We're Looking For a Few Good Organic Growers
This Page Frequently Revised ( Check Back Often )
How the Online Garlic Farmer's Market got started:
In 2009, at age 70, I retired as a commercial grower and not wanting to completely abandon my many customers I thought about opening up a farmers market where they could buy from good growers.The website was getting anywhere from 200 to 300 unique visitors day,
generating from 500 to 1500 page views a day and that was website traffic that generally costs a lot of money being spent to get, so by advertising on our website the growers could gain a national following quickly and for less money than they would have to spend otherwise.
In 2010 I put together a garlic growers farmers market on my website so that small organic and sustainable growers could sell direct to the public at their prices. We started off with four growers and sales started off a little slow but built up as people became accustomed to the concept and more growers became interested.
By bringing buyer and grower together, we serve a valuable function to both. Neither we nor any other small grower can satisfy the market needs for these garlics but by combining resources, we can help more buyers find their cherished garlics and more growers find a good market for their best garlic.
There are lots of good organic growers located in remote rural areas or other areas that do not have adequate local sales. We have provided such growers with a market they would not otherwise have and permitted them to increase their sales and incomes. We have served as a resource to the public seeking exotic gourmet garlics and have built up an impressive following.
If you are an organic/natural grower who can grow more than you can sell locally, and if your garlic meets our quality standards, E-Mail me, bob@web-access.net and let's talk about doing some business together. We're looking for the best you have to offer because the people who buy the garlic expect the best, so send out quality garlic - your reputation rests on it and first impressions are very important.
This could result in a lot of future repeat sales nationwide, that you would not otherwise get from people who have enjoyed your garlic and want more. Gourmet Garlic Gardens is at the eye of the storm of increased interest in garlic in this country.
What we are doing in 2020
Our website has been getting hundreds of visitors every day since 1997 and we frequently get over two thousand page views a day even in the off-season and lots more every day during in the peak fall planting season. We get plenty of traffic because we are highly ranked in the search engines - you got here, didn't you?
Our attractive and informative website serves to increase the desire of people to try the garlics they see and read about. By letting garlic lovers know that so many kinds exist and a little about them, we create an appetite for them and also provide people an opportunity to buy these exotic garlics direct from the growers.
By providing top quality garlic we cause our customers to want to buy from us again and to tell their friends about the interesting garlics they got - everyone wants to share a good thing to make it even better. You cannot generate this kind of excitement with second-rate garlic, only the best will do.
I share the attraction of my website with participating farmers, gardeners & growers who qualify and want to sell to a national audience and who have their own e-commerce websites. I put pictures of the growers in our farmers market page and links to their websites so people can get to know them and buy from them. I also put in additional links from my website to their websites at places in my website where the cultivars they grow are sold. That is, if a farmer grows Inchelium Red and Persian Star, he or she should put an ad in the Inchelium Red page and also in the Persian Star page. This will send a lot of people to their website seeking the exact garlics they grow.
Each grower in our farmers market will sell direct to the general public with each grower setting their own prices, warranties and other customer relations, pretty much like any other farmers market in the country. Memberships are year-around membership and temporary monthly or peak seasonal membership. All must have a website where they can process sales by credit/debit cards automatically 24/7-365.
Annual members have a year around exposure so people will have all year long to get to know them and place orders for fall delivery. People prefer to buy from familiar faces. This will allow growers to communicate with people and increase their market appeal all year long. Some people place orders months in advance in order to have the best chance of getting the specific cultivars they want.
Peak season (July 1 to Dec 31 ads in cultivar and sampler pages allow a grower to set up and sell garlic and when the season is at its peak from July through December until they sell out close down and no more expense until next year. In order to place any monthly ads, a membership fee must be paid so their ad can appear in the Farmers Market page as well as any variety or sampler assortment page. Memberhip is not an option, it is required and must be paid in order to be allowed to place monthly temporary ads on any page in our website. Once a grower has paid their membership fee. Most ads are $15 per month, Though ads on the home page or other high traffic pages will cost more and the setup fee may be higher.
All ads must be paid in advance and are not refundable. Subsequent monthly renewals will usually be invoiced between the 15th and 20th day of the prior month and must be paid on or before the first day of the month that the ad is to appear. If not paid by the 10th day of the month, the ad will be pulled and a new $10 setup fee will be charged in addition to the unpaid monthly ad fee if the grower wants the ad to remain up. In addition, there will be a $1 extra fee for each referral to your website during the previous month This invoice will generally be sent on or shortly after the first day of every month which people have clicked on any of your ads.
We can place ads on many pages within our website directing the public to growers' websites. For 2020, once a member has paid their membership fee, all monthly ad fees will be $15 per month plus a one - time setup fee of $10, per ad, regardless of the website traffic any particular webpage gets, except that ads. either on the home page or linked to from the home page are $30/month because it gets so much more traffic than other pages.
I expect to be signing up new growers continually and will likely have many growers online by year's end and the more growers, the more business everyone does, especially if the growers are proud of their websites and we send as many people to them as possible.
I am no longer a full-time commercial grower of garlic but maintain only a small garden to preserve some rare cultivars to sell at the local farmers market or through the website. I do not want any grower to see me as a competitor but only as a facilitator and resource. For all practical purposes, Gourmet Garlic Gardens no longer sells on our own website anymore. All new incoming sales inquiries go directly to the growers, not us.
I presently sell only a few if any, of my own garlic orders myself and reserve the right to continue to do so in the future but the farmers get 99% of the sales.
Our Farmers' Market program for 2020
There are some expenses involved in joining our market. Each grower must be a member of our market and each grower must have a website of their own, which we do not provide, to work with our system. We charge $15 per month membership plus a one-time setup charge of $30 to $60 for putting your ad in the Farmers Market page plus whatever monthly ads a grower wants to place. At this time monthly ad fees are $15, per ad, per month for growers whose membership is paid up for the months they want to advertise. During the busy season of July through December, our website gets many more hits than during the off-season but monthly ad prices do not increase.
Advertising to the broad general public can be very expensive and of questionable value but the $15 per/ad/month fee is basic and cheap for the specific audience it reaches but the real effectiveness is measured by tow many people click on your ads and go to your website every month. There is also an activity fee of $1 for each person who clicks any of your ads to go to your website. The people who are visiting our website when they click on your ad are not the anonymous general public but only that part that is interested enough to go to a search engine and search for garlic and that's how they got here - they're already looking for garlic and are just trying to decide what varieties to get and who to buy from so they are 'hot prospects' in sales lingo and if your website is set up to help them decide to buy from you, then they get what they want and you get a new customer. Everybody is happy and life is better for all. Everyone wins; there are no losers.
Once you join our online national garlic farmers market, your monthly invoice, billed automatically will bill for the monthly ads for next month and in a separate area will appear bill for the referrals to your website as of the last day of the previous month. The number of hits your website gets is the true sign of your ads' effectiveness. The percentage of them who buy from you is a good indicator of how effective your website is in helping visitors decide to buy from you.
Should you decide to save money by paying by the year instead of monthly. Annual ad fees are 10 times the monthly rate of $15, so at present, the fee for a year around ad is $150, if paid in advance. so there is a considerable savings over monthly rates for year around ads and they can be placed on almost any page on the website. All growers must place a membership ad in the Farmers market page. Monthly ads are removed once you sell out but annual membership ads give year around exposure at a discount and many people place orders very early in order to assure getting the exact cultivars they want. Demand for popular varieties/cultivars usually sell out early in the season so people have taken to placing orders and payment as early as the spring for fall delivery in order to maximize their chances of getting the particular varieties of garlic they want.
When you are ready to begin accepting orders, place ads in each of the cultivars you want to sell through our website. Each ad is $10/month, paid in advance. Many ads are seasonal and are only up as long as you have something to sell, email us when to start them and when to take them down when you sell out. During the busy season, rates are still only $15 per month and there are many more visitors to my website every day during the busy season than during the off-season and so more people are referred to your websites during this prime time. Paying for ads annually is your best option because that way you not only get a $20 discount over the monthly price of ads but also you get the early out-of- season advance orders since your ads will be up all year around.
Each grower will have their own website and can process their own credit/debit card sales and keep all the money from their sales; we get paid based on the number of ad-links we put in our website to their website to refer customers looking for their kinds of garlic to their website so customers can buy from them. In short, we funnel traffic to their websites. That's what we get paid for doing.
When you have all year around ad-links, your only monthly invoice will be for he prior month's referrals. The number of referrals to your website and where they came from can be verified by Google Analytics so you will be able to know where your website traffic comes from.
Gourmet Garlic Gardens requires every grower who lists with us to have a membership ad in the farmers market page. Those who wish to have greater visibility may purchase additional monthly or year-round ad-links in other pages of the website such as pages describing varieties of garlic they have for sale or other higher traffic pages, like this one .
Most growers will put in prepaid year-around ad-link on the farmers market page and temporary monthly ad-links during July, August, September, October, November and December (Gourmet garlics are the perfect gift for those who have everything.) among the cultivars they sell as those are our busiest months when the most sales are made and most growers sell out during this time though some are still selling through February or March. When you discontinue your monthly ads is up to you but the monthly billing is automated and ongoing and creates an obligation to pay so you need to email us to stop the billing before you are ready to discontinue an ad.
If you can qualify for inclusion in our online farmers market, we ask that you email us a photo or other image you want to be the basis for your ads, we will put together a link and place it in the Farmers Market page along with the pictures of all the other growers. We're promoting a "Know your Grower" theme here to capitalize on the modern trend for people to want earth-friendly food grown by real earth-friendly people and free of pesticides and all other toxic agricultural chemicals. This link will refer visitors directly to the grower's website so customers can see who the grower is and look at his or her gardens, depending whatever pictures of your growing areas you put in your website.
Growers need to have a year round ad-link in the Farmers Market page for advertising because even if you are out of garlic at the moment, the more people who see your website, the more likely they are to buy from you when you do have garlic available. In addition, we have what I call carousel ads, which have pictures of and links to the participating growers that presently appears not only on the home page but also on all high traffic web pages on the website, such as the home page, the Garlic Information, Preserving Garlic among others. It costs nothing extra to place an ad in the carousel as that is included with membership and appears on so many pages and will bring you visitors from all over the website, not just a few pages so it should increase the number of visitors your website gets.
In addition to an ad-link in the farmers market page I recommend at least temporary links during July, August, September, October, November and December in every cultivar growers sell in bulk and also in every sampler assortment they sell. Putting in a few temporary links maybe in assortments in March, April, May and June might also be a good idea since it only takes one or two sales per month to pay for several ads.
We need to understand that a 24/7 nationwide advertising campaign, takes time, and planning and preparation and it costs money to get your name in front of the general public and the return on your investment may be marginal. A few years ago when I advertised in state-wide magazines , my average ad cost me over $1,000 and resulted in sales of around $100 or so. The results of that alternative led me to develop this garlic growers farmers market on my informative website that attracts a lot of people who are already interested in garlic and gets much better results. GourmetGarlicGardens.com gets hundreds of page -views a day during the off-season and more during the fall busy season. Some of them bounce and may or may not be back but others stay a while and look around. Some 16% to 21% of the visitors to our website have been here before so lots of people keep coming back for more and sooner or later they usually buy some garlic from the growers in our farmers market.
In case you are not clear on how my website works, people looking to buy garlic follow the varieties pages so the Artichoke, Silverskin, Rocambole, Porcelain and the other basic varieties pages are the main pathways people follow to find what they want and so are the sampler assortments page and the farmers market page as well as the specialty areas of black garlic, braids, elephant garlic, etc. Each of these pathways can be seen as a cash flow stream and the more links you have in different cash flow streams, the more sales you can make.
It is also important to have at least one and preferably several ad-links in the Sampler Assortments page because about half our sales are sampler assortments and those are also the most profitable for most growers. Sampler assortments are a good place to sell smaller quantity varieties that you don't have enough of to sell in bulk as well as slightly smaller bulbs so people can get as many kinds of garlic in their sampler as possible. Customers prefer more bulbs for less and growers get a higher price for their smaller garlics. Everybody wins.
We require all of our growers to be either Certified Organic (CO) or Certified Naturally Grown (CNG), which we accept as equal to CO or better even though their organic standards are higher than CO. CNG still adheres to the original National Organic Standards on which CO was founded;' however since the USDA was put in charge of the Certified Organic Program, they have watered down the standards greatly in order to help big businesses profit from the public demand for pesticide-free food. CNG; however, still requires adherence to the original, higher, standards but costs less and without the red tape. CNG does not require the burdensome bureaucratic red tape or the high fees of the CO program. To find out more about CNG: click here: http://www.naturallygrown.org
Our experience so far has been that the more kinds of garlic one has to sell the more sales one makes. If a person has other varieties to sell in addition to their primary garlic, a great many more sales will be made. Most of our growers have caught on to this and now offer several kinds and get more sales. I expect you will sell out if your garlic is truly premium quality garlic.
Some growers average $5,000 to $7,000 through us a year and others over $12,000 to $16,000, while some have sales of $75,000 to $100,000 and more by motivated, organized growers and marketers, largely dependent on the number of cultivars they have available and whether they want to send sampler assortments as well as bulk garlic sales. As you can see, selling only one cultivar of garlic would greatly limit your sales potential. Still, that is a good place to start and if you decide to add more different kinds to your garden and your website then your income potential for future years is greater and you can add them as you succeed in growing them. Every variety you have for sale on the internet creates an additional income stream. It's your money, do what you want to with it.
If you are an organic/natural grower who can grow more than you can sell locally, and if your garlic meets our quality standards, E-Mail me, bob@web-access.net and let's talk about doing some business together. We're looking for the best you have to offer because the people who buy the garlic expect the best, so send out quality garlic - your reputation rests on it and first impressions are very important.
This could result in a lot of future repeat sales nationwide from people who have enjoyed your garlic.
This page last updated June 23, 2020.
Why growers should want to sell through our online marketplace.
The bottom line is that We can put in an ad-link for small market growers where there is a greater drawing power than they could generate on their own. It's a well known fact that even if you have an excellent website, it doesn't mean much if you can't attract customers to it among the millions of websites on the internet. We've been on the internet for over 23 years now and are very highly placed in the search engines; depending on what words were used in the search, we're usually on the first page or two on Google, Yahoo , Bing and duckduckgo.com andhave been for years. It's hard to get much higher but I'm working on it.
Those who have websites can tell you how hard and expensive it is to get to the top of the search engines and that it takes many thousands of dollars invested and even any high placement is usually only for a short time before anonymity sets in again after the payments stop. GourmetGarlicGardens.com has been steadily at or near the top of all the major search engines for over two decades now. While I can't predict the future, I doubt that will be changing much any time soon. By partnering with us your website can share our traffic and result in immediate sales.
Our website attracts a lot of people, many of whom are customers looking for garlic to buy and our number of hits continues to remain high. Our website has had over four million page-views since 1997. Every year we got many thousands of page-views.
As search engines began to reevaluate their search engine ranking algorithms in 2018, our website traffic slipped down some and when the ranking method changed in 2019, we lost a lot more until we finally figured out that the problem was our discussing the possibility of health benefits and are removing all mention of any such possibility decided to return to our original mission of helping people learn about the different varieties of garlic and their tastes and which ones grow best in what parts of the country and helping people discover the growers where they can buy these tasty gems that cannot yet be bought in stores.
We've implemented changes to comply with the new standards and our website traffic has begun to increase again and that is the reason why our ad rates have dropped from their previous levels so as to keep them a good value for the exposure our advertisers receive.
and we hope this trend will continue and more people will find our website and tell their friends. Hundreds of other websites link to us and this continues to help keep us highly placed in the search engines.
We receive a lot of free publicity each year in newspaper and magazine stories by writers who have found our website to be attractive and uncommonly informative. In past years we have been recommended by the NY times, Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle among many others and Forbes, Organic Gardening, Mother Earth News and many other magazines. In 2009 the AP wrote a story about garlic and mentioned us favorably and sent it to every newspaper in the country - that has happened several times. Also a video about us is now circulating all around the country on the RFD-TV channel and we're getting some responses from that. Texas Gardener magazine published their second article about us and the garlic in their Sept/Oct. 2007 issue. I find our website being increasingly mentioned in lots of, books providing us with publicity for years to come. There will almost certainly be more.
Many thousands of people come to our website each year, some looking for information and some looking to buy garlic. We will send those looking to buy garlic directly to our growers' websites.
I believe partnering with many small-scale market growers will help our website , the growers and the customers, all - everyone wins, no losers.
I also believe we are the best opportunity small remotely located growers have to increase their customer base to the whole USA and increase sales and profits.
I also believe that by eliminating the middleman, me, and reducing the transportation costs by having the market gardener ship directly to the consumer/gardener, the prices will come down somewhat, allowing for lower consumer prices.
I also believe that public demand for these gourmet garlics is increasing very rapidly and the marketing opportunities are vast and that people will be looking more to the internet even to shop locally and will prefer to purchase as close to home as possible.
I also believe we are on the ground floor of a business that will continue to grow at a rapid rate and lots of money will be made by those prepared for the opportunity.
Finally, I believe the American public is sick and tired of grocery store garlic and are eagerly willing to pay extra for superior quality, toxin-free, non-irradiated garlic.
If you don't have a website yet, get one - you'll love having us send you customers every month without investing a fortune in SEO. Growers use their website as their cash register on the internet.
The links in the varietal pages can be short term or year around are only up as long as a grower wants them left up and may be taken down or left up year around so as to allow many potential customers to become familiar with the growers and enhance sales prospects for the coming season.
For members, the rate for each year around ad is $150.
The small scale growers I have met generally have had a cooperative attitude toward other growers and buy and sell among themselves as well as the public. Most seem to be conscientious growers and there has been an emphasis on organics and general sustainability. Together we will be able to find ways to serve the steadily increasing Gourmet Garlic marketplace and live long and prosper with it.
If you have been looking for a niche market of some kind where you could make some extra money via the internet, this may be your best chance if you are conscientious and hard working enough to grow superior garlic.
How to join the Online Garlic Farmer's Market and get Started.
First, you must grow large, healthy, unblemished organic garlic of known cultivar in sufficient number to be meaningful and get a website of your own where you can let people know who you are, what kinds of gourmet garlic you grow and process credit /debit card sales automatically day or night, year around.
In 2010 I put together a garlic growers farmers market on my website so that small organic and sustainable growers could sell direct to the public at their prices. We started off with four growers and sales started off a little slow but built up as people became accustomed to the concept and more growers became interested.
By bringing buyer and grower together, we have served a valuable function to both. Neither we nor any other small grower can satisfy the market needs for these garlics but by combining resources, we can help more buyers find their cherished garlics and more growers find a good market for their best garlic.
There are lots of good organic growers located in remote rural areas or other areas that do not have adequate local sales. We have provided such growers with a market they would not otherwise have and permitted them to increase their sales and incomes. We have served as a resource to the public seeking exotic gourmet garlics and have built up an impressive following.
If you are an organic/natural grower who can grow more than you can sell locally, and if your garlic meets our quality standards, E-Mail me, bob@web-access.net and let's talk about doing some business together. We're looking for the best you have to offer because the people who buy the garlic expect the best, so send out quality garlic - your reputation rests on it and first impressions are very important.
Rules, Requirements and Qualifications
There always have to be some rules, regulations and qualifications to any enterprise or it gets out of hand in a hurry. There's one main rule and a bunch of lesser ones. Here are a few for starters and we'll adjust as we go:
The main rule is that this is my website, my farmers market and my rules and they are subject to rapid change as I deal with rapidly changing market conditions as has happened more than once. Growers who cannot tolerate this need to sell their garlic somewhere else but none of the present growers want to leave. This is not a democracy but a place where qualified independent growers can sell their premium produce and get the prices it deserves.
It is in my best interest to help maximize the sales the growers make as that will keep them coming back for more in the future.
The others:
1
1. All garlic must be naturally grown, (no toxic sprays or soil additives) and in its natural state, except processed garlic. NO IRRADIATED garlic allowed, regardless of country of origin.
Up until now all garlic had to be grown in the western hemisphere; that is, South and Central America, in Mexico, the United States of America or Canada - no other countries. I may later start an international garlic market in the next couple of years because I have had so many inquiries from people looking to buy or sell shipping container or pallet quantities of bulk garlic. idea is to let people join an international garlic exchange where they can meet people online to conduct their business with. All business will be strictly between buyer and seller; Gourmet garlic Gardens' international will not be directly involved in any deal but only a place buyers and sellers can meet and discuss prices, terms and delivery that they can reach agreement on. but this present effort is for small scale sustainable North American growers only and yes, Certified Organic growers in Canada are encouraged to join our market because we get a fair number of calls and emails from people in Canada looking for garlic to buy but who do not know where they can buy in Canada.
2. All garlic must be grown employing sustainable earth-friendly, people-friendly methodology and without any use of manufactured chemical or refined petroleum products or commercial granular fertilizers containing any toxic substances.
3. All garlic offered to the public through the farmers market must be of high quality and free of pests and pathogens and guaranteed for 30 days by the grower. If any garlic turns out bad within 30 days after receipt by customer, grower must replace the garlic or refund the price of the garlic that went bad.
4. Gourmet Garlic Gardens reserves the right to reject any and all applicant(s) for any reason it sees fit nor does it owe any applicant any explanation.. We have worked too hard for too long to let anyone who does not meet our standards destroy our great reputation and muddy the waters for all the good, conscientious growers out there.
5. All cultivars offered for sale by a grower must actually be the cultivars claimed.
6. This farmers market is for small scale market gardeners who personally work with and pay close attention to their crop. We want only those who take pride in their work and whose garlic shows it.
7. Mass commercial conventional chemical agriculture growers of garlic are not eligible to participate; this market is only for small business growers who work their own organic fields and pay close attention to every plant.
8. Gourmet Garlic Gardens reserves the right to restrict or cancel the links to the website of any grower who is the subject of what I consider to be excessive customer complaints.
9. All growers must send me samples of their garlic so I may be sure it meets our standards before being admitted to membership.
More as they come to me. Other Considerations - One of my chief concerns is garlic disease. Unfortunately, there are a few different garlic diseases and pests running around in this country and they're all over the place. I cannot in good conscience support or condone selling such garlic to the public knowing that they will plant it and infect their gardens with garlic diseases and/or pests. I do my best to educate growers at all levels on what pathogens and pests are and how to recognize them and suggest ways to deal with them sustainably.
While I can't guarantee anyone else's garlic to be absolutely disease free planting stock, I want to do everything I can to see that it is, anyway. Sometimes garlic that looks, smells and feels good is diseased and the observer is fooled. But at least we're making a sincere effort to help growers learn how to avoid bad garlic. Ultimately, it is up to each grower to practice high plant health standards and be responsible for their own garlic.
If small growers want sell small amounts of garlic via mail order, it is in their best interest to send only good, disease/pest-free garlic. If the garlic is good, the customer may want to buy more, if some of it is bad, they almost certainly won't. The small growers best advertisement is his/her garlic. People will naturally flock to great garlic; lousy garlic repels them - and should. Garlic is too good of a thing to grow poorly.
The one thing I greatly fear is that if growers do not learn to grow clean, healthy garlic, the FDA or the USDA may require all garlic to be irradiated and if so, there goes our freedom and our right to make a living. It is clearly in our best interest as growers to control garlic diseases and pests .
Click here to learn more about garlic diseases and how to deal with them.
One thing is for sure - I have created a website that can sell more garlic than I can grow and I wish to share this resource with buyers and growers alike. It will also make many more varieties available than I can grow in my geographic location.
Another sure thing is that I have a vested interest in seeing every grower who is chosen for the farmers market succeed. I expect to make a fair profit from this but I think every grower will make a lot more from me than I will from each of them and will open up new markets that will provide them with returning customers for years to come. I think our customers will be better served and get better prices as well.
More to come soon.
Everything is subject to change without notice, even this notice.
This page last updated May 16, 2020.
This page ,ast revised March ,5 2020
In 2009, at age 70, I retired as a commercial grower and not wanting to completely abandon my many customers I thought about opening up a farmers market where they could buy from good growers.The website was getting anywhere from 200 to 300 unique visitors day,
generating from 500 to 1500 page views a day and that was website traffic that generally costs a lot of money being spent to get, so by advertising on our website the growers could gain a national following quickly and for less money than they would have to spend otherwise.
In 2010 I put together a garlic growers farmers market on my website so that small organic and sustainable growers could sell direct to the public at their prices. We started off with four growers and sales started off a little slow but built up as people became accustomed to the concept and more growers became interested.
By bringing buyer and grower together, we serve a valuable function to both. Neither we nor any other small grower can satisfy the market needs for these garlics but by combining resources, we can help more buyers find their cherished garlics and more growers find a good market for their best garlic.
There are lots of good organic growers located in remote rural areas or other areas that do not have adequate local sales. We have provided such growers with a market they would not otherwise have and permitted them to increase their sales and incomes. We have served as a resource to the public seeking exotic gourmet garlics and have built up an impressive following.
If you are an organic/natural grower who can grow more than you can sell locally, and if your garlic meets our quality standards, E-Mail me, bob@web-access.net and let's talk about doing some business together. We're looking for the best you have to offer because the people who buy the garlic expect the best, so send out quality garlic - your reputation rests on it and first impressions are very important.
This could result in a lot of future repeat sales nationwide, that you would not otherwise get from people who have enjoyed your garlic and want more. Gourmet Garlic Gardens is at the eye of the storm of increased interest in garlic in this country.
What we are doing in 2020
Our website has been getting hundreds of visitors every day since 1997 and we frequently get over two thousand page views a day even in the off-season and lots more every day during in the peak fall planting season. We get plenty of traffic because we are highly ranked in the search engines - you got here, didn't you?
Our attractive and informative website serves to increase the desire of people to try the garlics they see and read about. By letting garlic lovers know that so many kinds exist and a little about them, we create an appetite for them and also provide people an opportunity to buy these exotic garlics direct from the growers.
By providing top quality garlic we cause our customers to want to buy from us again and to tell their friends about the interesting garlics they got - everyone wants to share a good thing to make it even better. You cannot generate this kind of excitement with second-rate garlic, only the best will do.
I share the attraction of my website with participating farmers, gardeners & growers who qualify and want to sell to a national audience and who have their own e-commerce websites. I put pictures of the growers in our farmers market page and links to their websites so people can get to know them and buy from them. I also put in additional links from my website to their websites at places in my website where the cultivars they grow are sold. That is, if a farmer grows Inchelium Red and Persian Star, he or she should put an ad in the Inchelium Red page and also in the Persian Star page. This will send a lot of people to their website seeking the exact garlics they grow.
Each grower in our farmers market will sell direct to the general public with each grower setting their own prices, warranties and other customer relations, pretty much like any other farmers market in the country. Memberships are year-around membership and temporary monthly or peak seasonal membership. All must have a website where they can process sales by credit/debit cards automatically 24/7-365.
Annual members have a year around exposure so people will have all year long to get to know them and place orders for fall delivery. People prefer to buy from familiar faces. This will allow growers to communicate with people and increase their market appeal all year long. Some people place orders months in advance in order to have the best chance of getting the specific cultivars they want.
Peak season (July 1 to Dec 31 ads in cultivar and sampler pages allow a grower to set up and sell garlic and when the season is at its peak from July through December until they sell out close down and no more expense until next year. In order to place any monthly ads, a membership fee must be paid so their ad can appear in the Farmers Market page as well as any variety or sampler assortment page. Memberhip is not an option, it is required and must be paid in order to be allowed to place monthly temporary ads on any page in our website. Once a grower has paid their membership fee. Most ads are $15 per month, Though ads on the home page or other high traffic pages will cost more and the setup fee may be higher.
All ads must be paid in advance and are not refundable. Subsequent monthly renewals will usually be invoiced between the 15th and 20th day of the prior month and must be paid on or before the first day of the month that the ad is to appear. If not paid by the 10th day of the month, the ad will be pulled and a new $10 setup fee will be charged in addition to the unpaid monthly ad fee if the grower wants the ad to remain up. In addition, there will be a $1 extra fee for each referral to your website during the previous month This invoice will generally be sent on or shortly after the first day of every month which people have clicked on any of your ads.
We can place ads on many pages within our website directing the public to growers' websites. For 2020, once a member has paid their membership fee, all monthly ad fees will be $15 per month plus a one - time setup fee of $10, per ad, regardless of the website traffic any particular webpage gets, except that ads. either on the home page or linked to from the home page are $30/month because it gets so much more traffic than other pages.
I expect to be signing up new growers continually and will likely have many growers online by year's end and the more growers, the more business everyone does, especially if the growers are proud of their websites and we send as many people to them as possible.
I am no longer a full-time commercial grower of garlic but maintain only a small garden to preserve some rare cultivars to sell at the local farmers market or through the website. I do not want any grower to see me as a competitor but only as a facilitator and resource. For all practical purposes, Gourmet Garlic Gardens no longer sells on our own website anymore. All new incoming sales inquiries go directly to the growers, not us.
I presently sell only a few if any, of my own garlic orders myself and reserve the right to continue to do so in the future but the farmers get 99% of the sales.
Our Farmers' Market program for 2020
There are some expenses involved in joining our market. Each grower must be a member of our market and each grower must have a website of their own, which we do not provide, to work with our system. We charge $15 per month membership plus a one-time setup charge of $30 to $60 for putting your ad in the Farmers Market page plus whatever monthly ads a grower wants to place. At this time monthly ad fees are $15, per ad, per month for growers whose membership is paid up for the months they want to advertise. During the busy season of July through December, our website gets many more hits than during the off-season but monthly ad prices do not increase.
Advertising to the broad general public can be very expensive and of questionable value but the $15 per/ad/month fee is basic and cheap for the specific audience it reaches but the real effectiveness is measured by tow many people click on your ads and go to your website every month. There is also an activity fee of $1 for each person who clicks any of your ads to go to your website. The people who are visiting our website when they click on your ad are not the anonymous general public but only that part that is interested enough to go to a search engine and search for garlic and that's how they got here - they're already looking for garlic and are just trying to decide what varieties to get and who to buy from so they are 'hot prospects' in sales lingo and if your website is set up to help them decide to buy from you, then they get what they want and you get a new customer. Everybody is happy and life is better for all. Everyone wins; there are no losers.
Once you join our online national garlic farmers market, your monthly invoice, billed automatically will bill for the monthly ads for next month and in a separate area will appear bill for the referrals to your website as of the last day of the previous month. The number of hits your website gets is the true sign of your ads' effectiveness. The percentage of them who buy from you is a good indicator of how effective your website is in helping visitors decide to buy from you.
Should you decide to save money by paying by the year instead of monthly. Annual ad fees are 10 times the monthly rate of $15, so at present, the fee for a year around ad is $150, if paid in advance. so there is a considerable savings over monthly rates for year around ads and they can be placed on almost any page on the website. All growers must place a membership ad in the Farmers market page. Monthly ads are removed once you sell out but annual membership ads give year around exposure at a discount and many people place orders very early in order to assure getting the exact cultivars they want. Demand for popular varieties/cultivars usually sell out early in the season so people have taken to placing orders and payment as early as the spring for fall delivery in order to maximize their chances of getting the particular varieties of garlic they want.
When you are ready to begin accepting orders, place ads in each of the cultivars you want to sell through our website. Each ad is $10/month, paid in advance. Many ads are seasonal and are only up as long as you have something to sell, email us when to start them and when to take them down when you sell out. During the busy season, rates are still only $15 per month and there are many more visitors to my website every day during the busy season than during the off-season and so more people are referred to your websites during this prime time. Paying for ads annually is your best option because that way you not only get a $20 discount over the monthly price of ads but also you get the early out-of- season advance orders since your ads will be up all year around.
Each grower will have their own website and can process their own credit/debit card sales and keep all the money from their sales; we get paid based on the number of ad-links we put in our website to their website to refer customers looking for their kinds of garlic to their website so customers can buy from them. In short, we funnel traffic to their websites. That's what we get paid for doing.
When you have all year around ad-links, your only monthly invoice will be for he prior month's referrals. The number of referrals to your website and where they came from can be verified by Google Analytics so you will be able to know where your website traffic comes from.
Gourmet Garlic Gardens requires every grower who lists with us to have a membership ad in the farmers market page. Those who wish to have greater visibility may purchase additional monthly or year-round ad-links in other pages of the website such as pages describing varieties of garlic they have for sale or other higher traffic pages, like this one .
Most growers will put in prepaid year-around ad-link on the farmers market page and temporary monthly ad-links during July, August, September, October, November and December (Gourmet garlics are the perfect gift for those who have everything.) among the cultivars they sell as those are our busiest months when the most sales are made and most growers sell out during this time though some are still selling through February or March. When you discontinue your monthly ads is up to you but the monthly billing is automated and ongoing and creates an obligation to pay so you need to email us to stop the billing before you are ready to discontinue an ad.
If you can qualify for inclusion in our online farmers market, we ask that you email us a photo or other image you want to be the basis for your ads, we will put together a link and place it in the Farmers Market page along with the pictures of all the other growers. We're promoting a "Know your Grower" theme here to capitalize on the modern trend for people to want earth-friendly food grown by real earth-friendly people and free of pesticides and all other toxic agricultural chemicals. This link will refer visitors directly to the grower's website so customers can see who the grower is and look at his or her gardens, depending whatever pictures of your growing areas you put in your website.
Growers need to have a year round ad-link in the Farmers Market page for advertising because even if you are out of garlic at the moment, the more people who see your website, the more likely they are to buy from you when you do have garlic available. In addition, we have what I call carousel ads, which have pictures of and links to the participating growers that presently appears not only on the home page but also on all high traffic web pages on the website, such as the home page, the Garlic Information, Preserving Garlic among others. It costs nothing extra to place an ad in the carousel as that is included with membership and appears on so many pages and will bring you visitors from all over the website, not just a few pages so it should increase the number of visitors your website gets.
In addition to an ad-link in the farmers market page I recommend at least temporary links during July, August, September, October, November and December in every cultivar growers sell in bulk and also in every sampler assortment they sell. Putting in a few temporary links maybe in assortments in March, April, May and June might also be a good idea since it only takes one or two sales per month to pay for several ads.
We need to understand that a 24/7 nationwide advertising campaign, takes time, and planning and preparation and it costs money to get your name in front of the general public and the return on your investment may be marginal. A few years ago when I advertised in state-wide magazines , my average ad cost me over $1,000 and resulted in sales of around $100 or so. The results of that alternative led me to develop this garlic growers farmers market on my informative website that attracts a lot of people who are already interested in garlic and gets much better results. GourmetGarlicGardens.com gets hundreds of page -views a day during the off-season and more during the fall busy season. Some of them bounce and may or may not be back but others stay a while and look around. Some 16% to 21% of the visitors to our website have been here before so lots of people keep coming back for more and sooner or later they usually buy some garlic from the growers in our farmers market.
In case you are not clear on how my website works, people looking to buy garlic follow the varieties pages so the Artichoke, Silverskin, Rocambole, Porcelain and the other basic varieties pages are the main pathways people follow to find what they want and so are the sampler assortments page and the farmers market page as well as the specialty areas of black garlic, braids, elephant garlic, etc. Each of these pathways can be seen as a cash flow stream and the more links you have in different cash flow streams, the more sales you can make.
It is also important to have at least one and preferably several ad-links in the Sampler Assortments page because about half our sales are sampler assortments and those are also the most profitable for most growers. Sampler assortments are a good place to sell smaller quantity varieties that you don't have enough of to sell in bulk as well as slightly smaller bulbs so people can get as many kinds of garlic in their sampler as possible. Customers prefer more bulbs for less and growers get a higher price for their smaller garlics. Everybody wins.
We require all of our growers to be either Certified Organic (CO) or Certified Naturally Grown (CNG), which we accept as equal to CO or better even though their organic standards are higher than CO. CNG still adheres to the original National Organic Standards on which CO was founded;' however since the USDA was put in charge of the Certified Organic Program, they have watered down the standards greatly in order to help big businesses profit from the public demand for pesticide-free food. CNG; however, still requires adherence to the original, higher, standards but costs less and without the red tape. CNG does not require the burdensome bureaucratic red tape or the high fees of the CO program. To find out more about CNG: click here: http://www.naturallygrown.org
Our experience so far has been that the more kinds of garlic one has to sell the more sales one makes. If a person has other varieties to sell in addition to their primary garlic, a great many more sales will be made. Most of our growers have caught on to this and now offer several kinds and get more sales. I expect you will sell out if your garlic is truly premium quality garlic.
Some growers average $5,000 to $7,000 through us a year and others over $12,000 to $16,000, while some have sales of $75,000 to $100,000 and more by motivated, organized growers and marketers, largely dependent on the number of cultivars they have available and whether they want to send sampler assortments as well as bulk garlic sales. As you can see, selling only one cultivar of garlic would greatly limit your sales potential. Still, that is a good place to start and if you decide to add more different kinds to your garden and your website then your income potential for future years is greater and you can add them as you succeed in growing them. Every variety you have for sale on the internet creates an additional income stream. It's your money, do what you want to with it.
If you are an organic/natural grower who can grow more than you can sell locally, and if your garlic meets our quality standards, E-Mail me, bob@web-access.net and let's talk about doing some business together. We're looking for the best you have to offer because the people who buy the garlic expect the best, so send out quality garlic - your reputation rests on it and first impressions are very important.
This could result in a lot of future repeat sales nationwide from people who have enjoyed your garlic.
This page last updated June 23, 2020.
Why growers should want to sell through our online marketplace.
The bottom line is that We can put in an ad-link for small market growers where there is a greater drawing power than they could generate on their own. It's a well known fact that even if you have an excellent website, it doesn't mean much if you can't attract customers to it among the millions of websites on the internet. We've been on the internet for over 23 years now and are very highly placed in the search engines; depending on what words were used in the search, we're usually on the first page or two on Google, Yahoo , Bing and duckduckgo.com andhave been for years. It's hard to get much higher but I'm working on it.
Those who have websites can tell you how hard and expensive it is to get to the top of the search engines and that it takes many thousands of dollars invested and even any high placement is usually only for a short time before anonymity sets in again after the payments stop. GourmetGarlicGardens.com has been steadily at or near the top of all the major search engines for over two decades now. While I can't predict the future, I doubt that will be changing much any time soon. By partnering with us your website can share our traffic and result in immediate sales.
Our website attracts a lot of people, many of whom are customers looking for garlic to buy and our number of hits continues to remain high. Our website has had over four million page-views since 1997. Every year we got many thousands of page-views.
As search engines began to reevaluate their search engine ranking algorithms in 2018, our website traffic slipped down some and when the ranking method changed in 2019, we lost a lot more until we finally figured out that the problem was our discussing the possibility of health benefits and are removing all mention of any such possibility decided to return to our original mission of helping people learn about the different varieties of garlic and their tastes and which ones grow best in what parts of the country and helping people discover the growers where they can buy these tasty gems that cannot yet be bought in stores.
We've implemented changes to comply with the new standards and our website traffic has begun to increase again and that is the reason why our ad rates have dropped from their previous levels so as to keep them a good value for the exposure our advertisers receive.
and we hope this trend will continue and more people will find our website and tell their friends. Hundreds of other websites link to us and this continues to help keep us highly placed in the search engines.
We receive a lot of free publicity each year in newspaper and magazine stories by writers who have found our website to be attractive and uncommonly informative. In past years we have been recommended by the NY times, Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle among many others and Forbes, Organic Gardening, Mother Earth News and many other magazines. In 2009 the AP wrote a story about garlic and mentioned us favorably and sent it to every newspaper in the country - that has happened several times. Also a video about us is now circulating all around the country on the RFD-TV channel and we're getting some responses from that. Texas Gardener magazine published their second article about us and the garlic in their Sept/Oct. 2007 issue. I find our website being increasingly mentioned in lots of, books providing us with publicity for years to come. There will almost certainly be more.
Many thousands of people come to our website each year, some looking for information and some looking to buy garlic. We will send those looking to buy garlic directly to our growers' websites.
I believe partnering with many small-scale market growers will help our website , the growers and the customers, all - everyone wins, no losers.
I also believe we are the best opportunity small remotely located growers have to increase their customer base to the whole USA and increase sales and profits.
I also believe that by eliminating the middleman, me, and reducing the transportation costs by having the market gardener ship directly to the consumer/gardener, the prices will come down somewhat, allowing for lower consumer prices.
I also believe that public demand for these gourmet garlics is increasing very rapidly and the marketing opportunities are vast and that people will be looking more to the internet even to shop locally and will prefer to purchase as close to home as possible.
I also believe we are on the ground floor of a business that will continue to grow at a rapid rate and lots of money will be made by those prepared for the opportunity.
Finally, I believe the American public is sick and tired of grocery store garlic and are eagerly willing to pay extra for superior quality, toxin-free, non-irradiated garlic.
If you don't have a website yet, get one - you'll love having us send you customers every month without investing a fortune in SEO. Growers use their website as their cash register on the internet.
The links in the varietal pages can be short term or year around are only up as long as a grower wants them left up and may be taken down or left up year around so as to allow many potential customers to become familiar with the growers and enhance sales prospects for the coming season.
For members, the rate for each year around ad is $150.
The small scale growers I have met generally have had a cooperative attitude toward other growers and buy and sell among themselves as well as the public. Most seem to be conscientious growers and there has been an emphasis on organics and general sustainability. Together we will be able to find ways to serve the steadily increasing Gourmet Garlic marketplace and live long and prosper with it.
If you have been looking for a niche market of some kind where you could make some extra money via the internet, this may be your best chance if you are conscientious and hard working enough to grow superior garlic.
How to join the Online Garlic Farmer's Market and get Started.
First, you must grow large, healthy, unblemished organic garlic of known cultivar in sufficient number to be meaningful and get a website of your own where you can let people know who you are, what kinds of gourmet garlic you grow and process credit /debit card sales automatically day or night, year around.
In 2010 I put together a garlic growers farmers market on my website so that small organic and sustainable growers could sell direct to the public at their prices. We started off with four growers and sales started off a little slow but built up as people became accustomed to the concept and more growers became interested.
By bringing buyer and grower together, we have served a valuable function to both. Neither we nor any other small grower can satisfy the market needs for these garlics but by combining resources, we can help more buyers find their cherished garlics and more growers find a good market for their best garlic.
There are lots of good organic growers located in remote rural areas or other areas that do not have adequate local sales. We have provided such growers with a market they would not otherwise have and permitted them to increase their sales and incomes. We have served as a resource to the public seeking exotic gourmet garlics and have built up an impressive following.
If you are an organic/natural grower who can grow more than you can sell locally, and if your garlic meets our quality standards, E-Mail me, bob@web-access.net and let's talk about doing some business together. We're looking for the best you have to offer because the people who buy the garlic expect the best, so send out quality garlic - your reputation rests on it and first impressions are very important.
Rules, Requirements and Qualifications
There always have to be some rules, regulations and qualifications to any enterprise or it gets out of hand in a hurry. There's one main rule and a bunch of lesser ones. Here are a few for starters and we'll adjust as we go:
The main rule is that this is my website, my farmers market and my rules and they are subject to rapid change as I deal with rapidly changing market conditions as has happened more than once. Growers who cannot tolerate this need to sell their garlic somewhere else but none of the present growers want to leave. This is not a democracy but a place where qualified independent growers can sell their premium produce and get the prices it deserves.
It is in my best interest to help maximize the sales the growers make as that will keep them coming back for more in the future.
The others:
1
1. All garlic must be naturally grown, (no toxic sprays or soil additives) and in its natural state, except processed garlic. NO IRRADIATED garlic allowed, regardless of country of origin.
Up until now all garlic had to be grown in the western hemisphere; that is, South and Central America, in Mexico, the United States of America or Canada - no other countries. I may later start an international garlic market in the next couple of years because I have had so many inquiries from people looking to buy or sell shipping container or pallet quantities of bulk garlic. idea is to let people join an international garlic exchange where they can meet people online to conduct their business with. All business will be strictly between buyer and seller; Gourmet garlic Gardens' international will not be directly involved in any deal but only a place buyers and sellers can meet and discuss prices, terms and delivery that they can reach agreement on. but this present effort is for small scale sustainable North American growers only and yes, Certified Organic growers in Canada are encouraged to join our market because we get a fair number of calls and emails from people in Canada looking for garlic to buy but who do not know where they can buy in Canada.
2. All garlic must be grown employing sustainable earth-friendly, people-friendly methodology and without any use of manufactured chemical or refined petroleum products or commercial granular fertilizers containing any toxic substances.
3. All garlic offered to the public through the farmers market must be of high quality and free of pests and pathogens and guaranteed for 30 days by the grower. If any garlic turns out bad within 30 days after receipt by customer, grower must replace the garlic or refund the price of the garlic that went bad.
4. Gourmet Garlic Gardens reserves the right to reject any and all applicant(s) for any reason it sees fit nor does it owe any applicant any explanation.. We have worked too hard for too long to let anyone who does not meet our standards destroy our great reputation and muddy the waters for all the good, conscientious growers out there.
5. All cultivars offered for sale by a grower must actually be the cultivars claimed.
6. This farmers market is for small scale market gardeners who personally work with and pay close attention to their crop. We want only those who take pride in their work and whose garlic shows it.
7. Mass commercial conventional chemical agriculture growers of garlic are not eligible to participate; this market is only for small business growers who work their own organic fields and pay close attention to every plant.
8. Gourmet Garlic Gardens reserves the right to restrict or cancel the links to the website of any grower who is the subject of what I consider to be excessive customer complaints.
9. All growers must send me samples of their garlic so I may be sure it meets our standards before being admitted to membership.
More as they come to me. Other Considerations - One of my chief concerns is garlic disease. Unfortunately, there are a few different garlic diseases and pests running around in this country and they're all over the place. I cannot in good conscience support or condone selling such garlic to the public knowing that they will plant it and infect their gardens with garlic diseases and/or pests. I do my best to educate growers at all levels on what pathogens and pests are and how to recognize them and suggest ways to deal with them sustainably.
While I can't guarantee anyone else's garlic to be absolutely disease free planting stock, I want to do everything I can to see that it is, anyway. Sometimes garlic that looks, smells and feels good is diseased and the observer is fooled. But at least we're making a sincere effort to help growers learn how to avoid bad garlic. Ultimately, it is up to each grower to practice high plant health standards and be responsible for their own garlic.
If small growers want sell small amounts of garlic via mail order, it is in their best interest to send only good, disease/pest-free garlic. If the garlic is good, the customer may want to buy more, if some of it is bad, they almost certainly won't. The small growers best advertisement is his/her garlic. People will naturally flock to great garlic; lousy garlic repels them - and should. Garlic is too good of a thing to grow poorly.
The one thing I greatly fear is that if growers do not learn to grow clean, healthy garlic, the FDA or the USDA may require all garlic to be irradiated and if so, there goes our freedom and our right to make a living. It is clearly in our best interest as growers to control garlic diseases and pests .
Click here to learn more about garlic diseases and how to deal with them.
One thing is for sure - I have created a website that can sell more garlic than I can grow and I wish to share this resource with buyers and growers alike. It will also make many more varieties available than I can grow in my geographic location.
Another sure thing is that I have a vested interest in seeing every grower who is chosen for the farmers market succeed. I expect to make a fair profit from this but I think every grower will make a lot more from me than I will from each of them and will open up new markets that will provide them with returning customers for years to come. I think our customers will be better served and get better prices as well.
More to come soon.
Everything is subject to change without notice, even this notice.
This page last updated May 16, 2020.
This page ,ast revised March ,5 2020