Any product that Oprah gives her blessing to has a tendency to become a best seller overnight. While we might not all have the influence of Oprah, do you feel compelled to recommend your favorite products to the world too? Taking it a step further, would you consider opening an online shop to sell some of your favorite products? Now you can with ease with Zlio.
Zlio, a product that launched five months ago in France, released its US version today to offer anyone the ability to set up an online shop even if you have nothing to sell but your favorite product recommendations. Zlio already has 35,000 shops opened since September in France and is planning to launch the service in UK in the next few weeks.
With Zlio, creating an online shop is a similar process to creating a blog on many of the web-based blog platforms. Users can then select from a plethora of products to sell on their Zlio site from a product catalog (from many merchants: 75 in France, 25 in the US). As a shop owner, you can make money anytime you sell an item (CPA business model) without ever having to worry about shipping items or customer service issues as Zlio handles all of the shop details for you. The revenue share is currently 60 to 80% with users. Zlio’s competition is currently comprised of aStore from Amazon, which only offers Amazon products, and Shoplinc from Chitika, which is focused primarily on users who already have websites to sell their products.
In a matter of minutes, I created the Somewhat Frank Shop which offers some of my favorite products as shown in the screen-shot below. If recommendations are not your cup of tea, you could create a Zlio site focused on a particular theme. For example, if you are a big Woody Allen fan you could set up a Woody Allen Fan Shop.
Zlio, though based in France, has half of its team based in Israel with plans of opening an office in the US soon. Currently they are in a Due Diligence phase with some VC's to raise funds.
Bottom-line: Zlio allows anyone to quickly create their own online shop even if they have nothing to sell.
