Make Ethical Money as an Eco Blogger
It’s the perfect home green job (this is a detailed walk-through!)
Working from home is the new normal. Green jobs are the future. So make money online blogging about the environment — it’s a win for everyone.
If you’ve been considering blogging as a home business, you may have read countless articles and binge-watched videos to give you advice. I’d bet NONE of them take the planet into consideration.
If the climate crisis, habitat destruction and plastic pollution are something you care about, then please consider blogging in a sustainable way.
In this (very) detailed article, I will teach you how. Because I’ve done it myself. I am giving away lots of information on how to start a home business, blogging about eco friendly products — with next to no money needed to start up.
If that idea interests you, read on and maybe you will join the growing green army!
Pros and Cons of Starting a Blog From Home
I consider these some of the benefits of starting a home green business:
- You will run your own simple part-time or full-time business
- You will work from the comfort of home
- You can work the hours you want to
- Earn a passive income (earn while you sleep)
- Have no ceiling on earnings
- Have no need to buy or store stock
- No need for customer service
- Have no polluting commute to work
- You don’t need any more than the price of a coffee to start it
- There are no overheads and next to no ongoing expenses
- You will run an eco business
- It will promote and help other green businesses
- You will play your part in helping the environment, and encourage others to do the same
- You will find the job enjoyable and rewarding
The Cons? Well let’s be honest before moving on…
- Although it is possible to start earning in your first week, most bloggers (who treat this business opportunity seriously) do not start making money for a few months. After that, however, the sky is the limit if you get things right.
- If you are a social animal who likes conversations around the vending machine in a busy office, be aware that working from home can be a real adjustment. Personally, I love it — but some people can find it a lonely existence.
- As a self-employed person, you will be responsible for all your own tax declarations — unless you employ the services of an expert to do this for you.
Want to learn more? Then simply read on. There are no catches, no sign-ups to get more information.
What you’ll find below is lots of experience, knowledge and thorough research to help you earn money online from home in a sustainable way.
Join The Green Revolution
Life these days can seem daunting. The global pandemic has changed the way we live and work, while the force of climate change has arrived decades earlier than most people expected. These are indeed challenging times.
As we navigate our way out of the pandemic, many of us are re-evaluating our lives, our jobs and our futures.
We need to make money to pay the bills, and hopefully have more left on top to enjoy life. But we want to do this on OUR terms, in OUR time, and make room for family and all the other important things in life we often miss out on with a traditional 9 to 5 job.
So huge numbers of us are deciding just to go for it, take the plunge, be our own boss and work in a way that we dictate ourselves.
It can start as a side hustle, a way to make extra money. And often this develops into a full time, high earning exciting new job.
This is also a time of green revolution — finally! More and more people are changing the way they live, to buy goods and services that are not going to harm the environment.
A recent study found that 73% of consumers around the world would definitely or probably change their buying habits to reduce their impact upon the environment.
This is great news for the environment, and life on earth, but it also presents an enormous opportunity for people like you and I.
We can help people to meet this ever-increasing demand for sustainable alternatives to everyday products.
And we can do this as entrepreneurs, to make money for ourselves and our families at the same time.
Don’t feel guilty about that — we all have to make money, so why not do it while helping the environment? And while also helping other eco-friendly businesses. Everyone comes out a winner!
This is your chance to get involved just as the sustainable revolution is starting to explode. This will only grow and grow and you’re in it right at the start — playing a vital role.
Can You Make Money Blogging About Eco Friendly Products?
Yes you can, through different sources — but the main earning model we will focus on here is affiliate marketing — writing helpful blogs about eco products and services, and getting paid for doing so.
All you do is put some words together about eco-friendly, sustainable, ethical products and services, on behalf of the companies who provide these.
They will give you a special website link to share in your blog post. And if people click on that link and buy the green product or service, you get a commission.
That commission can range from a few pence or cents to hundreds of pounds, dollars, Euros or whatever currency you operate in — this is a truly global business model.
It’s a simple operation — all you need is a home computer or laptop — and if you’re worried about setting up a blog or writing content, don’t — everything is explained below to help you do this.
It’s a business model that you will have come across time and time again, perhaps without realising it.
Many smaller scale affiliate marketers run niche websites to recommend and sell products of all descriptions.
On a larger scale, if you’ve ever searched the web for a hotel, or to switch your electricity provider, or find out which credit cards offer the best rates etc, chances are, they were affiliate websites, recommending products and services, and earning commissions when you booked or signed up.
Many of the world’s top companies have affiliate schemes, even Apple and Tesla, and perhaps the most famous of them all, Amazon — because they see the value in using the services of people like you and I to recommend goods and drive sales.
But of course, we are doing this with our green heads on!
So we won’t engage here in the Amazon affiliate scheme, and we only want to promote products that are not harming the environment and carrying a huge carbon footprint.
Most smaller, ethical, sustainable companies don’t have the marketing budgets of Apple and Tesla, of course. That’s why they need our help.
So help them — tell people about these eco products and services, help these green businesses to make sales — and earn commissions yourself as a reward.
Affiliate marketing brings immense job satisfaction, because it only works when you give people genuinely useful information. You’re doing a good thing here, and earning money at the same time.
If you don’t know the first thing about affiliate marketing, I will teach you all you need to know to get started in this blog post.
And if you’re already familiar with affiliate marketing, or already run a blog, this article will show you an alternative, greener way of going about your business.
So let’s get into it…
What You Will Learn
Let’s outline the five broad steps you will be taking, then dive deeper into each one.
By the way, all these steps are easier than they may sound!
You will:
1 Think of an eco niche that you know quite a bit about, or can learn about. Maybe you are already passionate about it. This can be anything from vegan food to recycled toilet paper, to electric bikes to shampoo bars, to anything at all within the eco-friendly, ethical, sustainable sphere.
2 Set up a blog so you can write about topics related to this eco niche.
3 Promote other companies’ products and services within your niche, within your blogs.
4 Promote your content to a receptive, buying audience — and you can do this free of charge.
5 Make money! Repeat steps 3 and 4, over and over, and boost your earnings while you promote sustainable businesses.
How Long Will It Take To Make Money?
Honestly, that’s up to you. It’s possible to go through all five steps in the space of a week. For others, it might take a few months.
Greater returns will come over time, according to how determined you are for this to succeed.
If you build up a library of genuinely helpful content, it can continue to earn money for you, long after you have written it.
What Skills Do I Need?
You don’t need any special skills to make money blogging and affiliate marketing.
If you are worried that you can’t write very well, don’t care too much about that. The most successful blogs are written in a conversational style, where it comes across like you are just chatting to the person reading it.
So just write the way you talk! No need for any complicated sentences — that turns people off, to be honest. And if your spelling is a bit dodgy, just use a spellchecker on your computer.
I’ll give you more helpful pointers on blogging later on in this article.
If you are following my advice all the way and blogging about green issues, then of course it helps to have knowledge of what you are writing about. So if you need to learn more, simply do some online research.
How Much Will This Cost?
It will cost next to nothing to set up and run this home business.
All you need is:
- A blog with hosting plan — I will show you the best green hosting plans, and they start from as little as a few dollars or pounds a month.
- A domain name — for just a few dollars or a pounds a year.
- That’s it!
- Optional extras include an email service and blog theme, but they are not necessary right at the start, and there are free options anyway.
Choosing Your Niche
Let’s focus on what you’ll be blogging about — and don’t worry too much about this part, you can start off with a broad niche and then narrow it down if you want to.
The reason it is important to establish a niche to write about is basically to retain focus, because your aim is to present yourself as an expert.
Someone who knows what they are talking about. So people will come to your blog, respect what you have to say, act on what you have to say and even come back in future for more advice and products to buy.
So have a think, is there an area of sustainability that really interests you? Perhaps you have pets… maybe you’ve wondered if it is possible and healthy for the animals to be brought up on vegan pet food. That could be your niche.
Maybe you are into your beauty products and always try to buy brands that haven’t been tested on animals, or come with minimal packaging. That could be your niche.
And if nothing springs to mind, if you’re just interested in the whole eco-friendly movement, then find out what people are actually asking questions about.
Keywords are the words and phrases that people are using when they search on the internet and social media.
You want to start ranking for those keywords so it is YOUR content that comes up in a Google search.
Quickly and easily find out what people are searching for today. by going on to Google. In the search bar, start typing, for example, ‘best eco friendly…’ and look at the list that has appeared.
Each one of those list items is a popular keyword — an actual popular search, which may influence you in what to write about.
Scroll down to the bottom of the selected Google page and you will see a list of related searches to give you even more ideas.
Another reason why it is important to establish your niche, is that you’re about to set up a blog, and choose a domain name — the address for your website.
Phrases like vegandogfood or crueltyfreesoap or electriccarsaustralia are all examples of domain names you might choose, to present your blog as a highly focused website that people can trust.
But if you niche down that far at the opening stage, you’ve not left yourself much room for switching your focus, so perhaps you think you’d like to specialise in all things non-plastic for starters — that’s a niche but far broader and more flexible.
Ideally you only want to set up one blog website, because too much admin work takes your precious time away from the writing and promoting of content.
Start Your Blog
So let’s set up your blog.
This part scares some people, but there’s no need. You just need blogging software plus a hosting service to store all your articles.
And fortunately, they come as one package with one click of your mouse!
At least they do if you follow my suggestion.
There are many blog platforms and website builders, but most of the world’s blogs are written on WordPress — and for good reason.
WordPress is the most blog-friendly platform, and also offers bloggers the best chance of making money.
There are completely free blogging platforms but don’t go near them if you want to make money — they are all hampered by restrictions and in any event don’t make you look professional at all.
So you will start a WordPress blog.
You will not need to know how to code — WordPress now has many many themes and page builders which do all that work for you.
Which Is The Best Web Host?
There are many blog coaches out there who try to get people started using Bluehost. The reason for this, is that they get paid at least 60 dollars every time someone signs up — that’s how affiliate marketing works, and it’s super effective.
However, this article is not going to recommend Bluehost, because this article is all about setting up an eco business.
If you run an eco business, you need to make sure every aspect of your operation is causing as little harm to the planet as possible.
That’s why you need green website hosting.
Think of where your business website is stored. It will be in a massive data hub with huge servers demanding a great deal of energy use.
The servers run 24/7 and must operate in a cooled environment to run properly. That uses vast amounts of energy, too.
In fact, it is estimated that data hubs account for 2% of global electricity use — that makes them just as polluting as the airline industry.
Data pollution is expected to grow to 14% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2040.
Clearly, responsible web hosting companies should be trying to offset this energy use in some way, or reduce it at source.
They can use renewable energy to power up the servers, so instead of relying on fossil fuels, they generate electricity from wind, solar, tides and geothermal heat.
Companies can also buy carbon credits — a permit to emit carbon dioxide a long as action is taken to offset their carbon footprint.
Other offsetting efforts include planting trees for every order received.
There is a shortlist of green web hosts who score highly for both green credentials and website performance — you can find out more about them here, in an article aimed at switching to a green web host (you may already have a blog, in which case this especially applies to you):
For the purpose of this article, I’m going to choose just one of these suitable hosting services, to walk you through the process — GreenGeeks.
GreenGeeks is hard to beat for environmental credentials, as it puts three times as much energy as it has consumed, back into the grid, via renewable sources.
The company also ranks very well on website performance, rated by influential experts CNET as one of the Best Web Hosting Services, as well being as a Top Tier hosting provider for WordPress in Review Signal’s performance benchmark tests.
By following my link below, you will also get a start-up discount, so this vital step in the process could cost you as little as $2.49 a month — completely risk-free with a 30-day money back guarantee.
All the instructions you’ll need are here for you to follow in simple steps…
Get Started with GreenGeeks
Choose A Domain Name
Within the process of setting up your blog, you will be invited to buy a domain name — the address for your website.
You could always buy it elsewhere, though — Namecheap offers some good deals and allows you to use a .green suffix to your address to emphasise your eco credentials.
It would be good to check out the options, anyway, and see what domains have already been taken.
How Do I Use WordPress?
The best way to get used to writing your blog on WordPress is to play around with it. And because it is such a popular platform, if you hit an obstacle you will easily be able to find a solution on one of thousands of forums online.
But it won’t start looking like a blog until you’ve chosen a theme. This is your blog’s skin, dictating the design.
For starters, you can use a free theme — there are many that look great. Just look through the list from your WordPress dashboard (Appearance > Themes), choose and activate. You can change the theme at any time so don’t worry too much about it, just get started.
Bear in mind a few things when selecting and editing your theme:
- It will need to work on mobile, too — most do
- Keep it simple. Black text on white background works best
- Choose a popular font that’s easy to read — and make it large enough to read
- A sidebar is extremely useful so you can place ‘widgets’ there — these can range from a list of latest blog posts to adverts that can make you money
Here are a few basic features in WordPress you’ll need to know about:
Pages — These are the pages of your website. You’ll need to create a Home page, Blog posts page, About page, perhaps a Contact page, and a Privacy Policy page.
Posts — These are the blog articles, the content you will create
Categories — These help you to organise the content, and help the website viewer to find different subjects, eg green energy, vegan recipes etc.
Comments — You can choose to turn these on or off on blog posts.
Media Library — This is where all your images are uploaded and stored.
Appearance — This is where you can customise the style of your website, through themes, menus, sidebars and widgets.
Plugins — These can be installed in a single click to enhance the site or make extra customisations. Do a little research but you might want such plugins as RankMath to help you write headlines and content that ranks highly on search engines. You can also add forms and social icons through plugins. And much, much more.
Settings — Self explanatory — just look through the list and customize as you wish.
How To Make Money Blogging
As you are going to be promoting green products or services, and this is going to form the bulk of the content on your website, you need to set up this side of the business before you start writing.
Bloggers make their money in one or more of these ways:
- Advertising
- Sponsored Posts
- Affiliate Marketing
- Promoting their own digital products or services
You can link in with advertising platforms like Adsense or Ezoic, only when you have built up a decent number of page visits. So that’s not for starters.
You can sell blog space to companies, so they write the content — effectively an advert for themselves. But you’ll need to have a good reputation and decent number of visitors again, so not for starters.
You probably won’t yet have any digital products of your own to sell, like courses or eBooks, but these can be lucrative so you might want to move in this direction in the future.
So first you’ll be using affiliate marketing to make money.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the promotion of products and services that are not your own.
You become an affiliate for the company selling that product or service, and if people go to their website through your special link on your blog, you will earn commission on that sale.
You’ll see constant references to cookie length — usually between 30 and 90 days — which is the amount of time people are given to buy the product or service, after clicking on your link.
Many eco brands handle their affiliate schemes through affiliate networks, which you will apply to join.
Most will let first timers get on board, but if any reject you because you don’t have a very large audience, just go back to them when you do.
You may have heard or read that Amazon’s affiliate scheme is the best for starters.
It’s certainly simple to join, even if commissions are low, but we are going to ignore Amazon for the purposes of running a green affiliate marketing business.
To give you some recent background, in 2021, Amazon launched a ‘Climate Pledge Friendly’ label on more than 40,000 products in Europe.
But Friends of the Earth commented: “As a company that thrives upon people buying more and more stuff, Amazon has a very long journey ahead of it before it could ever be thought of as green.”
You can make your own judgement call on this one, and also on Clickbank, which is promoted by many blogging and affiliate marketing gurus. Personally, I think the platform contains a lot of dubious businesses and offers.
Here is a selection of trustworthy schemes you might want to join instead…
Top Affiliate Networks For Green Products And Services
Shareasale
A great starter for beginners, as it’s simple to set up an account, then there are about 40 categories to choose from and 4,000 affiliate programs in total to join.
Crucially, there is an eco category, and within there you will find genuine green businesses wanting your help and offering commissions.
Awin
Awin owns Shareasale and works with more than 1,600 brands from 11 countries.
A bigger operator in the UK and Europe, the network is growing across America, too.
Both digital and physical products can be promoted, from across nearly 80 categories.
There is a healthy selection of sustainable businesses to choose from here, including some selling vegan and household products.
Again, it’s beginner-friendly so a great one to sign up to early on.
Rakuten
Always a highly-ranked affiliate network, Rakuten was founded in 1996.
It makes up for a shorter list of partner companies with the fact that many of them are household names, so potentially easier to sell from your blog.
One thing to note, Rakuten will only pay you once they have been paid by the merchant, so it may be a slightly longer wait for payment than with other networks.
Flex Offers
A large affiliate marketing network with faster payments — so great for beginners.
More than 10,000 affiliate programs are divided into categories and sub-categories to make life easier, when you are searching for eco-friendly, sustainable and ethical companies to partner with.
Moonrover
Many exclusives among the 700-plus affiliate programs, and especially suitable if you’re operating in the genres of travel, gaming or finance.
There are some top brands to promote here, too.
Commission Factory
Another network that can be a good starting point for beginners. There are more than 600 brands to promote, from smaller ones to famous names.
Commission Factory prides itself on giving affiliates all sorts of tools to make life easier for them to earn.
You can also get paid weekly, using a variety of methods.
Avantlink
Centred on three distinct markets — the United States, Canada and Australia — Avantlink has. number of sustainable businesses on its books for you to promote, with generous commissions and cookie lengths.
How To Join An Affiliate Network
Usually affiliate networks require you to have a website (That’s your blog. If they ask for visitor numbers, maybe give them an indication of where you soon expect to be).
If they ask for any extra channels, give them the Pinterest page you will set up soon.
Browse through these networks to find products that fit into your niche.
Then write content based around that product — perhaps a review, or a comparison with other products.
Maybe you’re aware of a certain green product that you’d like to promote to but aren’t sure if there is an affiliate scheme which includes it. Just check out the company website, look for ‘affiliates’ in the footer menu, and apply if they have a scheme.
So how does the company know that the person who buys a product or service has done so after clicking on your link?
The link is personally tailored for yourself, so can be tracked.
As mentioned before, there are built-in cookies of varying lengths, perhaps three days, seven days, 30 days, 90 days or more.
The longer the time period the better, because this is the time the purchaser gets to buy after clicking on your link, for you to be able to receive a commission.
So they don’t have to buy straight away. If someone clicks on your link, it takes them to the product page and they only decide to buy after 10 days, that’s still money in your account if the cookie length is 10 days or longer.
Some affiliate schemes pay really quickly, others might wait a month or two, so check the terms and conditions of each one.
Passive Income With Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing will give you what is known as a passive income.
That means that once you’ve put the work in — writing the blog and promoting it — you can sit back and only occasionally go back to update it.
And in the meantime it will be earning you money, while you’ve moved on to something else.
It’s not unusual for one blog to carry on earning for years after publication.
So you’ll be earning even without being in front of your computer. Even while you sleep.
As the products or services you are promoting are not your own, you won’t have to provide any customer support — including any complaints! (Hopefully there would be none anyway).
You don’t need any stock, the startup and running costs are next to nothing, and you can work from home, putting in as much time as you want.
What’s not to like?!
How To Write A Blog That Makes Money
As I’ve said before, you need to quickly establish yourself as an expert through your blog articles — and you’ll do this easily if you know what you’re talking about.
Above all else you need to be helpful, and you need to offer people a genuine service. And we’re on a mission here, of course, to educate the world and speak to those who already know about all things that nestle under the ‘green’ label.
Nobody is going to read your words and act on them if they come across like a sales pitch.
You need to develop a rapport with your readers, build up a relationship.
But at the same time your words need to be strong enough, convincing enough and persuading enough to capture first time visitors to your blog and turn them into customers of the product(s) you are promoting.
The reader needs to feel like they’ve walked into an eco shop, you’ve welcomed them with a smile, asked how you can help, listened to their problem, and suggested a solution — in a knowledgeable, friendly and maybe even entertaining manner.
Just let your enthusiasm and helpful nature shine through in your writing.
There are different techniques for blogging about a subject while including affiliate links.
The most obvious, perhaps, is to write reviews. These can be mixed with news articles on a given subject.
If you are writing a review of a product, you don’t have to first buy it or use it yourself — but it obviously helps if you do. Sometimes a company will send you a particular product for review purposes.
The other blogging affiliate style is to chat, pretty much in the way that I’ve been chatting to you.
You give people a genuinely helpful service, informing them of options, and if they want to check a product or service out, give them a link to do this.
The link, of course, will be an affiliate link, but that doesn’t affect anything — the customer still pays the same price (sometimes cheaper through affiliate offers), the green company still gets the sale, but pays commission to you. Everyone’s a winner!
Choose your products and services carefully — keep up with the latest eco news and trends so you know that people actually want what you are writing about.
Only recommend products you are familiar with — and make sure they are a good fit for your target audience.
Remember, you are the expert, the reader trusts you and values your expertise. Give them plenty of reasons to come back in the future.
How Long Should A Blog Post Be?
Google and other search engines love long blogs. Long, quality, unique blogs to be precise.
So what’s long? The average blog these days checks in at about 1,200 words but best results are seen when posts are between 2,000 and 2,500 words long. Or even longer.
But don’t worry, there are plenty of examples of blogs that rank highly when they are 500–1000 words long — it depends on the subject matter. And if you’ve cleverly chosen a specialist eco niche, chances are there won’t be a ton of content on that subject out there.
Is it about quality or quantity of blogs? Well… both. But don’t rush to flood your website with content, you’ll build a nice library as you go along. It’s very important that this content is valuable and useful, so never forget about the quality.
How Do I Write A Blog?
Some key points when structuring your blog post:
- Make your headline strong, inspire the reader or solve a problem — this is the most important part of our blog
- Start your blog post strongly and get to the point — most people won’t read past the first paragraph or two if it doesn’t excite them
- Keep paragraphs short (1–3 sentences) and put spaces in between
- Use sub-headlines throughout to break the post up into sections
- Choose your sub-heading words carefully as they can be great for your SEO (for search engine ranking)
- Feature good quality copyright-free images and/or graphics at regular intervals
When it comes to your blog headline, you have to grab people’s attention. And too many headlines are generic and samey.
The ‘how to…’ headline is a strong problem solver and call to action. It emphasises your authority and gives the reader a promise of a solution to their dilemma.
This is also where we talk more about niches, having done some keyword research to find out what people are searching for.
For example, your blog might have a general theme of cycling, a wonderful eco-friendly pursuit. Individual blog posts can seek to attract different people looking for different things within that genre.
So, perhaps, Road Cycling for Over-50s, Mountain Biking for Beginners, How To Choose The Best Hybrid, Best E-Bikes in 2022, etc.
Listicles (list-based articles) are also popular. Don’t overdo it with these, it can look a bit clickbaity, but it doesn’t harm to have the occasional ‘7 Best…’ or ’12 Greenest…’ blogs in your collection.
Try to stand out from the crowd, get noticed, and get trusted.
Publish the best content you can. Always. And don’t worry, your best will improve over time.
Put Your Reader In The Picture
Photos are hugely important in attracting the eye of the reader and making it easy for them to read your blog post.
But how do you get good quality photos to match your subject? You can’t just take them from the internet — NO, you can’t! There are plenty of examples of bloggers who have been asked for payment because they’d used copyrighted photos.
Best to find a good source of quality stock photos, either free or with a small monthly subscription fee.
Have a look around, but I always use Canva.
There is a stock of MORE THAN 100 MILLION premium images, photos, videos, audio and graphics if you sign up to the Pro deal — and it’s only £10.99 / $12.99 per month (for up to 5 people if you want to collaborate with a team) so well worth it.
You even get access to tens of thousands of images on the free plan but try Pro for yourself with this FREE offer…
Try Canva Pro Free of Charge
Promote Your Blog
As we are concentrating on free or very low cost methods of starting a blog business and promoting it, we won’t look here at paying for advertising.
We’ll get you blog traffic organically — that’s without paying for it!
There are a number of places to share your content, which will reach high numbers of the exact type of reader you need. Post, answer questions or comment, using your affiliate links, on the likes of:
- Quora
- Other blog posts
- Forums
- Media story comments
- YouTube comments
The list goes on, but we will concentrate on the first on the list, the amazing platform that is number one at driving traffic to blogs — Pinterest.
The Power of Pinterest
Pinterest has become an essential business marketing tool because the platform is superb at driving tons of traffic to your website. And Pinterest users are ready to buy — or ready to take action on something.
- An incredible 93% of people on Pinterest use the platform to plan purchases.
- 87% of Pinterest users have bought something after finding it through Pinterest.
- 67% say they have discovered a new brand or product thanks to Pinterest.
Because Pinterest is used to seek inspiration, to save ideas, and then to search for purchases, it allows businesses to engage with people at every stage of the customer journey.
Bloggers love Pinterest because it is excellent at driving traffic to their pages — which helps them make money through ads and affiliate offers.
Pinterest is the second most used social media app in Europe and the US. Even though Pinterest isn’t really a social media platform. Pinterest is more akin to Google, being an extremely powerful visual search engine.
Pinterest was once regarded as a female-dominated site for American hobbyists looking for inspiration. But the biggest growth in Pinterest users over the past five years has been among men, those outside the US, and younger people.
There is now about a 60–40 female to male split with two-thirds of users based outside the United States.
People come to Pinterest for inspiration. They’re usually planning a purchase, wanting to know more about something, planning a major event, setting off on holiday… so many things right across all genres and eventualities — but they need help.
And YOU can help them.
The Pinterest community has embraced the movement to care for our planet.
People who care about the climate emergency, care about loss of habitats and wildlife, care about the oceans and want to reduce their use of plastic.
An army of people who want to save the world are uniting on Pinterest. They are sharing content, learning and putting new, greener ways into practice.
The Pinterest 2020 Trends report revealed eco-conscious searches showing huge rises, including Low Waste Living (+446%), Protest Posters (+5,961%), Product Swaps (+172%), Reduced Carbon Footprint (+86%) and Eco-Friendly Travel (+73%).
Pinterest inspires people. We know this because a recent survey found that an incredible 95% of users said this. Also, 91% claimed that Pinterest helps them achieve their goals.
So your business can be a source of inspiration and play an important role in people’s lives.
Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Your boards are collections of pins, set out in themes or categories.
On a business level, your boards are effectively a shop window, or a catalogue, or library. Arrange the pins into sections that people will be searching for, and Pinners will arrive in their vast numbers (as long as you have done the necessary SEO work).
Pins can be image-based tiles, or they can feature video. It is easy with Canva templates to incorporate an animated element to save it as a video pin — they drive more traffic.
Pins should also include text, and should carry a link to the source of the information on the pin — for example your blog post.
But Pinterest is evolving in 2022. Idea pins are showing up more in people’s news feeds — these are a series of images or videos within one pin, showing people something in action, or going in to more detail — so an ideal opportunity to promote an eco product.
There are lots of other developments, like Pinterest TV, but keep your marketing effort simple and focused at first.
Remember that Pinterest is a visual search engine. So if you want people to find your pins, keywords are vital.
It’s better if you include long-tail keywords — sentences, phrases, whatever people will be typing or saying when they search.
Get your keywords right and you’re well on our way to succeeding at Pinterest.
Use them in your pin titles and descriptions, on the pins themselves, in the board names; also in your profile name and description.
One of the major attractions for businesses, brands and bloggers using Pinterest is the fact that content stays in view for ages. Certainly compared to other platforms.
Pins can actually stay prominent in searches and feeds for years, generating traffic — and therefore sales — over and over again to your blog.
Pinterest radically changed its algorithm in 2020. Emphasis had previously been on sharing other people’s content — now Pinterest rewards you for fresh, original content.
Your Profile Name, Description and Photo are just as important as the descriptions on your pins when it comes to ranking higher on Pinterest.
Make sure you set up a (free) business account, which gives you analytics to find out what’s working and what isn’t.
Ideally, your photo should be your blog logo or a clear photo of your face — however you want to brand yourself.
Your profile name should not only include your business or personal name, it could include keywords about what you do, or what you are offering.
Your profile description should contain as much detail as you can fit in, which again includes important keywords.
How To Use Affiliate Links On Pinterest
When you design your pins, there is a box for you to put the web link. This usually links to the relevant blog post.
For example, back to cycling. Say you’ve designed a pin for ‘The 7 best mountain bikes for beginners’. That would link to the blog you’ve written on this subject — and the blog would include your affiliate links to websites selling mountain bikes.
But you can also put affiliate links direct into Pinterest. So you might have ‘This is the best mountain bike for beginners’ and you could link straight to the web page where you can buy that bike. But of course, use your affiliate link to that page, then the sale will be tracked back to you and you’ll get your commission.
You will get better results, however, and charm the Pinterest algorithm, if you link to your own blog website.
Essential Tools To Use With Pinterest
Canva is again the program I use to design the pins. It makes the process so easy — they have stacks of templates with the right measurements (1500px x 1000px) and they all look great. All you have to do is change the words and photo.
Seriously, Canva is a creative factory that makes your job so much easier. There are templates for everything from Pinterest pins to Facebook posts, to Twitter ads to business cards, to logos to presentations, and much more besides.
The other tool I find useful is Tailwind, enabling you to set up automatic posting throughout the days and weeks ahead — although Pinterest has its own version now within the platform.
The Next Steps
There you go, that should get you started for the first few months!
I hope it’s helpful to you.
As you continue on your eco affiliate journey, other things you will want to consider are:
Do Professional Keyword Research
It is best to aim at first for low competition keywords, so you are not fighting against the major brands.
You can use a range of keyword tools, many of them free of charge, to help with this. Check out Google Keyword Planner (through your own free Google Ads account), Ubersuggest or the Keywords Everywhere Chrome extension.
Compile A Mailing List
Pretty much every affiliate marketer will encourage you to set up an email capture form on your site, because “the money’s in the list”.
Email is indeed still an effective way of communicating with people, educating them about products and services, and encouraging sales. But you do need to have a big list for the method to be effective.
Affiliate coaches always go on about putting together sequences of emails with auto responder software, but from a green perspective, we have to remember again that the more we do online, the more emails we send, the more energy is being used in storing all that information. So it’s another judgement call for yourself.
You may instead want to put people on a mailing list and update them weekly, say, so there is no hard sell. Because you want to run an ethical business, too. A free newsletter product like Revue might be a good option to explore.
Add A Privacy Page
According to where you are in the world, check out the data protection laws and ensure you are on the right side of them, and upfront and honest about what data you collect from readers, and what you do with it.
You also have to be clear on your blog that affiliate links are included.
Hire Blog Writers
As you pull more money in — or if you are starting with a budget behind you — you may want to speed up the process of populating your website with content, by outsourcing some of the writing.
You can find blog writers on platforms like Fiverr.
Pay For Advertising
Again, depending on budget, many affiliate marketers choose at some stage to put money into social media ads, to reach what might be seen as your ideal customers.
For example, you can target ads at people who have an interest in the environment, vegan food etc.
Make Your Home Office Greener
Switch to a Green Energy Supplier
Everyone should regularly look for a better deal on their gas and electricity supplies. When you do so, choose a supplier that produces their fuel from renewable sources, such as wind and solar.
Go Paperless
It’s not just energy companies that offer account management online, your bank will do this as well. Where possible, switch all paper communications to online ones.
Recycle as Much as You Can
Where you live will determine how many household products you can recycle. Many places have household collections or nearby waste facilities for paper, plastics, glass and cans.
Search your area for even more opportunities — there are many facilities out there collecting clothes, batteries, mobile phones, oil, tyres and more.
At the same time, bear in mind the next suggestion…
Avoid Single-Use Disposable Plastic Items
It’s good to recycle plastic, but the rates across the world are criminally lower than they need to be. In fact, only 9% of the plastic we send to recycling is actually recycled.
So better still, stop buying plastic in the first place.
Support Businesses which put the Environment First
Now you’re doing this of course through your green affiliate marketing blogging business. But wherever you go, try to reward sustainable businesses with your custom.
When you’re looking for a service online, use Ecosia as your search engine, because trees are planted in return.
Go Green when Getting Around
If you can, don’t use the car. If you have to use a car, look for schemes to make buying an electric car more affordable, if they are out of your price range.
Use public transport to help keep the amount of polluting traffic to a minimum. Invest in a bicycle if you can — it’s a green, healthy, fun way to travel.
Use Eco Products
Always look for an environmentally-friendly version of whatever it is you absolutely need to buy.
Also buy Fairtrade products — they help some of the poorest economies in the world, and abide by strict environmental standards.
So now it’s green for… go!
GET STARTED ON YOUR ECO BLOG!
This was originally published on the GreenGreenGreen website here
Some links in the article above are affiliate links, but only for eco services used by the author
