AF294 - Amazon vs Walmart for Third-Party Sellers
Ever wonder whether you should start selling on Walmart now that you’ve got Amazon figured out? Today my Guest expert is Carrie Miller from Helium10 and she is going to discuss a few of the differences between Amazon and Walmart third-party selling and why NOW is the best time to add Walmart as a sales channel!
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We are talking about new platforms, better platforms. We are going to be diversifying. We need to make transitions and changes.
Carrie’s e-commerce background:
Back in about 2015, 2016, our neighbor approached my dad and was asking him to help out with this skateboard business that was not doing very well. My dad started helping out and then I decided I kind of wanted to help out, too. We realized they were only selling $200 a month on Amazon and they were using Vendor Central. I think I can do better than that because I was in sales. I just went on YouTube, started learning how to sell on Amazon, and figured out I should get all the listings switched over to Seller Central to make sure that they were not on Vendor anymore.
I could not really edit any listings on Vendor Central. It was really challenging. It was very difficult to maneuver and we were not as profitable that way. You can make more profit using Seller Central. I switched over and started just learning how to optimize listings and started doing well with that. I signed up for Free Up. I was a freelancer on Free Up and I started optimizing listings for people. I was writing tons and tons of listings, people who were just starting out all the way to 2 million plus a month. It was a really good experience to learn how to optimize and sell on Amazon and was continuing to help out obviously with the skateboards. We were also doing a skateboard business. We started to expand into other products and we have just kind of kept growing from there. We expanded to a Shopify site and learned how to sell on Walmart. That is kind of been my progression over the years of just selling on Amazon. Then creating a Shopify site and then starting on the Walmart platform as well.
Transition from Amazon to Walmart:
If you are willing to endure the kind of stress and difficulties, then you are going to have a lot more of a benefit in the long term. It is frustrating sometimes to set up your listing. It does not always go up and you might have worked really hard to try to set it all up and then it just deletes everything and wonder what happened. I do talk with Walmart and I do know that they are really improving a lot of things. There were a lot of improvements made to pay-per-click as well. Almost impossible to get seen on ads.
There are some challenges on Walmart, but once you get on there, you start to realize that you are more profitable on Walmart. So even just my product that was not doing well on Amazon, because the pay per click was so high, I started selling it on Walmart and the profitability was higher, not only because the pay per click was way, way less, but then also your fees are less. I got the pro seller badge, you get like a 20% discount on your fees. There is all these kind of incentives that they have been giving right now. A lot of people like that part about Walmart.
Tips to Amazon Sellers Signing Up with Walmart:
If you are a Helium 10 member, I do have a whole course in the members' platform, under FBA training We have something called Freedom Ticket 3.0. At the very end, we have a ton of in-depth how-tos like I show how to do flat file uploads, how to set up your shipping, all everything you could ever want to know. I would say start there because then you kind of know the basics of it. You will be better prepared to kind of troubleshoot for them.
Something that I think is kind of a challenge if this does happen is comp errors and comp errors are like if you get pesticide warnings on Amazon like you used a word that you were not supposed to.
So if you know for sure there are words you are not allowed to use on Amazon, do not use those on Walmart either, because they will put this comp error on your listing and you will not get help for like one to two months. It is really important to just do the best you can to stay away from those words. And if you do get a comp error, I would just kind of delete the words and just kind of keep kind of testing it and going back and forth and re-uploading your listing. And usually, that will fix the issue. You do not always have to go through the support to do it if you can just kind of go through the process of elimination and figure out what words kind of triggered that error.
I would say to learn how to do flat files to do uploads for your listings. I know flat files on Amazon are kind of a headache, but they are actually not as bad on Walmart.
Significant Differences Between Amazon and Walmart:
Profitability
Profitability is better at Walmart just because of the fees. I know Amazon keeps kind of raising fees constantly. The traffic is about 120 million unique visitors on Walmart every month, and it's about 200 million unique visitors on Amazon.
Something about Walmart shoppers is that they like to buy kind of their thing, their necessities so they are going every week usually to get things that they kind of purchase over and over.
Clothing is starting to really pick up. I have been really seeing a lot of influencers showing Walmart styles and a lot of those Walmart styles are from third-party sellers.
Electronics do well. I would say just if you are not sure, just go ahead and give it a try if you have the time to do it and just see what you can do. You can do the advertising and see what happens.
Not only that people filter for the pros seller badge when they are searching, so you get more visibility.
Shipping
I used to say Walmart will be and maybe surpass Amazon as the number one online retailer once they get the logistics figured out. I have always said this because they have a location on every corner, every store they have the ability logistically to deliver same day or in a few hours if they can rally the troops and get the same infrastructure that Amazon tends to have to where Amazon is scrambling to build more and more warehouses and try to figure that out.
The shipping rates to ship products into WFS, which is Walmart Fulfillment Services, are actually cheaper than Amazon. Once your products get to WFS, it does take a little bit of time to check-in. So maybe they are not as quick as FBA to check things in. Once you get your products in there, they do the two-day shipping. So once you get that two-day shipping badge, you also get more visibility. You get kind of a jump in your rank when you are in the WFS program.
Customer Service
I think that Walmart Fulfillment Services they have, if you have issues with shipping, they are a little more helpful. Like I said, if you get a comp error, it is like you might get a response in a month or two. I actually just had a comp error the other day and it was a mistake and they actually responded in like three days, which was really good. So I was actually pretty surprised about that.
I have a group called Winning, Helium 10 Winning with Walmart. You can ask questions there.
If you are not a Helium 10 member, you need to become one. Go to mommyincome.com/helium10.
There are so many research tools, so many things we have negotiated a discount for you. But specifically for Carrie's training week 11 in the Freedom Ticket 3.0
Diversification:
If you have a platform to sell your products, why not sell them everywhere and fulfill in one or two places? You can test the market and see what does better on Walmart and what does better on Amazon. If they all do better, great.
When your products are on Walmart, they are advertising your products in Google Shopping. So you are not just getting Walmart shoppers now, you are getting a lot more exposure through Walmart for that reason as well. Bundles for wholesale, I think, it is a really good opportunity for Walmart especially, because there is just a lot less competition with pay-per-click.
Some people I have talked to have even surpassed their income on Amazon, on Walmart. So it really depends on the effort you put into it and what you want to get out of it and if you are thinking long-term or not.
People are going to flood in, so why not open that second location, right? I just call it virtual locations. We have a place on Amazon, a place on Shopify, a place on Walmart even, if you have someone to do Facebook marketplace even. I am all about having automation.
QUOTE:
“I love that it's just like opening a second location that maybe doesn't do as well as your first location, but it still has enough traffic. Yeah. You know, to bring people and bring sales. I'm all about that. I mean, especially with the profitability now with the competition lower than on Amazon, you have an ability, what I call that minus touch few years when you really have enough time to kind of get all of the profits before people start coming in.” - Kristin Ostrander
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