You Can Now List Your Product on Google Shopping For Free!
Google announced last week that it would stop charging business owners to put their products on its Google Shopping platform. This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell their items online without advertising costs.
It is also a good strategy for Google to win e-commerce advertising business from Amazon.com Inc, as Amazon is having a hard time shipping items to customers because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Amazon stopped offering fast shipping on non-essential products to be able to have on-time shipments on essential commodities such as face masks or medical items.
Typically, companies would need to pay for advertising costs to place their products on Google Shopping. So far, merchants whose products appear on the Shopping tab on Google’s search have been charged when customers click on their products. But, the company said it would let anyone who has an e-commerce website or owns a store on a marketplace platform can now list their items without charges. If you want to put your product on the first page of Shopping, you may still have to pay.
By developing a system similar to Amazon, Google is planning to attract more business owners to put their products on Google. By increasing the number of products, it can attract more shoppers and ultimately increase ad revenue. Google will get a cut of the purchase price and details on consumer purchases for ad targeting when shoppers use the Buy on Shopping.
“What we are seeing is that there are many, many retailers and small businesses that stand ready to serve shoppers, but don’t yet have a great way to connect with them digitally,”said Bill Ready, Google’s president of commerce. Ready also said,“If you work with the ecosystem, there will be monetization opportunities that come on top of that.”Google has been trying to monetize product ads for quite a while, but Amazon has been its biggest competitor. The new policy had been in the works for some time, Ready said, but it is now accelerated because of the pandemic outbreak. A lot of stores are now struggling to find customers, and this free opportunity can help them survive during COVID-19 outbreak.
The new free opportunity for Google Shopping will first go into effect in the US starting April 27th, and Ready says it will be extended globally in the next few months.
If you are a small business owner or are thinking about starting your online store, this can be a great opportunity for you. As a new client, you are now able to put your product in front of millions of shoppers without any costs through Google's Merchant Center. Shoppers can buy items using a credit card on file with Google while they are on the search engine. If you are already using Google Shopping, you can list your full inventory for free and only pay for a few items you want to bring to the top placement.
Google is also cooperating with PayPal to add more payment methods on its platform for shoppers and attract more merchants to list their products and receive their payments. At the same time, Google is working with fast-growing e-commerce inventory management companies such as Shopify to smoothen the way for online store owners to shift to selling on Google platform quickly.
Google shopping has been around for almost two decades, but since 2012, it started charging merchants to pay to list their products. Now is the first time since 2012 that Google is dropping charges. Merchants benefit from the huge number of users searching on Google platform, and shoppers are more likely to buy the fewer clicks they have to make. Google does not offer fulfilment and shipping services as Amazon does, but it still helps smaller businesses make some profit while self-isolation order is in place globally.
How to advertise on Google with no money in 2020?
1. List your product on Google Shopping with no cost
2. Set up a Google Merchant Center account
3. Input your product data in Google Merchant Center/product feed
4. Link your Google AdWords account to Google Merchant Center
5. Create a Google Shopping campaign
6. Target and schedule your Shopping campaign
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