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PriceZombie is shutting down

pricezombie.com

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Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#121

Post by spdionis »

daodedickinson wrote: post #92
patio11 wrote: post #23

Our appeals to Amazon affiliate program administrators (associates@amazon.com) and even Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) were either ignored or answered incompletely, leaving us wondering if anyone was listening I was once in a room with Dave McClure and a ~50ish companies he had funded. He announced that he was taking a tour of partnership teams at two members of AppAmaGooBookSoft and asked for who wanted to come with.…

Facebook destroyed Zynga overnight. All of a sudden they decided billions in revenue wasn't worth the spamminess. Now, their feed is at least as spammy but with out the spam coming from friends and being part of a game. shrug

I think it's better that spam doesnt come from friends/feel part of the game. That would feel even more intrusive to a lot of users.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#122

Post by dhimes »

ryao wrote: post #90
InsideTrack wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You miss the point. PriceZombie was above board with what they were doing at all times. Amazon TOLD THEM that as long as their latest price was within 24 hours they could display price history like dozens of other price trackers were doing. PZ was reviewed three times, not just by low level people but higher up in the chain, and each time there was no question they were within the TOS so long as they displayed the cu…

Many of the shoppers using Price Zombie likely relied on Price Zombie's historical pricing data and notifications of price drops to delay purchases until prices for items were relatively low. The affiliate link gave Amazon data on which shoppers were using Price Zombie. Maybe someone at Amazon used their data to estimate the decrease in margins from that, causing Amazon's leadership to change its mind.

So Price Zombie was the best, and it hurt them. GOTO patio11's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360482

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#123

Post by AznHisoka »

Domenic_S wrote: post #79
AznHisoka wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The advice by patio is generally sound, though in this specific scenario, I don't think Amazon would ever care. PriceZombie offers negligible profit compared to the billions Amazon makes. Even spending 0.5 seconds on their case is a waste of their time.

I don't agree with that at all. We have to guess how much transaction volume PriceZombie sends to Amazon, but $50k/month isn't an unreasonable estimate (probably very low). It is totally worth a couple hours of a support person's time to deal with the source of $600k of annual revenue.

Where did you get $50K from? I would guess that's a huge factor above what they exactly make. I'd estimate somewhere a few thousand (and maybe even less than $1000 some months) to $10K at most. If they're making $50K/month, they must be very very good marketers, or they're doing something very shady.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#124

Post by designtofly »

meritt wrote: post #48
mwexler wrote: post #30

All the comments on "don't rely on 1 customer" are correct, of course, but I'm more interested in how, as far back as the 80s, we all believed in the magic of having something show us the best price for an item. Now, sure, it may often be Amazon, but not always, and they don't carry everything. So, multiple price engines come and go. Why? Because consumers won't pay for them, and so they rely on kickbacks from mercha…

CamelCamelCamel has not went anywhere. But they also don't serve affiliate links as far as I can tell, so their revenue model (if they have one) is not dependent on an affiliate relationship.

CCC does serve affiliate links. If you go to any product page on CCC and click the "Buy" button, you'll end up at Amazon and the URL will have the "tag=camelproducts-20" for their affiliate code in the URL. I'm sure every Amazon-bound link on their website or browser plug-in will do the same.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#125

Post by dhimes »

sharps_xp wrote: post #76
gdulli wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bots are the worst kind of comments on reddit threads, after the ones posted by people.

come on now, arguably the most valuable commenter on r/nba is a bot that converts twitter videos to streamable links.

Read GP's comment again. ;-)

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#126

Post by uptown »

ValentineC wrote: post #52
mattlutze wrote: post #22

The issue here wasn't that they were just using Amazon's API and then lost access. The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices and, per the post, that's what PriceZombie was doing. The lesson is that if you're doing something in violation of a partner's TOS and start to negatively effect their business, the partner is well within their rights to cut off access. Whether other businesses have or haven't…

The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices How is Amazon fine with CamelCamelCamel [1] then? It seems like they make money off Amazon affiliate links too. [1] http://camelcamelcamel.com/blog/how-our-price-checking-syste...

CCC only shows Amazon. Others show competitors. One is far more likely to send a buyer to a competitor if the pricing at Amazon isn't competitive.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#127

Post by brightball »

patio11 wrote: post #23

Our appeals to Amazon affiliate program administrators (associates@amazon.com) and even Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) were either ignored or answered incompletely, leaving us wondering if anyone was listening I was once in a room with Dave McClure and a ~50ish companies he had funded. He announced that he was taking a tour of partnership teams at two members of AppAmaGooBookSoft and asked for who wanted to come with.…

What you just described is why a number of large businesses have relationships with politicians.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#128

Post by [deleted] »

meritt wrote: post #48
mwexler wrote: post #30

All the comments on "don't rely on 1 customer" are correct, of course, but I'm more interested in how, as far back as the 80s, we all believed in the magic of having something show us the best price for an item. Now, sure, it may often be Amazon, but not always, and they don't carry everything. So, multiple price engines come and go. Why? Because consumers won't pay for them, and so they rely on kickbacks from mercha…

CamelCamelCamel has not went anywhere. But they also don't serve affiliate links as far as I can tell, so their revenue model (if they have one) is not dependent on an affiliate relationship.

[deleted]

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#129

Post by Dylan16807 »

patio11 wrote: post #23

Our appeals to Amazon affiliate program administrators (associates@amazon.com) and even Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) were either ignored or answered incompletely, leaving us wondering if anyone was listening I was once in a room with Dave McClure and a ~50ish companies he had funded. He announced that he was taking a tour of partnership teams at two members of AppAmaGooBookSoft and asked for who wanted to come with.…

I'm confused. Was the mention of a tour just something that reminded him to give that advice, and it was completely unrelated to the rant? Was he assuming that anyone that wanted to go on the tour was in that situation, an assumption that makes very little sense?
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