Getting your products on Google Shopping

If you make anything by hand, it's always a struggle to figure out how to market your products and get them before the most buyers.

One of the ways buyers search for products is by using Google Shopping. But your products aren't going to show up there just because you have your own web site. Some of the handcrafter sites like 1000Markets and ArtFire do it for you when you list your work on their sites. Etsy, by far the largest site for selling handmade items, is slowly getting their merchants' work on Google Shopping. But it has been frustratingly slow for those of us whose work hasn't made it there yet.

You don't have to join one of these web sites,to get your products posted on Google Shopping, though. You can do it yourself if you have your own web page. And why not? By linking your products back to your own web site, you don't have to pay any listing or seller fees to someone else. You get to keep all your money!

Google has a tutorial on how to do it.

Here is some additional info:

You must create a Google Merchant's account first. It is free.

Each item must be on a separate web page with a description, price and how to pay.
You then list each product in a file to upload to google. The easiest way is to create the list in a spreadsheet and save it as a tab-delimited file. You MUST include certain headers in your file or it will not upload correctly.

WARNING: The example Google uses does not have enough headers to upload correctly, so use my headers instead.

The headers I use are brand, condition, description, expiration date, ID, image link, link, price, product type, title.

For brand, I put JewelryArte. Condition would be new or used. Description is just a description of your product. Expiration date is the date your file will expire off Google. It can't be longer than 30 days from the date you post your list. ID is your product ID. Image link is a link to the image that will show up in the search. Link is the link to the product's web page on your site. Product type in my case is jewelry. Title is what you call your product.

I have only listed three things so far because most of my products are grouped together. I need to put each one on a separate page. Here is how the three I have posted look when I type my name into the Google Shopping search box.