In association with Citenum, we are delighted to be able to offer a new “hi-tech design” template for your shop : “Blue Tech”.
To change your shop’s template, click HERE. Feel free to also personalize it using CSS (customization tabs) !
More templates to follow, so keep tuned !
The GnoZtiK program (http://www.gnoztik.com) offers, in the Backlink tab (website side), a list of webpages with which you can exchange links to increase your Seach Engine Optimization (SEO). This list is sorted in decreasing order of relevancy. In particular, the program takes into account the theme of the website and its pagerank:
sign – this highlights pages with pageranks much higher to yours (often considered as suspicious by Google).
Finally in the contact column, you can click on the email icon to create an email to help you convince the webmaster of that website to exchange backlinks with you. All you need to do is to find that website’s contact form or contact email address, copy and paste the message and send it.
Dear users,
As previously announced, all links pointing to Amazon products have now been removed from the Zlio platform.
Amazon US informed us that they no longer wished to have Zlio promote Amazon products in the United States (see for details), and they’ve unfortunately remained inflexible in negotiations for the moment.
However – to every cloud, there’s a silver lining, and in this case, it’s a big one!
As of yesterday, Barnes & Nobles has joined our ranks and we’re now close partners – this means that a lot of products sold by Barnes & Nobles is now available for you to add to your ZlioStores. So there are now 1.5 million new products available for you to boast to your customers! And best of all, you’ll find that a lot of the products we’re losing from Amazon are coming straight back in via Barnes & Nobles (they’ve automatically been replaced in your shops)!
Let the party begin!
Jeremie Berrebi
President/CEO
Zlio.com
Zlio secures $4 million in Series A funding
Mangrove Capital Partners backs the world’s most innovative online commerce network
Paris, July 8 2007:
Zlio, which allows every Internet user to become a shopkeeper, has today announced it has raised $4 million in funding from Mangrove Capital Partners, the first institutional investor in Skype, and that it has reached an important milestone: it has now launched 100.000 shops and attracts 2.5 millions unique visitors per month.
Zlio gives every Internet user the opportunity to create and run their own hassle-free internet shop – users simply build their store from a growing list of 3 million products and earn commissions on every item bought from their ZlioShop (or on every user they successfully forward to a supplier). “In essence, we are creating the world’s largest mall and giving Internet users the power to create businesses which reflect their personality” said Jeremie Berrebi, Founder and CEO of Zlio.
Prior to Zlio, there was little opportunity for people to engage in hassle-free trade on the web; the burden was on the user to advertise their shops and handle goods and their distribution. Zlio is revolutionising the market by creating a framework in which the technical legwork of internet trading is a thing of the past. Zlio is transforming what was previously an occupation reserved for a select few into a fun, fast, easy and risk-free way to make handsome profits online.
Jeremie Berrebi, Founder and CEO of Zlio, commented: “The funding is a vote of confidence for our vision. We are committed to helping the widest possible audience discover the joys of becoming an online shopkeeper”.
“The company already has shopkeepers earning $750 per month. What Zlio is doing is reminiscent of the Tupperware phenomenon. By engaging with the individual, Zlio is bringing a social component to e-commerce, which I believe will help create the most important online sales force ever seen” said Mark Tluszcz, Managing Partner of Mangrove Capital Partners.
About Zlio
Zlio is the world’s most innovative start-up dedicated to social ecommerce. The company allows internet users to set up their own online store and populate it with products from a growing database of several million items. The company was launched in September 2006 by Jeremie Berrebi, ex founder of Net2one (sold in April 2004), David Levy & Jean Guetta. Zlio has transformed what was previously an occupation reserved for a select few into a fun, fast, easy and risk-free way to make handsome profits online. www.zlio.com
About Mangrove Capital Partners
Mangrove Capital Partners “Mangrove” provides venture capital with a punch to entrepreneurs looking to build world class companies. Our mission is to help turn visions into realities by providing financing, thoughtful advice, relevant experience and deep industry relationships to our portfolio companies. Mangrove has invested in, among others, the following companies: Skype (www.skype.com), Securewave ( www.securewave.com), Dialcom Networks ( www.dialcom.com), Nimbuzz (www.nimbuzz.com), Properazzi ( www.properazzi.com), Quintura (www.quintura.com ), and Piczo (www.piczo.com).
To find out more about Mangrove Capital Partners, please visit www. mangrove-vc.com.
Mangrove, the first institutional investor in Skype, has just invested $4 million in Zlio
Many of you have wondered what last night’s mysterious announcement was going to be – well, Techcrunch US have just announced it!
Ten months after David Levy, Jean Guetta and I launched Zlio (the “create your own shop” version), we’re proud to announce that we have taken Mangrove Capital Partners on board. Mangrove is based in the Luxemburg and is famous for the sale of Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005.
Mark Tluszcz, Managing Partner of Mangrove and previous member of Skype’s Managing Board, has now joined ours. According to the 2007 Forbes Medias list, he’s the 20th most talented high-tech venture capitalist in the world!
We’re extremely proud to now be working with the Mangrove team – from what we’ve seen thus far, it feels like having real partners working with us.
We had several other offers in this round (some of them rather larger, financially, than Mangrove’s) but no other VC in the Europe, the US or in Israel displayed as much ambition, international vision and ease of communication as did the Mangrove team.
I hope to be able to share my experiences of this fundraising round with you all in a few years… It really was fascinating, and gave me a real insight into what makes different VCs around the world tick.
We are now therefore in regular contact with Mark and David Waroquier of Mangrove, whose kindness and expertise have so far done nothing but confirm that the choice we made was the right one!
Our aim: to build up the largest online sales force in the world!
100 000 stores… Over 2.5 million unique visitors a month (of which 2 million on our stores alone)… Some of our members earning up to $750 every month… Zlio is a tremendous success. But a rather version 1.0 success at the moment… We’re a company that is planning to grow quickly, but surely!
We’re already drawing the attention of some of the world’s largest companies like Yahoo, eBay, Google and Microsoft – they’re well up to date with what’s happening at Zlio. In fact, we’ve already signed some important partnerships with some of them – keep watching for announcements we’re about to make in the near future.
What’s this going to change for Zlio, you might ask?
1. We’ve now started to consolidate our team with solid, experienced members. We are, as it happens, currently recruiting developers in Nantes (France) and in Israel, as well as an US Vice President of Operations.
2. We’re planning to use a large proportion of these funds for R&D. We only have one aim: to add even more features to Zlio, and only for one reason: to allow you to make even more money
A beta service is in fact currently being tested (beta testers – please remain quiet! 
). It has already allowed some of you to increase your revenue per visitor. We’re also planning to launch some other very innovative features before the end of the year – so far unique worldwide! You’ve also sent us hundreds of suggestions as to how to improve our service – we value them and we’re looking into them. This investment will allow us to start implementing them effectively.
3. We are launching Zlio in several European countries (the UK originally and then Germany at the start of next year). A marketing campaign has now begun in the US.
4. We’re in the progress of signing important partnerships all over the world – stay tuned for details!
In any case, I would also like to use this opportunity express my sincere thanks and gratitude to all of you for the trust you have placed in us since the launch of Zlio US – our work has only begun. Zlio is a very exciting adventure, and we have a fantastic team… but we still have lots of work ahead!
If you have any questions or would like any other details, I’d be delighted! Just leave a comment on this post, and I’ll get back to you.
Jeremie Berrebi
President/CEO
Zlio.com
1. It needs to include strategic keywords
It is about keywords on which your want to position your page.
If your shop is about soccer:
Avoid “Chinese cuisine”, though you might be well positioned on “Chinese cuisine”, the visitors who will reach your page by typing that sequence in Google are very likely to leave it just as quickly.
Prefer “soccer t-shirt” , because you may be well positioned on ” soccer t-shirt”, and the visitors who will reach your page by typing that sequence in a search engine are very likely to stay on your web site.
2. It needs to be composed of 2 or 3 words
A 3-word sequence allows you to catch more requests.
If your shop is about real estate, I suggest “rent flat Pari”s. You may be well positioned on ” rent flat Paris “, but also on ” rent flat” and ” flat Paris “, which increases your chances of being found on search engines.
3. It should not have spelling mistakes.
If your shop is about real estate, avoid ” rnt flt Pais” , you may be well positioned on “rnt flt Pais”, but since nobody types that sequence in a search engine, it is useless !
4. Avoid having the same text in all your backlinks.
You normally receive a backlink when a webmaster likes your webpage. The text he/she encloses in the backlink is his/her own initiative. Therefore there is low probability that all the webmasters use the same text in the link they create towards your page. So the same text in all your backlinks looks very suspicious to search engines and can play against you.
