on some incredibly awful, hideous web sites -- even sites which are engaged in pornography or other illegal or immoral activities.  And because they may leave the Nominee badge on their site for a long time, a visitor may come to associate your award program with that web site, rightly or wrongly!

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