1. Professional Look, Feel, and Functionality: Clean up your online storefront/Web site. Ask your friends to go to your website and ask them this: "If you were a stranger and you came to my website would you buy from me?" If they say no, ask them why and remember that you only have one chance to make a good first impression.

2. Start with Four Free Comparison Shopping Engines: Send your entire product catalog to four free comparison shopping engines: Google Product Search, theFind.com, MSN LiveSearch, and Microsoft Cashback. They are free, may lead to some sales, and will certainly help with organic SEO search. Where else can you get free marketing and also learn how comparison shopping engines work before making a larger time and financial commitment?

3. Use a Cost-Effective, Web-based Tool to Handle Technical Issues with Analysis: There are solutions in the marketplace that, for as little as $145 a month and no transaction fees, no listing fees, no revenue share, and no set-up costs, can get you up and running in less than 48 hours on the free sites mentioned above (and 21 others, if you choose for the same price), with analytics included.

4. Test, Test, and Test Various Comparison Shopping Engines: Even after you "worked" a specific comparison shopping engine for 60-90 days, optimized your feeds properly, and used the SKU level bidding feature of some comparison shopping engines, sometimes a particular comparison shopping engine still may not lead to sales. Instead of getting upset, try another comparison shopping engine. There are a lot of comparison shopping engines out there that may have a more appropriate audience for you. And, since most comparison shopping engines charge on a month-to-month basis, can you afford not to try them?

5. Educate Yourself: There are many resources on the Web about best practices when working with comparison shopping engines. You can access several free Webinars, whitepapers, and other sources of information, with no obligation, from the MerchantAdvantage site.

6. Catalog Dipping: Not every product you sell will sell well on every comparison shopping engine: we all know that fact. Try adopting a strategy of only sending products that lead to sales and not just clicks. You can do this easily when using a Web-based tool with analytics, to manage your product catalog feeds and start to have some fun when working with comparison shopping engines.

7. Choice: Make sure you have the option and choice to send your product catalog feed to any marketing channel available to you on the Internet. That includes over 250 comparison shopping sites I know of, affiliate sites as Commission Junction and Linkshare (that can get you to the smallest of sites where your products can be found), eBay! and Amazon. Why? Because you never know into which comparison shopping engine your product catalog will lead to the most sales.

8. Timing is Everything: Although it is very important to feed your most current product information to CSEs, they typically "Index" them before consumers view the information. It is best to be sure and upload your product data just before the CSE sweeps, or imports their data, and this typically happens a few times a day at varied times depending on the CSE.

   But, when possible, it is good to allow a day or so between feeds to allow proper indexing within the CSE, and particularly Google Base. So, if your product information has not changed, wait until it has (up to a few days) before feeding again. This will allow your products to be properly categorized and indexed, and help your performance within that CSE.

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.