BEST Amazon Alternative for Sellers: Walmart.com - Its FREE!! Plus FREE Marketing! Everything You Need to Know

Posted by Big Brand Wholesale.com on 6th Apr 2020

Today we are going to do a super deep dive into selling on Walmart.com because its FREE*... and who doesn’t love FREE*?

OUR TOTAL RATING FOR SELLING ON WALMART:

4 STARS!! Do you agree? Disagree? Tell us why! Here's how we based our opinion:

Previously we wrote an article about selling on Walmart.com vs Sears.com and we even included BriskSale.com in the article too. But today I want to focus on the best of the 3 options, which is, by far, Walmart.com. Let’s begin!

FACT:

But why? Primarily PRICE. Does this mean a millennial would RATHER have a “no brand” item? NO. It means they do not want to pay a premium to have the interior tag say “Victorias Secret”. BUT, if that millennial can get the branded item at a brandless price, would they take it? Abso-friggin-lutely. Who wouldn’t? This means walmart is a fantastic channel for you to sell your awesome-deal branded items that you buy from BigBrandWholesale.com (a little shameless self promotion there)

Another reason you MUST jump on the Walmart wagon right now… Amazon.com (AKA: “Damn-aZon”) has over 2 MILLION sellers. Ebay (AKA “feeBay”) is right behind Amazon with 182 million as of 2020. That’s a sh*t ton of competition. Walmart.com has only 33,000 Sellers!! (as of Jan 2020) = less competition = more views on your listings = more sales.

BUT THIS PART IS EVEN COOLER…. Walmart gives you INSANE marketing FOR FREE. All of your applicable listings will ALSO appear on Walmarts other sites (when applicable), including:

Jet.com
Shoes.com
MooseJaw.com
On the Walmart Mobile App (it’s a REALLY NICE APP!)
And more

That is simply fantastic. There’s no other way to explain it.

FREE TO LIST, ONLY PAY IF IT SELLS

Unlike other sites, Walmart does not have a monthly fee to list stuff. Additionally, there are not listing fees. The only time you pay is after it sells. The closing fee is taken out of your pay for the merchandise, so you are never hit with a giant bill. We will discuss closing fees later in this article.

ANOTHER REASON WHY WALMART.com KICKS A**

Did you know that almost 30% of people who browse a website, add an item to “Cart” then never buy it (AKA “Abandoned Cart”) is because their preferred method of payment wasn’t available? Walmart offers a LOT of payment methods including credit / debit, pay pal, Visa Checkout, CASH, Chase Pay and more. This means if you sell on Walmart, your buyers will be able to pay using these same options, with no added cost or hassle for you.

In addition, Walmart.com allows Guest Checkout. Shoppers don’t even need an account to buy stuff. And there’s no annual fees like with Amazon.

Also, Walmart offers Free Shipping for orders of $25 or more, which is great for buyers. This means Walmart eats the cost of shipping.

Another bad a** thing is that you are not racing to have the lowest price (like on eBay or Amazon):

As you will see in the images above, the tank on the right is $14. The tank next to it is $28. So, you’re not stuck selling a tank top for $10 here.

Victorias Secret merchandise has an excellent margin overall on Walmart and appears to sell fantastic based on the star ratings:

The last major reason Walmart is GREAT is because your photos don’t have to meet Amazon-Criteria. AND, you CAN use someone elses listing based on the UPC!!!! White and grey backgrounds might be a requirement, but the size can vary, mannequins, live models or no model at all is also fine. It’s substantially less crazy here than Amazon.

Now let’s dive into the downsides of selling on Walmart.com

CLOSING FEES

This really isn’t a big deal and it shouldn’t be viewed as a downside, but any fee in general is :( so we must count it as a downside.

Before we discuss Walmarts fees, let’s look at Amazon and eBay.

AMAZON - A referral fee is the commission paid to Amazon for every item sold on their site. The amount paid ranges from 8%-17%

Baby, Body Care and Accessories Products = 15% (unless the item you sell is OVER $75, then the stupid fee increases to 18%)

Clothing is 17%

Here’s an awesome article from Feb 2020 with a great breakdown of fees by category: https://www.junglescout.com/blog/amazon-fba-fees/

EBAY - Although eBay has a lot of different fees, they are still less than Amazon in total. Let’s say the average is 11%, when you factor in the listing fee and 1 - 2 upgrade fees.

Anyways, eBay fees fall into 3 main categories:

Listing (mandatory) - About 35-cents per listing
Closing (mandatory) - Around 8% - 10%
Upgrades (optional) - so we’re not going to discuss them

There’s an actual eBay fee calculator available for free: https://www.ebayfeescalculator.com/usa-ebay-calculator/ whoever made this free calculator is a genius and a saint! Bookmark it!

You can get a full list of fees here https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/get-started/seller-fees.html

Ok, now lets discuss WALMART fees

Walmart doesn’t have any listing fees or “store fees”. All you pay is the “Referral Fee” which is the same as “closing costs” or “commission” or whatever other name you want to call it to make it sound nicer than “FEE”.

Walmarts fees are 8% - 15%, with the majority of fees being exactly 15%.

This means Walmart.com is around the same price as Amazon, yet more expensive than eBay BUT with WAY LESS competition and WAY MORE FREE PROMOTION. So basically you can say you pay 10% closing fees on Walmart plus 5% promotion fees. That sounds a lot better, right?

Also, I really like that the fee structure is so simple; 15%, that’s it. That makes it very easy to factor into your listing price.

Another downside of Walmart. Walmart wants ALL outgoing orders to match, so when someone buys from Walmart.com, even though it ships in multiple boxes, from multiple sellers, they want it to look uniform. This means you have to ship in a plan box, plain tape and no promotional materials or fanciness. This means you can’t advertise your website or stuff the box with frilly pink tissue paper or anything else. This really isn’t a big deal whatsoever if you don’t have (or don’t want) your own .com site. The only time this would be a bummer is if your ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your .com. If driving to your own site is the goal then you would want to go with eBay or Amazon. But the upside to this downside is that its EASY. Get plain boxes and tape. Done. I am not sure if poly mailers are allowed, but everything I have ever bought from Walmart.com has arrived in a plain box.

Something kind of annoying is that people can return stuff for almost any reason, or no legit reason. Check out the list of returns taken directly from the Walmart Sellers Portal:

So basically... they can return it. BUT this isn't really any different than Amazons A-Z policies.

And the last downside, which might actually be an upside, is that Walmart.com let’s you sell the item for whatever the F you want to sell it for *IF* you are the first person to list it. If someone else lists the same UPC as you they can offer a lower price and “bump” you down the list. Solution, just price-match them, Boom, done. BUT, if you’re selling unique things, such as Calvin klein apparel or Victorias Secret clothing, there isn’t much competition per UPC. In fact, most of the listings you will see based on UPC only have 1 seller. Or, if you are using a UPC that has more than 1 seller, just add yours and price match. Easy peasy!

CONDITIONS TO BECOME A WALMART.com SELLER

The criteria to sell on Amazon is a little more than eBay but substantially less than Amazon.

You need to have a USA Business (EIN / TIN) and LLC. As I have said before, and I’ll say it again, if you are not sure if you genuinely want to be committed to an online business, do NOT get an EIN and LLC. Instead just sell on eBay and other sites. Read our blog posts: What is an EIN and How to Get One and What is an LLC and How to Get One
You need to have a USA “warehouse address”. This means your Ship-From address can’t be Canada. (If you are international you can also apply using the international form). Im 99% sure the warehouse address can be whatever you want it to be BUT you have to be able to accept returns to it. I don’t see why you couldn’t use a PO Box, but I haven’t tried to apply with one. I always encourage people to use a PO address instead of their home address for safety reasons. People are really strange and giving them the address where you store all of your inventory is NOT COOL.
Your business MUST have good reviews online. So if you’re sucking it with a 2.75 average star rating, don’t apply until you build that sh*t up. This might surprize you, but 4 stars actually IS a good rating because it’s believable. It really just depends what your negatives say. People can be utter psychopaths and leave the strangest bad reviews, or even strangest good reviews. Have you seen the reviews that say “4-Stars: Perfect experience. I just don’t leave 5-Stars” - like WTF does that mean?!?!
You have to have tax information so you can set up a W-9. Once again, you need a EIN.
You need a bank account
You can either list items individually OR bulk upload from a database

And that’s pretty much it! See why I said its SOOOOOO Much easier than (totally strict, almost insane) Amazon?

Once you are approved you have to fill out your business stuff which includes:

Company info - read our post How to Create an Awesome Company Logo FAST and FREE
Contact Info
Shipping
Returns
Privacy Policy - if you want you can just copy ours and change the name to your name: https://bigbrandwholesale.com/privacy-policy/ - make sure you change Section 4 to say Walmart.com instead of BigCommerce and whatever else you need to revise.

You can signup to sell on Walmart here.

Have more questions? Check out the Walmart Sellers Community Site!

Next, read our Selling on Sears.com Honest Review.

Love this blog post? Check out our other Amazon & eCommerce detailed guides: