What better way of getting an insight into the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program than listening to what Diana Scharpenberg, (Mgr, Online Marketing) herself has to say about the program? We asked Diana, who heads up Shopzilla’s EU Publisher programs, a few questions on affiliate marketing and the programs themselves.

Emma: Hi Diana, thanks for taking the time out to do this for us. It’s a great way for our readers to check out the program from an insider perspective. First of all, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience in the online industry?

Diana: Hi Emma, I’ve actually been with Shopzilla about four years now in my role as Online Marketing Manager. The UK affiliate program was launched just over a year ago with the French and German programs following shortly afterwards. Personally, I’m now completely immersed in the affiliate world, not only because I work in the industry but also because I run a couple of my own personal sites, so I know how the story goes on both sides of the fence; being an affiliate myself who uses various programs as well as running Shopzilla’s. Before that, I actually studied Aviation in Germany (my home country) and went on to work in an online marketing role for Lufthansa.

Emma: Wow, sounds like exciting stuff! Four years is quite long…so you must know the company pretty well now?

Diana: Absolutely. I’ve worked with a lot of people here on a lot of different projects so there’s never a dull moment. It’s a fantastic company to work for so I was happy to launch the Publisher program. I welcome the opportunity to work with new Publishers everyday and the program’s steady growth since its launch confirms just how great an affiliate program it is.

Emma: So what do you look for in new Publishers? And do you have any advice to website owners who would like to try their hand at affiliate marketing?

Diana: For the most part, we look for quality websites. That is to say, Publishers who have great content, an already existing user/visitor base and generally a well established site. The program is free to join and pays on a CPC based model so to those affiliate marketers who wish to get started, try us out! My advice would be to really focus on matching the content of your site to your advertising. There’s no point having a site about golf, for example, and including our cosmetics banners. It just wouldn’t work. We take traffic quality very seriously and monitor it very closely for all Publishers. The Shopzilla Publisher Programs will only work if you take traffic quality as seriously as we do.

Emma: Could you give us a brief overview of the banners/products Shopzilla’s program offers?

Diana: Sure. We have a multitude of options in our Publisher portal including dynamic banners, text links, search boxes, stock banners and product pods which are all easily accessible in the portal. For the more experienced affiliate marketers, we also offer FTP Data Feeds and a soon to be released Catalogue API solution (September 2010). These last two really give affiliates even wider access to Bizrate’s inventory for a great comparison shopping integration. My favourites are actually the dynamic banners as you can not only choose the products you want to promote but also change the look to match your site’s design.

Emma: You mentioned Bizrate - why not Shopzilla?

Diana: Ah, the company origianlly started out as Bizrate but changed it’s corporate name to Shopzilla a few years later. We still have both the Bizrate and Shopzilla sites which run parallel but it is Bizrate itself which powers the Publisher Program.

Emma: I see. And what kinds of products can I advertise through the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program?

Diana: Pretty much anything. We have a broad range of products from niche to large scale, from clothing to perfumes and TVs to iPods. To find a particular product in our portal, it’s a really good idea to browse Bizrate’s site to find the product you want to promote. You just need to know the category tree of that product to then be able to find it in the Publisher portal.

Emma: Great advice there. One last question - as a Publisher I would want to know how my revenues are accrued. Can you give us a brief lowdown on earnings and redirects?

Diana: So as a starting point, earnings are accrued on a CPC based model whereby redirects sent through to our merchants generate earnings. As already mentioned, we are a very quality-focused affiliate program so actually have a system in place called Smartpricing which is not unlike Ebay’s Quality Click Pricing Strategy or the Google quality scores (amongst other quality assurance initiatives). This enables us to monitor the quality of traffic Publishers send through to our merchants. For high quality traffic there is great potential for high revenues and similar to other affiliate programs, these revenues are then paid out on a monthly basis, when the Publisher hits a £50 benchmark.

That’s all for now, folks. Diana has provided us with some great insight into the Publisher Program. Follow her on Twitter.

If you have any further questions on our affiliate program or the affiliate products we offer, we’d love to hear from you - check out our FAQs or contact the Publisher Team.

To sign up, you can register for a Publisher account here.

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