About Me - Shanti Shunn - Internet Marketing

As of this post (3/9/2011), I have been doing internet marketing for more than 14 years. I started in PPC back in the early GoTo.com days and found I had a deep affinity for, at the time, this very new marketing vehicle and medium. I then found myself finishing college with a dual major bachelor of science business degree in (traditional) marketing and entrepreneurship. At this time, I bounced around in various temporary positions in order to try to find an industry as well as further understand where I was able to excel in the real world. From this, I found myself caught up in the dotcom bubble in LA going from company to company expanding my working knowledge, particularly in the realms of PPC and SEO as these, many times even back then were a hand-in-hand effort and skill-set. Eventually moving up the ranks of companies, I found myself deeply engaged in all channels from comparison shopping engines, the datafeed analysis to do this right and affiliates, technical architectures for site improvements...of course, more recently, social media as well. See LinkedIn internet marketing profile for the more recent history view of my professional exploits. To rank favorite acquisition channels I'd go with:

1. SEO - when done right, it can be a positive for all the channels, the user and the company.
a. Technical Architecture - love, love, love this stuff. Done right with the understanding of the true online business needs, this is where I can have the most impact for goal growth. From custom platforms to IBM WCS to vendor partners technology, I have enjoyed all of my forays into this!

2. PPC - when done right on a true SEO structured site foundation, it is the most fun, versatile and measurable channel

3. CSEs (Comparison Shopping) - with the proper SEO site foundation, this is a fun channel to get to play with datafeeds and data optimization. This also many times will help with SEO as you really learn what data fields are available and which ones are missing providing additional insight into SEO site foundation building.

4. Affiliates - this is simply fun and allows for great associations, professional relationships and a way to monitor and watch the people who are and or still can be the true renegades in the internet marketing space.

5. Social Media - love creating strategies for this that can benefit the brand and provide some SEO benefits in our highly social digital landscape. However, that said, I'm not the communicator/voice for this medium as I know my limitations.

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As for the 'real' me, I still have a love and passion for internet marketing, particularly still having my hands on any and all of the various acquisition-type channels. Crazy part is that my most recent forays have taken me into the technical architecture design role and THIS is really fascinating stuff, but I'll get into that more later. Other passions I have are classic cars, green technologies, homebrew, gardening, wood working, hiking (just the outdoors in general), fishing, rescuing animals and spending time with my wife and adopted furry family.

Classic cars:
- Worked on: '57 t-bird special country sedan, several old VWs, a '73 el camino, '70 custom ford f-150, '68 chevy c-10 pick-up and various others throughout my life.

Green Technologies:
- Our house is solar powered with rain-water capture
- I plan at some point in life to build a electric vehicle, probably an old VW
- If anyone wants to give me a Tesla, I wouldn't complain

Homebrew
- My wife is the brewer, but I love being the assistant and drinker of most of this amazing beer she is producing.

Gardening
- We have a pretty expansive garden. We grow pretty much all of our vegetable intake for the summer with plenty left over to be canned for the winter time frames and to be given as gifts to our loved ones.

Wood Working
- This is a more recent phenomenon. Recently I made some furniture for my wife and now find myself "tinkering" on projects for some of her friends. Fun stuff for sure, but definitely need to up the tool assortment here.

Hiking (Outdoors)
- Just recently spent a week in Kauai (the Garden Island) where we pretty much wore ourselves out with walking and hiking. We hiked 10 miles one day and 2 days later, another 4+ mile hike...needless to say, we were exhausted.

Fishing
- I had always been partial to deep sea fishing, specifically the guided tours out of Morro Bay. With the more recent life in Oregon though, I have developed a passion for lake fishing and occasional forays into Salmon and Steelhead river fishing.

Rescuing Animals
- We have 2 dogs and a cat that are rescues, 2 of which came from previous abuse histories. If we had more land, we'd have many more. Overall, we have 2 dogs, 2 cats and 3 chickens as of now...

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As for what I really want in life, well, it is pretty simple.

1. Happy, secure professional career with a stable company that respects me and the experience I bring to the table.
a. Preferably with telecommute as the primary option (hey, it is the internet right?) Agency, in-house...doesn't matter to me.

2. Happy home life and time for my family and hobbies.

3. Ability to take at least ONE good 2 week (or more) vacation a year to continue expanding my knowledge and intimacy with this wonderful, diverse world we live on.

Peace!

Shanti Shunn