| Carl Burgess has been involved in web development for over twelve years as a system administrator, developer, tester and site owner. He is a respected author, teacher and international referee of Taijiquan who likes to push the boundaries of his art and how to disseminate it on the web. Here he talks about his site shadowhand.com and his experience with the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program. |
 |
Emma: Hi Carl, first of all, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer our questions. Could you start off by giving us a little introduction about your site?
My site, www.shadowhand.com, has been going for about ten years now and is focussed on the Wudang Style of Taijiquan which is the The martial arts form of T’ai Chi. I teach from home and decided to start my blog, www.shadowhand.com/blog on how I set up my home dojo. I will start adding my teaching material at some stage.
Emma: What inspired you to start up the shadowhand blog, why this particular subject?
I have written a book and produced a number of CDs and articles but felt that a more flexible approach was needed to convey what I am doing now. I generally video my lessons and would like to add commentary and clips on a regular basis rather than taking months to produce a completed full blown work.
Emma: You’ve been with the Shopzilla UK Publisher Program for a while now – how are you finding it?
It takes some time to work out how to tailor the ads to your content – i.e what size, colour , shape, orientation etc so I have been experimenting with all variants to see what works best.
It is good to have a choice of ad type to choose from and be able to configure colours etc.
Emma: I see you’ve added several of our large dynamic assets…how did you find the implementation process?
The Shopzilla system is fairly straightforward to use , the key is to search for your particular subject matter in the BizRate.co.uk site to check on what keywords will find the particular items you want to show and then use those keywords in the Publisher admin to find the appropriate ads. I thought it was important to match the ads chosen to the particular content I was writing about to keep it contextual. For example, if I write about boxing gloves, I’ll include an ad showing the gloves, or if you take a look at my headgear post, I’ve integrated an ad displaying items of headguards and head protectors.
Emma: What’s important to you in an affiliate partnership? Are you using any other programs?
Basically good communication, ease of use of the administration system. I am also affiliated with Amazon and Hong Kong Flix. For me, the partnership with Shopzilla’s Publisher program has been a great experience and one that I look forward to continuing.
Emma: How often do you consult our Publisher blog? Do you find it useful in keeping up to date with what’s going on in the Shopzilla Publisher world?
I am a very busy person and so I don’t have much time keeping up with what everyone else is doing. I probably focus about once a month to check up on the statuses of everything.
Emma: And finally…do you have any feedback for us here at Shopzilla i.e. suggestions for improvement?
Maybe some style guidelines for websites which have different layouts i.e. multi-column pages – or perhaps some page templates that fit the ad types might be of help.
Thanks for some great info and feedack, Carl. If you’d like to take a peek at his site, please visit Carl’s martial arts blog.
