Walmart Affiliate Program
Types of products: Broad range of physical products.
Where to join: https://affiliates.walmart.com/
Commission structure: Categories with fixed commissions
Cookie length: 3 days
Payment Methods: Paypal or Bank Transfer
Walmart Affiliate Program Review
Here are the reasons you may want to consider the Walmart affiliate program as an alternative, or addition, to your Amazon Affiliate offerings:
- Walmart is the #1 US retailer.
- They are a trusted seller.
- There is no resistance from buyers to purchase.
This overall trust and brand loyalty is the key reason to consider Walmart.
Like Amazon, the Walmart affiliate program is based on product categories. Each category has an assigned commission rate. But unlike other retail affiliate programs like the Target affiliate program, Walmart opens up many categories for affiliates. Most niches will find products to represent.
You do need to check if the commission rate for your niche is worth the investment in time to promote.
Let’s take a look at the details …
Important Walmart Updates …
Commissions
The Walmart affiliate program has recently lowered their commission rates in a number of categories. They seem to have followed Amazon’s lead. The following departments appear to have been reduced from 4% to 1%.
- Furniture, Bed and Bath
- Kitchen Appliances
- Dining
- Vacuums
- Home Decor, Arts & Crafts.
At 1% commission rate you are definitely better to send that traffic to Amazon. Not only will they convert better you will get more add-on sales. Also many of the Walmart 1% categories pay 3% at Amazon. That’s a 300% better rate for a company that converts better.
Here are the changes per Walmart …
API
Walmart has a new website for the api — Walmart.io. All Walmart APIs for stakeholders including affiliates, developers, partners, and marketplace sellers will be housed at Walmart.io. It is currently open for beta users and you can signup at: https://walmart.io/onboardi
The old api is expected to be end of life around the first of the year (2021)
Go to our best affiliate programs page for more program reviews.
The Walmart affiliate program is an excellent choice for those looking for an Amazon replacement or those looking to add a second affiliate program. In many parts of the US, Walmart is THE trusted retailer. Also, some buyers are distrustful of Amazon and the impact they are having on retail stores in their communities.
For affiliates the latest Amazon commission rates will mean that many Walmart products pay more than the equivalent Amazon products. The conversions will likely still be better at Amazon so you should test before switching or offer both.
How to Join the Walmart Affiliate Program
Joining Walmart’s Affiliate program is as easy as one would expect. The affiliate program is managed by Impact Radius There are three steps to getting started …
You will need an email address, a username, and a password to start filling your application. As you go along, Walmart will ask you about how you will be representing their products. They are very inclusive and almost all applications are accepted. Just go to the affiliate website and follow the steps. Easy peasy.
Walmart Products for your Niche
The Walmart affiliate program provides a huge variety of products on the website. It’s the only website which comes close to Amazon in terms of product depth. You will find the most popular categories such as Kitchen Appliances, Electronics, Musical Instruments, Baby Apparel, Men’s Fashion, Women’s Fashion, and Furniture, etc. But more obscure categories like, Vehicle Parts and Outdoor Sports are also included.
The large number of products makes it easier for a Walmart affiliate partner to earn a good amount of commission from hot products and those unique to their niche. Just keep it in mind that the commission rates are different for different products.
Walmart Program Commission Rates and Payouts
So how much does the Walmart affiliate program pay? Walmart has a category based affiliate schedule from 1% to 4%. Here is the current commission structure by category:
| Department | |
|---|---|
| Baby | 4% |
| Books | 1% |
| Beauty | 4% |
| Clothing | 4% |
| Contact Lenses | 10% |
| Home | 4% |
| Electronics | 1% |
| Gifts & Registry | 4% |
| Health | 4% |
| Patio & Garden | 4% |
| Jewelry | 4% |
| Movies | 1% |
| Music | 1% |
| Video Games | 1% |
| Photo | 1% |
| Sports & Outdoors | 4% |
| Toys | 4% |
| All Others* | 4% |
The Walmart affiliate program pays on a category based fee schedule. As you can see from the preceding commission table Walmart commissions range from 1% to 4%. It is always best to target products that will resonate with your audience. There is little value in writing reviews of toys if your niche focuses on kitchens. So one of the most important things to consider with the Walmart programis if your niche pays a commission of at least 4%. It will be hard to earn enough to justify the content creation expense for 1% items like electronics (though these are low payout products in almost all affiliate programs).
You should also note that there are a few excluded categories that will earn no commissions. These include …
- Apple phones
- Groceries
- Household commodities
Affiliate Tools and Support
There are a number of Walmart affiliate tools to help you effectively sell their products with your affiliate account.. The include developer kits, WordPress plugins, and Chrome extensions.
Walmart Affiliate SDK
There are tools for website, Android and IOS. The SDK is where you get call-to-action items like Buy Now buttons. There are both Javascript buttons which are great for apps and widgets and HTML buttons for easy insertion into your page content. This makes it easy to add Walmart affiliate program offers. The buttons have the familiar Walmart look and feel and are available in a few formats …
Details of the SDK are found on their affiliate website. Here is a direct link to the Walmart SDK.
WordPress Plugin
Among the best of the Walmart affiliate tools is a WordPress plugin to make selling its products even easier. Most affiliates use WordPress for reviews and other articles for their niche. After adding your affiliate id to the plugin you can …
- Generate Walmart Ads while composing articles on WordPress.
- Provides item banners and text links to link to relevant Walmart.com products.
There is more information about the plugin on their website.
Chrome Extensions
There are even two Chrome extensions to help you find and sell products:
The Walmart Deals Chrome extension helps you find deals, top selling items, and promotions that you can offer to your audience. This is a third party extension and uses the Special Feeds API to find Bestsellers, Clearance, Rollbacks, and Special Buys.
The Walmart for Chrome extension has a powerful search capability. This extension comes from Walmart not a third party. The extension is designed to generate links and banners that embed your affiliate ID while you are browsing Walmart.com.
Walmart API
Walmart has an extensive api for developers and power-users. There are actually five separate APIs with a number of functions including …
- Datafeed api — This is the product lookup functionality that gives real-time price and availability.
- Special Feeds API — Special feeds provides all of the specials like: Preorders, Bestsellers, Rollback, Clearance and Special Buys.
- Search API — The search api lets you create text based product searches
- Product Lookup API — If you know a product id you use this capability
- Taxonomy API — To find based on the taxonomy … Department, Categories and Sub-categories
How to Promote Walmart Products to your Audience
Promoting Walmart products is easy. Find products that resonate with your community. Use the Walmart and third party tools to find products and build call to action (CTA) links with your affiliate id and away you go. One of the key advantages is the vast variety of products.
After Amazon, Walmart has the most products available so you can surely find products for any niche. Just be sure they pay well before you invest the time in writing content.
Most affiliates will be driving their sales with content marketing. Creating content that gets picked up by Google search. The search traffic comes to your review or other content and the visitors follows a link with your Walmart affiliate id to Walmart.com. When they make a purchase you get a commission.
You will want to focus on more expensive products unless you have quite a bit of traffic. Only a small percentage of your readers will click on the product link going to Walmart and then only a small percentage of those will purchase.
Walmart does not currently have any CPA type commission for signing up for credit cards or gift registries like the Target affiliate program does.
Walmart Affiliate Program vs. Amazon Associates
You can’t expect the kind of conversions at Walmart that you get with the Amazon Associates program. Though they are a great brick and mortar company their website does not have the same influence as Amazon’s. It will be best for people building comparison sites or those focusing on specific products.
With Amazon you just send people to the site and let them do the conversions. With Walmart you will need to give the visitor a reason to buy from Walmart.com.
With the new Amazon commission rates Walmart will pay higher commissions per transaction for most categories. Plan on conversions in the 2%-3% area for Walmart and 5% for Amazon. Amazon also will have more extra unrelated purchases.
So basically if your product is paying less than twice as much at Walmart they are a good option. Otherwise Amazon may be the better choice or you can offer the visitor both options. Of course this is all dependent on your traffic/audience and the quality of your content.
Go to our affiliate tips page -- learn how to promote products.
Pros and Cons —
Walmart Affiliate Program
ADVANTAGES
Easy to sign up
Quick approval to the program
A commission rate of 1% to 4%
No delays in payments
Free banner ads are provided
Free newsletters and complete info of the product
DISADVANTAGES
Low commission rate on music and books categories
Works only inside the US
You must target US audience to generate leads
3-Day cookie
Should You Use the Walmart Affiliate Program?
Walmart has lots of products, lots of supporting tools, and lots of trust in the marketplace. It is a strong affiliate marketing program. There is likely great products for your niche. Returns can be done at the Walmart store, so customers have even further incentive to purchase online. As long as the products you represent pay 4% or more in commissions – go for it.
FAQ
Is the Walmart Affiliate Program easy to join?
Yes. It is easy to become a Walmart affiliate. A website with solid content is the primary requirement.
How does the Walmart affiliate program work?
Like other affiliate programs, you are assigned an affiliate id and you add that affiliate link to your content and refer visitors to products at the Walmart website.
How much are the Walmart affiliate program commissions?.
Walmart has a sliding scale based on the item categories. They tend to be higher than the same category as Amazon's.
Should affiliate marketers use Walmart over Amazon?
Like other affiliate programs it is all about your niche website audience and your website traffic. Click troughs and conversion rates will likely be lower than Amazon but pays more in some categories.
