Dear user,
One week ago Amazon informed us that they no longer wished to have Zlio promote Amazon products in the United States. We were advised through a generic email with immediate effect. For the past week we have endeavored to understand and get to the heart of their concerns – Amazon has remained inflexible. As we have yet to resolve the matter, we feel compelled to inform you of this situation.
Of course Amazon is not the only merchant and we are working hard to have as many products and merchants available for you. Within the next 10 days we expect to announce several new agreements with major merchants in the United States. Strangely enough, we continue to work with Amazon outside the United States.
The unfortunate effect of Amazon’s decision is threefold:
1. Shopkeepers in the United States will no longer be able to add Amazon products to their shops.
2. In 20 days, Zlio will remove all Amazon products from your shop and replace automatically as many as possible with identical products from other merchants.
3. Amazon will no longer pay commission to Zlio for products promoted on you shops and this with effect one week ago. Please contact us if you feel that this has resulted in any significant loss to you.
While we regret Amazon’s decision, we are dedicated to provide our users with the most comprehensive list of products as well as the most competitive group of merchants. To that end, we expect to confirm that Barnes & Noble as well as several other large merchants have joined the Zlio network. Freedom of choice guides us in everything we do.
We apologize if this has caused you any inconvenience. Feel free to reach out to me personally through the comments of this blog if you have any thoughts or recommendations. I look forward to hearing from you.
Jeremie Berrebi
President/CEO
Zlio.com
May 21st, 2007 à 12:42 pm
Thats bloody awful news…but I guess u guys will get around it and add products with price points being as competitive as it is on amazon…
lets hope everything works out well for you guys
Thanks
May 21st, 2007 à 6:38 pm
[...] Today, Zlio announced on their US blog – and via an email to their users – that “one week ago Amazon informed [Zlio] that they no longer wished to have Zlio promote Amazon products in the United States“. It’s indeed a strange move from Amazon that likely rely on their affiliate network. More interesting is that this story has been covered in the main Web 2.0-oriented blogs just a few hours later: [...]
May 21st, 2007 à 8:08 pm
Too bad news. I expected this. Lots of my BUY buttons just were not working about a week ago, they were only an anchor link to the top of my page. The first thing that came to my mind was that some of Zlio partner merchant sites has said they leave us. Unfortunately I was right. I hope this can’t stop us and I hope this doesn’t discourage Zlio team. Zlio is just a couple of months old start-up baby and suffers such blows badly. This is a test for all us the Zlio users. A lot of us will give up and maybe regret later, others not and may actually even win from Amazon withdrawal.
Go Zlio, don’t give up!
May 21st, 2007 à 8:15 pm
PS
What about we can still link to Amazon products even if we don’t receive any commission for this. Of course this is if another merchant doesn’t offer the same item. What Zlio shops will benefit from this is size. More items, means bigger store, which means better indexing by Search Engines, which means greater traffic. That was just an idea.
Thanks,
Steliyan
May 22nd, 2007 à 8:48 am
Hello
We put over 1600 products in 2 stores. What will happen to most of these products that had amazon as merchant partner? Will you just remove the products from our store that I took great care to add to the store? I do not look forward to losing hundreds of products and no way to sel them and also having to put hundreds of new products in the stores again.
By the way, I notice that most people browse the store but rarely buy anything. Perhaps the prices that the products sell for don’t appear as competitive as possible.
May 22nd, 2007 à 8:53 am
Hello
I would like to see an accounting of products sold in our stores. I don’t know what product a person buys when they buy a product. This would tell me what products appear popular.
Thank you.
May 22nd, 2007 à 9:03 am
I have another suggestion. Please look at the zazzle.com model of showing products in the marketplace. zazzle.com has a big matrix of products in which buyers can browse and search and it shows the name of the store who sells the product. In other words, in addition to having our store web pages, I suggest zlio have a browsable, searchable marketplace with every one of your member stores products sorted by classifications of products.
This way you can mention zlio and the zlio marketplace of products from every one of your zlio stores and people can then search it and give everyone publicity and a chance to sell their products.
Thank you.
May 22nd, 2007 à 7:41 pm
I just looked in both our shops and discovered that we will lose almost all of our food products we sell as Amazon.com sold those food products. We will lose over 350 products. I hope you will find another merchant partner that will allow us to sell many food products.
I called Amazon.com that I will not shop with them any mmore and told them I will tell my friends and acquaintances not to shop with amazon.com
May 23rd, 2007 à 6:55 am
I sent you 2 mails, but haven’t got any response from you.
Why isn’t it possible to change the market of my shop from US to something else? I’m not American anyway…
I have about 1,000 products in my shop, and I’m not going to build it again, so…
May 23rd, 2007 à 4:00 pm
My girlfriend has these stores.
http://redsemporium.zlio.com
http://redsemporium2.zlio.com
She’s a Canadian. Can you leave Amazon.com as one of her sellers?
May 23rd, 2007 à 4:38 pm
Nicely done, Dennis, nicely done. My friends stopped shopping from Amazon long time ago with their constant delivery delays and awful customer service. Honestly I dont care if they stay or go from Zlio, but its another brick in the wall of their terrible reputation to toss this brick in the online community. I am sure that suitable merchants will be found soon to replace them not only in Zlio.
Cheers
May 23rd, 2007 à 5:15 pm
Rather than complain to Amazon (or Zlio), contact the merchants that Amazon represents (most have their own website) and let them know that Amazon has decided to cut off what would be a huge revenue source for them. I’m sure hardly any of them even know about this. Enough complaints from the merchants will make a difference.
I know some of you don’t care if we lose Amazon, but about 95% of my products come from them, and there aren’t any close substitutes.
May 24th, 2007 à 11:15 pm
I would like to recommend that ZLIO see if it can get Omahasteaks.com as a merchant partner and other food sellers as merchant partners.
Thank you.
May 26th, 2007 à 8:41 am
Dear Zlio,
Since you’re totally ignoring my emails, and I can’t get any response from you, other than the constant spam you’re sending me (in French, which I can’t read anyway…) I understand that there’s really no point in continuing working with you.
You can delete my shop.
Madam Zosha
PS. I’ve been working with Amazon’s associates program, and have been buying through them for years, and they *always* took the time to answer my emails…
May 27th, 2007 à 2:37 pm
I have been considering the weight of the letter from Amazon, and now it is apparent to me that without Amazon products in my stores on ZLiO, I may never have any sales at all. All of my stores are populated with Amazon listings, at least 99%.
Why would Amazon do this to all of us? They were the foundation of affiliate marketing years ago, and now they are attacking small affiliates. What a change.
I am very disappointed in this move by Amazon, and I will never promote another Amazon product online as long as I live. My ZLiO shops do not have a chance after this move. All I have in my shops is Amazon listings.
May 27th, 2007 à 3:41 pm
Well this is bade news but just got to buck up and do the deal.Im hopping that the product that u replace Amozon stuff with is the same price that we get it for from AMAZON.Tom
May 28th, 2007 à 7:49 pm
I just put amazon on banned. Since they won’t pay me I won’t promote them. Let me know if they change their minds.
May 28th, 2007 à 7:56 pm
I have an idea. My zliosite is of an adult nature and I use http://www.adultestores.com/ for my regular site. Since most of my adult products were from amazon, I’m in a pickle.. Maybe they would be willing to be a merchant. Just a suggestion.
May 29th, 2007 à 5:19 am
Hi id like to say there is some promising input, Id also like to say Amazon do not know what they are doing. Which means they are losing customers which means loss
of productivity.
May 29th, 2007 à 11:36 am
Une mauvaise nouvelle en plus pour couronner tous mes échecs.
Je n’ai jamais vendu jusqu’à présent un seul de mes produits monsieur le président c’est une
catastrofe ce qui nous arrive tous .
ALEX
June 16th, 2007 à 5:41 pm
Monsieur le Président,
J’ai plusieurs boutiques aux USA et la plupart des produits proviennent de Amazon.com J’attends un peu pour voir si vous pouvez remplacer ces produits et j’ai confiance en Vous. Si cela n’est pas possible je vais essayer de trouver de nouvelles idées et je vais recommencer. J’ai vendu des produits dans 3 de mes boutiques aux USA ( http://delicatessen.zlio.com, http://perfumes.zlio.com, http://health-products.zlio.com (après avoir fait de la publicité des sites) et j’étais très contente. Il faut être positif, je suis sûre que Vous aller y arriver et Nous aussi. Tan pis pour Amazon
PS I am sorry my English is not so good.