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How Green Affiliate Marketing Can Grow Your Sustainable Business
Words by 3p ContributorWarren Fligg is the Founder of Performance-Based.com, a niche green affiliate marketing network that serves organic, fair trade green merchants and retailers. Warren is a veteran affiliate marketing professional whose experience in Internet marketing goes back to the 1990s. Warren launched his green business in response to an "Aha!" moment that came with the pending arrival of baby number one.
When he and his wife were cleaning the room that they intended to turn into their nursery, they felt sickened by the toxic chemicals in their cleaning products, and realized that the ingredients in their everyday cleaning products were most likely harmful to their soon-to-arrive baby, their pet, and themselves. Warren then decided to start an affiliate network that would help promote eco-friendly products and businesses.
3 Benefits of Green Affiliate Marketing for Merchants of Eco-Friendly Products
Green affiliate marketing is a powerful marketing channel overlooked by merchants of eco-friendly products. Here are three ways green merchants can benefit from affiliate marketing. As a green merchant, you can:
- Recruit an army of affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketing allows merchants to recruit people who believe in your brand or product to market for you for far less than the cost of hiring in-house sales and marketing staff.
- Increase your brand recognition. Even if your affiliates do not generate sales, their marketing efforts serve to extend your brand recognition beyond what your in-house team can accomplish.
- Market your products at low cost and high ROI. The cost of setting up an affiliate program for your products is extremely low. Outside the merchant setup fees, and the time it takes to create banners for your affiliates and a web page about your program, from that point on, the affiliates market for you in return for the commission on each product.
3 Benefits of Green Affiliate Marketing for Aspiring Eco Entrepreneurs
One of the biggest challenges that aspiring entrepreneurs face is the certainty of wanting to work for oneself but uncertainty around what products or services to offer. Starting a green online business that sells other people's products is one of the easiest, lowest cost ways to start a business. Here are three benefits to starting a online business as a green affiliate marketer:
- No need to store or ship merchandise. The costs of shipping and storing tangible products are often prohibitive for small startup entrepreneurs, and also more work, as the more sales you make, the more you have to order, stock, pack, and ship. With affiliate marketing, the merchant takes care of this.
- Low cost of entry. Since affiliate marketing doesn't require opening a retail store, stocking or shipping products, the affiliate marketing business has an extremely low cost of entry. Furthermore, most affiliate marketing programs are free to join.
- Opportunity to generate revenue 24 hours a day. Unlike a traditional business you don't need to open a retail store. The primary method of generating sales and income is through online marketing, and the Internet is open for business 24/7.
If you want to learn more about how green affiliate marketing can grow your business as an eco merchant as well as an eco entrepreneur, tune into the interview between Lorna Li and Warren Fligg at the Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit, Friday April 20th, 12pm PST. During this interview Warren will cover:
- How to recruit the best affiliates for your eco friendly products
- Winning strategies for green merchants to boost the sales performance of their affiliates
- Commission advice to ensure that your affiliates are motivated and your affiliate program is thriving
- How to get started as a green affiliate marketer, step-by-step
- How to identify winning products to promote as a green affiliate marketer
- Several actionable ways you can successfully promote affiliate products online
Warren is also offering listeners 35%-50% discounts to Sign Up on the Performance-Based Green Affiliate Network so join us on Friday April 20th at noon PST to get the discount code.
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Join Us for the Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit This Week April 16-20 This FREE virtual event is an online conference where you can get powerful business advice (without the travel costs and conference fees) from 28 expert speakers on how to start and grow a thriving green business.
Register for this complimentary series of expert teleseminars here.
Lorna Li is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Green Marketing TV. She is the host of the Entrepreneurs for a Change Podcast and the Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit. Lorna specializes in Social Media SEO, the art of using social media to increase web visibility and search engine rankings. She works with socially responsible business owners as an Internet Marketing Business Coach.
image: Simon Greig via Flickr cc (some rights reserved)
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