The Economy and Online Shopping for Christmas 2008

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The fragile economy has been a source of great anxiety for many affiliate marketers as we head into the biggest month of our year. But if Black Friday was any indication of consumers opening their wallets, we should be in good shape.

More than 172 million shoppers visited stores and sites over Black Friday weekend this year, which was up from 147 million shoppers last year, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 Black Friday Weekend survey.

The survey also indicated shoppers spent an average of $372.57 over Black Friday weekend, an increase of 7.2 percent over $347.55 in 2007.

So today is Cyber Monday, which is often reported as the biggest online shopping day of the year.

I expect it will be a strong day for affiliate sales, but it’s not the strongest Monday of the season, based on holiday trend data shared last year by the Google Affiliate Network (then DoubleClick Performics).

If the past is any indication, we’ve got a few other Mondays and other days this month that should outperform Cyber Monday.