With the economic slowdown, you'll have to be extra careful on where and how you spend your advertising dollars. This might have a small impact on your product sales, but for the most part, you shouldn't have to worry too much as economists are forecasting that people will still be purchasing the same amount of presents, but they might not be spending as much as they might have in the past.

One of the best ways that we have found to generate product sales is by listing some of your items on shopping comparison sites. Shopping comparison sites are websites that allow individuals to view lists of prices for specific products. People searching for products on shopping comparison sites are usually farther along the buying cycle and thus are more like to buy (targeted customers).

There are two very important points to remember when listing products on shopping sites:

• 1. You DO NOT need to be the lowest priced. The key is to be competitively priced. People searching for products on a shopping comparison site will be price-sensitive, but price is only one of many deciding factors. This is where you can separate your store/products from your competitors. Offer these people a better shopping experience by creating an atmosphere that makes it feel like a safe and friendly place to shop, has better and more descriptive product descriptions, and features expert advice/recommendations, etc. This is where you sell the potential buyers on why they should buy from you and NOT from your competitor. What is your value proposition?
• 2. Only list products where you are competitively priced after you factor in your profit margin and some budget room for commissions/fees. You will need to sort through the Shopster warehouse and only select products to list on shopping comparison sites after researching each specific product. Be smart and do your research! This will likely mean you should not upload all of the products in your stores to Shopping comparison sites. Also, remember to leave some buffer room in your potential profit margin because it can take a number of visitor clicks before a potential customer actually buys. Just to give you an idea, shopping comparison sites generally have a conversation to sale ratio of 4-6%.

Links to Shopping Comparison Sites:

There are a lot of Shopping Comparison sites out there. Some of them are FREE and some of them charge a fee for every visitor click (PPC - "Pay-Per-Click"). Here are some of the more popular ones:

FREE Shopping Comparison Sites:

Since these sites are completely free, you might as well upload and list ALL of your products. This is an excellent free and easy way to generate product sales and drive traffic to your store.

ShopWiki

ShopWiki will automatically crawl the website and add e-commerce stores. If you don't see your store and your products listed on ShopWiki, you can submit your store here.

Once you submit your store, be patient as it will take ShopWiki a couple days to crawl your store.

Google Base

Google Base's policy does not allow e-commerce stores to list 3rd party products. Which means no "dropship" products. However, if you do a quick search on Google Base and you will notice that a majority of the products in there are drop shipped. From our experience it's almost a random toss up if they will accept or reject your store. Since it's free, you should give it a try and upload your products if you can. You have nothing to lose if they reject your submission.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Shopping Comparison Sites:

As mentioned in "Important Tip #2" above, you should only list products where you are competitively priced after factoring in a decent profit margin. Each click can range from $0.05-$1.05 depending on the category of products. Also keep in mind that it will take a number of clicks before someone actually buys. Industry standard from conversion to sale for shopping comparison sites is around 4-6%. As you can see, this can quickly eat away at your potential profit margin if you're not careful. If you are new to this, we highly recommend you keep a close eye on your campaign and set a low daily budget. Monitor it to see what kind of conversion rates you get and see if you're generating a positive return on your investment or not.

Shopping.com

Shopping.com, an eBay® company, pioneered online comparison shopping and today is consistently the leading online comparison site because of its comprehensive set of products from thousands of trusted stores from across the Web.

Shopping.com delivers qualified leads to your store, not just traffic. Shoppers on Shopping.com are researching products and retailers, comparing prices, and are ready to buy. In fact, third party research proves that Shopping.com provides better conversion to sale, higher order value and five times the revenue per lead of leading portals and search engines.

It is free to list products on Shopping.com and you only pay when they drive a lead to your store. Cost-per-click ranges from $0.05 to $1. Click here to view their rate card.

If you are new to listing products on shopping comparison sites, Shopping.com is one of the largest and most reputable stores out there and is probably a good place to start. You can download datafeeds and export datafeed within your Shopster account to upload onto Shopping.com.

PriceGrabber

There are 2 ways to list a product on PriceGrabber.

CPC Merchant Services

Already have an online store?
This program allows merchants with web sites to list their product offers on PriceGrabber. When a product offer is clicked by a user, the merchant pays a cost-per-click.

PriceGrabber Storefronts

Don't have an online store?
This service allows merchants without web sites to list and sell merchandise already listed on PriceGrabber. When a user buys from a PriceGrabber Storefronts seller, they place the order within the PriceGrabber web site.

The CPC Merchant Services option can potentially save you money if you have high conversions to sale ratio. If you don't, it can also end up costing you more in the end. The PriceGrabber Storefronts options charges a $1.50 Base Commission and 8.5% of the Purchase Price whenever an item sells. Although they only charge you when an item actually sells, the fees are also pretty high and can take a big bite out of your profit margin. You will have to evaluate and see which option is best for you and the products that you are selling. If you have a Shopster store, I recommend trying the PriceGrabber CPC Merchant Service option first and test your conversions.

When doing research for this article, the Technology & Entertainment category required a minimum $250 deposit. Their Home & Personal category required a minimum $50 deposit. One of their sales representatives said they have typically have a conversion to sales ratio of 4-6%. If you are new to Shopping Comparison sites, we highly recommend you try testing the other sites first so you can avoid the $250 minimum deposit.

ShopZilla & BizRate

Shopzilla's Shopping Search Engine program is the easiest and most cost effective way to reach targeted buyers while giving you the control over the price you pay for traffic. There are no set up fees; you only pay for clicks directed to your online store.

The same company owns Shopzilla and Bizrate. So listing your products in one of them, it will automatically appear on the other site as well. You can even log into both sites with one username and password.

Shopzilla/Bizrate require a minimum initial deposit of $50. According to their website, it is fully-refundable.

There's a help link that list BizRate's Top Products.

Pronto.com

Pronto.com is the ultimate place to shop online. With an active community of millions of shoppers, and over 70 million products, Pronto.com is a fun place to discover unique products and find great deals on everything from electronics and apparel, to sports equipment and home décor.

Pronto.com is an operating business of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI), which operates Ask.com, Citysearch, Evite, Match.com, Bloglines, Zwinky, Excite and more.

Pronto is one of the new shopping comparison sites. Shopster recently included an export datafeed function for Pronto. If you choose to, you can easily download all of the products within your Shopster store and upload it to Pronto.

Pronto's minimum cost per click ranges from $0.15-$1.00. You can view their rate card here.

Pronto works a little differently than the other shopping comparison sites. Instead of a flat fee for a particular product, Pronto charges a minimum bid for a product, but gives the user the ability to increase their bid so it shows up higher in the search results.

We're not done yet!

Now here comes the best part. Here's how you can make even more sales from shopping comparison sites! After generating leads and sales from these shopping comparison sites, you own the customer. You have their contact information. Remember the 80/20 rule in business. 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customers. Generate repeat sales from these customers by sending them weekly/monthly newsletter telling them about your product promotions, new products, etc. Keep the lines of communication open and you might find yourself gaining more sales from the same set of customers.