I have been, or can be if you click on a link and make a purchase, compensated via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value for writing this post. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.
On this 40th Earth Day, I wanted to talk about some ways that as an affiliate, we can be a little more green. Let’s start with what you may already be doing: working from home.
When you work from home, you obviously eliminate the energy it takes for you to get to / from an office, and the resulting pollution.
If the 40% of the U.S. population that holds telework-compatible jobs worked from home half of the time, – The nation would save 453 million barrels of oil (57% of Gulf oil imports) – The environment would be saved the equivalent of taking 15 million cars permanently off the road. – The energy potential from the gas savings would total more than twice what the U.S. currently produces from all renewable energy source combined.
But what else can you do?
Servers
If you don’t want to move your hosting set-up, you can offset your carbon footprint by working with carbonfund.org. For $29.90, I can offset the carbon footprint of my home office & 2 servers. Of course that’s just my small business – if I wanted to offset my family of 5’s entire lifestyle for 1 year, it’d be close to $1500! There’s other things I do around the house to be a little more green.
Around the House
This past year, we’ve also added a Smart Power Strip to our entertainment system, so when the TV is turned off, power is cut to the home theatre, subwoofer, DVD player, Wii and Xbox, eliminating any phantom power these devices would otherwise draw.
Making Green off Green
If you’re an affiliate looking for green programs to promote, browse ShareASale’s green category, or take a look at LinkShare’s green merchants. CJ makes this a little more difficult, as they have multiple green subcategories under their main categories.
While I don’t promote merchants specifically because they’re green, based on my own life experiences, I’d say green took a backseat the past few years as people focused on a weak economy and simply surviving versus living green. However, as the economy turns around, I predict green will make a come-back.
The best time to get into a niche is before it’s hot. It’s at times like this where an affiliate can enter a niche, build up quality content, grow their mailing list, and (with low competition) establish a high CTR on PPC ads (which will give you better position & lower bids when the competition tries to move in).