Most shopping comparison sites work the same way: you click a product, the merchant pays a commission for the referral, and the site keeps every dollar. ShopForTerra does the same thing up to that point — and then redirects 30 percent of what we earn to environmental organizations, as a matter of company policy. This article explains the model in plain language so you can decide whether it's a model you want to support by shopping here.
Where the revenue comes from
When you browse products on ShopForTerra and click through to a retailer, that retailer pays us an affiliate commission if your visit leads to a sale. The price you pay is identical to what you'd pay if you went directly; the commission comes out of the retailer's normal marketing budget, not out of your pocket. Affiliate networks — Awin, CJ Affiliate, Rakuten Advertising, Impact, Amazon Associates — handle the tracking and paying.
We also sell ad space through networks such as Google AdSense. That generates a smaller but useful amount of revenue on top of the affiliate income.
Where the revenue goes
As a matter of company policy, 30 percent of our total revenue is donated to a vetted list of environmental organizations. The remaining 70 percent covers hosting, development, content and tools, taxes, and the people doing the work — because this is a for-profit business, not a charity.
The donation share is set at the policy level rather than as a per-purchase pledge. It applies to everything we earn, not to any specific click or product. You can see the running numbers on our Transparency page.
How this differs from cashback sites
Cashback and rewards sites give users a cut of the affiliate commission in exchange for clicking. We deliberately don't. The affiliate terms prohibit paying per-click incentives to users — and just as importantly, paying users to click would distort what we recommend. When a site earns more if you click a specific item, the recommendations start serving the site's revenue rather than the shopper. Our model strips that incentive: you pay the normal price, the merchant pays a commission, and a fixed share of that commission funds environmental work. You can read the reasoning in detail in our guide to why we don't offer cashback.
What we recommend
Our focus is home energy and efficiency: solar panels, home batteries, portable power stations, insulation, and climate control. The category is deliberate. It's where small spending decisions can have outsized impact on a household's energy use, and it pairs naturally with our free solar and insulation calculators — tools that help you figure out whether an upgrade will actually pay back in your situation.
Every product we list carries an eco-score (a 1-to-10 rating on energy savings, durability, low-impact materials, and repairability) and eco-tags (the supporting evidence). Our ratings methodology is published openly so the reasoning behind any rating is visible, not hidden behind a single number.
Why this site exists
People are going to shop online regardless. Channeling a slice of the marketing money already baked into retail prices into environmental work is a quiet, no-extra-cost way to nudge things in a better direction. If that resonates, the simplest way to support it is to bookmark ShopForTerra and start your shopping trips here — use the calculators, read the buying guides, and click through any products we list that you were going to consider anyway.