Getting ready to launch into the online affiliate blogging and marketing sphere? There are probably a few companies that come to mind right away like Amazon or eBay, but I recently found out that even Walmart has their own affiliate program.
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This is amazing news as so many of us spend most of our weekly shopping routines inside a Walmart super-center. They truly have everything you need and thankfully over the past few years they have improved the products being carried. Along with improving their in-store merchandise, the great thing is that they enhanced their online store to include everything you see in stores today.
While Walmart is not the most popular affiliate program on the market, Walmart has done some great improvements to their products and affiliate program that is bringing it up to being comparable to Amazon’s robust program.
If you’re interested in signing up, you can do so here. I’ll take this entry to review Walmart’s program as I think this could be really helpful for many of with affiliate sites looking for a broad range of products to promote. Walmart is a great alternative to Amazon Associates, because they not only offer a similar (thought not as large) range of products, and are really trying to compete with Amazon in the online space.
That means you can expect lots of changes coming to their online offerings as well as their affiliate program in the next couple years. This could possibly including attractive deals for visitors to your website. Walmart may also operate in some states where Amazon Associates does not!
What Type Of Products Are Featured
When working with Walmart, you can expect the same great products that are featured in their super-center stores around the world. They have a huge variety of offerings ranging from grocery to clothing to personal care. Here are the highlights of the products they offer online:
- Home/Garden: Huge variety of household goods including appliances, decorations, cleaning supplies, plants, etc.
- Health and Wellness: All you need in terms of medicines, food supplements, soaps and shampoo, dental supplies, and much more.
- Electronics/Games: Whether you’re looking for a new TV, some great movies, charging cables, or a new phone, they have all of the electronic goods you’ll need.
- Sports/Hunting: The broad range of sporting goods they have is great for all of your shopping needs for your active children! They also carry the necessary hunting gear that you need to keep you both safe and warm out there during the hunting seasons.
- Automotive: You cant necessarily get your oil changed online, but you definitely can find many of the service parts and car cleaning/maintenance care products all here.
- Grocery: While this isn’t available for home delivery, you can order online and pickup at the store without even leaving your car.
What Is The Commission Rate
Walmart has differing commission rates depending on each product ranging from 1-4%. And while the percentage range is a bit lower than most sites which typically range between 4-5%, most customers going to Walmart.com end up purchasing quite a few products. So whereas on other sites they may only purchase 1 product, on Walmart customers typically purchase large quantities of products for their home/business use.
There is always a fine line you have to walk between chasing companies for high commission or high sales. While some sites may offer large commissions, their offerings may be too few to make any considerable amount of money.
Whereas with Walmart, their commission is a bit lower but they have such a broad range of offerings that customers will often stay and make multiple purchases.
As of now, your affiliate ID as well sticks with a customer for up to 3 days so any purchases they make will still be counted toward your affiliate account.
Here is the overview of their affiliate program commission rates:
Alternative Affiliate Programs
There are quite a few great programs on the market today that are similar to Walmart’s affiliate program. These include companies like Target, Amazon, and even eBay. These each have their own affiliate programs which operate similar to Walmart but each offer a few differences. Lets take a look at some of the differences of these:
- eBay: While this site does offer new products direct from some suppliers, it is typically a site for normal people to sell their new or slightly used items to make a profit on things they no longer need. Walmart items are always new but still at always low prices. The power of Ebay’s affiliate program should not be ignored!
- Amazon: This is the most common affiliate site on the market right now, but I think the biggest difference is that with Walmart if you want to see something you can always head to the store and check it out. Also Amazon has a limited variety of grocery items. With Walmart you have the full range of grocery items available including milk and meats. Don’t forget though, there are many ways to make money with Amazon.
- Target: If you want a store which has high-quality brands available, Target is a good option. The only downside is that Target’s online store is quite limited in it’s offerings and their pricing can tend to run quite a bit higher than what you’ll see on Walmart.
Walmart is part of the Rakuten network, and you can search their website for other similar affiliate programs to feature on your site too!
Website Ideas
There is a variety of websites you can create using Walmart.com affiliate program as your referral for products. Some of these can be home decorating ideas you can do on a budget. You can share your favorite recipes and cooking ideas. Arts and crafting is easy to do as well as Walmart has a large selection of craft items available including fabrics!
Lets dive into one of these ideas a little more. Lets say you’re a stay at home parent, then you know Walmart like the back of your hand! This works perfectly to your advantage because you already know the products they carry. So a great website idea for you is to share your home secrets, whether that be the best ways to get stains out of clothes, or perfect affordable Christmas decorations you can make from home.
By creating a home secrets type website your ideas can be limitless and you can literally talk about the things you do on a daily basis and just link in the products and items you use from Walmart’s affiliate program and you’re done!
So how do you make money using the Walmart Affiliate Program?
Lets get into the ways in which you can use Walmart’s advertising tools within the affiliate program. This is where the fun begins.
As with every affiliate program, their site takes a while to learn the basics to use their tools. With Walmart, I found it to be quite easy to use with the different types of tools linked across the top.
Widgets: The widgets on Walmart affiliate program give you different buckets for advertisements. What this will do is allow you to create a custom sized box that will feature items within that bucket. If for example you selected Clearance, it will show you their current clearance items running.
These widgets are great if you want to give general advertisements on Walmart products but it will not give your visitors specific suggestions which are how the best sales happen.
Banners: I found Walmart’s banner selection really incredible with hundreds of options. They had banners for so many different ideas whether it be home improvement, or finding what to wear, etc. They also came in many different sizes to fit your sidebars and footers.
Here’s one as an example:
Text Links: While the text links aren’t the most glamorous, they are definitely the tools in which you will both use the most often and make the most money from. Text links allow you to link to specific product URLs. Customers purchase products when they can get personalized reviews from you and are more likely to buy a product if you’re talking about specific ones.
Top products/Campaigns: The top products tab will show you the current top products being sold on Walmart’s site. While the Campaigns will show you current seasonal programs like Back to School, Father’s Day, Black Friday, etc.
While all of these tools are great resources to advertise Walmart’s products, like with every affiliate program, customers buy products when they trust the one referring them and there is great content associated with it. If you write create content consistently, that is the key to keeping a great customer base.
Pros/Cons of Working With Walmart
The best thing about working with Walmart affiliate program is the huge array of products available to you. It allows you to have quite a limitless boundary of avenues to explore to make potential sales. Another great benefit of working with Walmart is that you’re guaranteed their always low prices. This is well known!
Some other benefits of the affiliate program itself is that it’s free and extremely easy to navigate. It does not require you to be a wiz to figure out the tools.
As for the downside, I felt the commission rate being offered was too low for market standards. Some commission rates on products being as low as 1% seemed to me quite unsatisfactory. This is the one area that I feel for Walmart to supersede it’s competitor affiliate programs it will need to increase it’s commission rate.
Play around with the Walmart affiliate program yourself and see how you can use this in your blog. If you like or dislike the Walmart affiliate program, let me know why in the comments below. Share your own favorite affiliate programs as well here!
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Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. My name is Nathaniell and I'm the owner of One More Cup of Coffee. I started my first online business in 2010 promoting computer software and now I help newbies start their own businesses. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!
Henry Tyson
Love your program guidelines. Thanks Henry.