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LOL at "I hope that all of my competitors are working their asses off doing press releases." Me too, especially ones that actual media professionals laugh at.

My guess is that you'd be better served by taking the same content you would try to form an exciting press release out of, and crafting a great guest post instead. Find a respected blog in your field to post that on, then repeat with another (original) guest post, and you will SPANK the press release competitor in the SERPs in no time.

I tend to think that unless there is actually something exciting or newsworthy to report, a press release is inappropriate, and probably not going to do much for you in terms of a link building boost.

I also tend to think that paid press release sites know there are plenty of people who think press releases DO work to their advantage, and capitalize on that by charging for publishing them.

Unless you have something the world really needs to know about, and therefore a chance of writing a press release that will actually draw some attention from the media, I would focus on other avenues, like maybe guest posting.

I realize this is an old question, but thought I'd note for the record that as of May 2012, Google has announced that they are doing away with Product Search and essentially implementing PPC ads in its place. So if you continue to use what used to be Google Shopping, you will need to place bids in order to get your products to show up at the top of the results, much like AdWords works.

I realize this is an old question, but thought I'd note for the record that as of May 2012, Google has announced that they are doing away with Product Search and essentially implementing PPC ads in its place. So if you continue to use what used to be Google Shopping, you will need to place bids in order to get your products to show up at the top of the results, much like AdWords works.