Hannah Louise Swift

What an amazing few days! The second and final a4uexpo roadshows were in Manchester then Edinburgh, and fell right over my 24th Birthday! Yes I know I look older, but anyway! Mark the boss man decided he would drive us in his car, all the way to Manchester, then on to Edinburgh, then all the way back, which is where I am currently writing this from.
We left the office at 10.15 am on Tuesday morning, before heading over to get Jason from Easy Content Units. We then headed up to Bristol to get A4U Expo’s very own Chris Johnson! We were picking him up from a roundabout and the bugger was late so we spent quite some time going round and round two different roundabouts, getting VERY dizzy before he finally turned up (wearing pajamas!). There were some strange music choices which involved Oasis, Buddy Holly, Neil Diamond, and any other random act you can think of! The highlight for me was the whole cast recording of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour dreamcoat! Chris was less impressed!
We hit some traffic joining the M6 from the M5, and eventually Mark turned off and we followed his Sat Nav, voiced by John Cleese, round the back rounds until we finally arrived in Manchester at around 3.15. I breifly saw my parents who were travelling home from Liverpool and had bought burgers for the boys but not me , then it was into the hotel room for a quick change and straight back out again! The hotel room will be a whole new blog post! YUCK!
We were all starving after our journey so instead of going for dinner, we headed straight out for Nando’s! mmmn Nando’s! Neither Mark, Jason or Clarke from Paid on Results had eaten Nando’s before, so what a treat for them! Myself and Chris are veterans so we were chuffed to be eating one of our favourite foods. After devouring our respective chickens we headed off to the venue to find the guys from CJ already outside waiting for us! And so the partying began! CJ had kindly sponsored the bar so the 80 or so people were drinking for free! hurrah! It was awesome to finally meet people I had chatted to through facebook, and the a4u forum and twitter for the past few years! It’s a bizarre world I work in whereby most of my close friends I have only met once or twice! I manged to get through a couple of wines before insulting Alex from ASAP Ventures. When he said he was from Buenos Aires, and I said ‘thats in Cuba’! Knowing fill well it isnt, its Argentina! Stupid me! I love the musucal Evita, so what i was thinking, i really dont know! Myself and Lee McCoy drank the bars tiny stash of Mount Gay before being forced to drink other rums… yuk! I should thank him for buying me a Plymouth Gin and tonic for my birthday (which he said he will be expensing)! Helen from the it guide came out with a great idea of getting her wedding sponsored, so we had a mini plot of what we could get sponsored! God, it was a random night and it hadnt even begun!
Many people began dribbling off to various bars with shots or strippers or both but as we were travelling we all decided to go and get some food, so off we headed to China Town. We found a Chinese and myself, Chris, Mark, Jason, Darren from Linkshare and Steve from the Gift Experience headed inside. The food was, erm, not the best and I’m thankful I only ordered a starter for my main course. Now, as I was with 5 boys and it was minutes away from being my 24th Birthday I felt I would have to ask for my own cake. Which I did! They didn’t have any cake, but the nice waitress took it upon herself to find me something! So after the meal, the lights dimmed, the crazy Chinese happy birthday song came on and out she came with an icecream witha candle and an ‘ice fountain’ (which my client, Night Sky Lanterns sell).

After all the excitement, we decided to walk home, following Jasons directions… never again. We ended up having a major trek around Manchester and we must have passed the hotel at least 3 times before we finally got inside! Straight to bed to catch a crazy Ben Fogle programme on the Peak District and I was asleep.

The next morning, I couldn’t shower as my bath had stuff growing in it, I headed downstairs for breakfast, which was yet another major FAIL… There were a few broken faces that morning as I attempted to get breakfast! It was then time to set off on the next part of the journey, up to Edinburgh!

It is hard for me to believe that in October 2007 (just over 18 months ago) I didn’t know what an affiliate was, or what they did. Now I have been nominated for an award for my work in the affiliate community. It is tremendously hard for me to fathom. I guess before I go into my thankyou’s I should explain just what a personal acheivement this is for me.

It’s mid October 2007 and my current manager and boss in passing conversation say “We’ve decided you will be looking after our affiliates and white labels” – Affili-what??? The current affiliate manager, a dear friend of mine had lost interest (which he will admit) and they saw my skills coming from a sales background and my flair for talking to anyone and they put the two together.
I’ll be honest, I resented them incredibly for not even asking if I wanted the job, just thrusting it upon me. I had just left a well paid sales job and had moved from Twickenham to Watford for this one. I wanted to do core marketing, writing was what I loved so I was angry about being forced into affiliate management. Anyway, I battled on and learned the trade but faced ‘no’ at every corner. Eventually I began to understand the needs of an affiliate and how they worked and grasped the concept of cookies and tracking and the odd voucher code. Then came the time when how a feed worked really sank in! I even managed to launch the programme onto a second network!
By the spring of 2008 I was getting really really fed up of working for the company, fed up of the corporate policies and waiting months for an answer, sick of people not understanding my job and not understanding the power of an affiliate. I was ready to give in and go back to sales or another form of marketing. Then came the best news… After reading on the forum that there was a last minute place to Barbados with Affiliate Future I put my heart and soul into winning a place, I begged, humiliated myself and stayed up all night with my laptop just incase someone elses entry was better than mine. I won a ticket!!! (Thanks Sunshine.co.uk!)
Barbados was my first affiliate event, so boy was I nervous! I met some of the nicest, hard working amazing people on that trip who not only proved that yes, afterall affiliates ARE human beings, and where I had a secure salary, they didn’t. I had a few very in depth conversations with people and it was then that I realised I loved the industry, loved the people, but did not love my current company!
Returning to the UK and back into the swing of things I began looking for a new job, and tried to get to as many get togethers as possible. A chance meeting at a get together and I met Mark.

“you’ll give me a job” said a drunken Hannah… A few weeks later and another get together and again “You said you would give me a job” eventually Mark caved and said maybe. I had an interview in the late July where I met Mark and Bruce, we shook hands over a few glasses of wine and a kebab, and in the Septemeber I made the move to Plymouth.
Having never been to Plymouth before I was understandably nervous, but Mark and Lorraine and Martin soon made me feel at home, and of course I brought Monkey the cat!
Mark spent alot of time training me in the finer arts of Affiliate Marketing whilst Bruce worked from Milton Keynes teaching me the finer arts of big words and increased my vocabulary! It has been great to spend the last 9 months working with such passionate, devoted industry figures who both in their own rights deserve awards, if only just for putting up with me for such a long time! I think we make a brilliant team, constantly throwing ideas around, teaching each other tricks of the trade and most importantly we have fun and love what we do.

So I guess what I am trying to explain is that the past 18 months have been a steep learning curve, and I have gone from someone who hated all things affiliate to someone who loves affiliate marketing, I dream about it, talk about it constantly and spend my life online. I know it sounds sad, but my closest friends are in the industry, my role models are in the industry and the people learn from are in it too. It isn’t just a job to me, it is a lifestyle. I think those of you in our ‘community’ will feel the same way as I do.

Being nominated for ‘Account Manager of the Year’ came as a shock I have to say, although some people had kindly said they would nominate me, I felt that there were more deserving people in the industry, and let’s face it there are 34,493 members of the forum (at the time of typing this) so just a few people is a small snippet of all those eligable to nominate. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, trust me if there was a way of me finding out who nominated me I would thank you all individually. As it is I am having to blog about it! I wish I could thank everyone individually on here but so many of you have contributed to me either as a friend, with advice and tips or just a good gossip that I would be here all day saying thanks to you all! I guess thanks mainly to all you affiliates, Mark and Bruce for taking a chance on me, the Network staff and my lovely clients!

Thankyou, with all my heart thankyou all for the nominations, the support, the jokes and the friendships. It means the world to me. There are some great contenders in my category who are all more than deserving of the award so good luck to you all.

I hope to see you all at the awards ceremony for a drink or several. Oh, and can someone stop me flirting with Jason Manford, he is quite beautiful!

Hannah xxx

Oh if you do want to vote for me (so I can meet Jason in real life) click here.

Or if you want to vote Existem Affiliate Management for Agency of The Year click here.

Once again a random work related post, but I thought I would share my top 10 moments with you anyway. So here are my top 10 moments from Expo!

1) Whoah! – To explain, when venturing out into the inner depths of Amsterdam, some friends and I were admiring the many lovely looking ladies in windows ‘working’ only to hear a sudden ‘whoah’ in response to a most industrial looking lady, she was such a site we went up the street twice just to check it was real!

2) The Mixed Grill – My boss Mark ordered a mixed grill on the first night, and after a long day driving and almost no food, he was quite hungry. This is what arrived, you can imagine his face. I was crying with laughter, seriously can you imagine his face when that arrived? We even questioned it with the waiter and then went on to explain a British mixed grill… Comedy genius!

3) J Lil fell asleep – J, you know you did! After a heavy night on the beer, during his panel presentation, J slipped in and out of sleep. Me being me, made everyone aware of the fact and so it was twittered, and re twittered accordingly! It also amused me that you were introduced as a member of a rival workplace! LOL

4) Okay Tug – Best Name ever! Apologies to the real person, but seeing that business card created many many laughs!

5) The face pulling – after being groped in a random bar in Amsterdam on Queens night a few of us headed outside to hail a cab, I decided i had not taken enough dodgy pictures and so some face pulling ensued. See below;

6) If Carlsberg make taxi’s, they’d make this one bigger – imagine 3 ‘larger’ blokes and a skinny guy, guess who gets in the front!?! My lord we laughed so much it hurt, our taxi driver was in hysterics too (dangerous) soo sooo soooooo funny!

7) Being SMUG – I decided not to drink at expo, yes yes i know, me, not drink! I said not until the last night and thats what happened. The sheer feeling of smugness is great, when you see many many broken faces who partied a little too hard, and you feel fresh as a daisy it’s great. I may continue this theme at other events!

Matt Wood – This picture says it all. This man should win a comedy award, hilarious to point and laugh at when broken, potty mouth when drunk.

9) The Free Stuff – I managed to swipe some pens, bags, notepads, stress balls, tee shirts, mugs, calendars, dvd’s, sweets and best of allllll – waffles! yummy yummy yummy! Everyone likes some free stuff! I even almost managed another grey affiliate hoodie, but it was removed from my possession and given back to its owner.

10) Friends old and new – I couldn’t write this without mentioning my new mates and old buddies who i got to meet and catch up with! Great to see you when sober. Surprising how different you all look when not blurred with winre!

All in all a bloody great few days!

I missed loads out, so to those in the know – Cedric and Tom, Poo Bags, My new mum and dad, new climbing frame, farts, Lookie Likies in the pub, shagging/making love, kebabs, chipsy king, upside down cows, my new hoodie, cheeeeseburger, Rodriguez, finger in bum, HAT, she is the boss!!!, Ghent, Fag dash, flapflicker, pimp my car… there is more im sure!

peace! x

I almost forgot, my boss saved a life, nay the internet, nay the world! he is a herp (hero!)

Oh and big up to Chris Clarkson from Sunshine.co.uk for saying “you’re wasting away” I love you dearly for that!

I usually don’t write about work, but as this was a party I am making an exception.

After about 3 hours sleep (mainly due to Monkey going missing) I arose at stupid o’clock to head off to London with the boss man Mark. Thanks to Mark for buying breakfast – it was much needed! We went to a number of meetings around London before heading back to get ready to go out. On the way to somewhere (bad memory) I spotted a brand new form of advertising, basically, some people had steam cleaned mould in the form of adverts! I thought it was awesome and very inventive, mark not so much.

I had decided to buy a new outfit to hopefully show off my new slender figure – ‘lesbian’ was the comment I got. So I am not sure if that is good or bad!?! We had a quick drink in the bar with Elaine, Dave, Julie, Nick? (crap with names – Just found out, it’s Dan! oops) Jason and John – and to be honest the excitement, lack of food and tiredness meant the wine hit my head pretty quickly!

Off to the bar and a great job had been done organising, and I got to catch up with so many old friends and new faces that I had so far only met via the forum or msn! good times! I can’t be arsed to name everyone as I would be here all night, but you all know who you are.

A few games of pool, and yes I lost miserably, a distinct lack of available men for me to flirt badly with and lots more wine later and the night begins to blur. You see if people give me booze, I drink it. Apologies to anyone I met, I don’t remember talking to you, I most probably did something stupid, so sorry!

There is a vague recollection of the limbo (ragga ragga) and me doing the splits for the first time ever in my life (ouchy)

A few of us headed to Heaven (a gay bar, not the spiritual place) – So big up to J Lil, Mark, Mikey, Adam, Graham and Jo… I think that’s everyone! I hope! Bloody wicked night! Team XTreme you never cease to amaze me!

In we went at Heaven, and we had been in there no more than 5 minutes when Gay Porn Idol began, which basically consisted of 10 hot fit guys stripping and dancing. Number 3 got our vote. I think it was him who pulled out the ‘willy windmill’ – you gotta love a willy windmill! Here is ME DRUNK…

Some more dancing later, and I have no clue. I know I got home at 5am, complete with Mark’s coat (it’s mine now) and very sore feet. I arose the next morning to much piss taking and many bruises. I was supposed to have anpther meeting but the boss man booked the wrong frigging train, so it was a mad dash to the station. I got home to be greeted by and angry Monkey and my parents. Oh the pain!

Here are the pics I managed on my shitty phone!