With an astronomical high revenue intake and decades of success behind them, Sam Walton’s Walmart can be considered as one of the biggest cash-generating businesses of all time – and they’re just getting started.
Today I am releasing my a long-overdue review of the Walmart affiliate program.
If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate for what could just be Amazon’s only real competitor left, keep reading as I am about to show you:
- What the Walmart affiliate program is (& how it works).
- What can you promote as a Walmart affiliate?
- Their affiliate commissions structure (a must-read).
- How to get started as an affiliate for Walmart.
- The pros & cons of affiliating with Walmart and;
- 3 methods you can use to promote Walmart successfully.
Last but not least, I will also share with you a few affiliate marketing tips which I am sure you will find useful if you do decide to become a Walmart affiliate.
Let’s get started…
Table of Contents
What Is The Walmart Affiliate Program?
The Walmart Affiliate Program (which you can join here) is the official and only affiliate program of the Walmart website.
This affiliate program will allow you to earn commissions (commission rates to be discussed soon) on any purchases made by traffic you send to the Walmart.com website.
Needless to say, this affiliate program is only for online sales, not for walk-ins through the many Walmart stores available in North America.
How Does The Walmart Affiliate Program Work?
Just like any other affiliate program, once you have signed up (and been approved) you will be given access to the backend system where you will find your own affiliate links which you can then use on your website to promote the many products found on the Walmart website.
What Can You Promote As A Walmart Affiliate?
Just like with the Amazon Associates program (which I’ll tell you about how they compare down below), Walmart offers a wide range of products that you can promote to a wide variety of different audiences and make money from.
As you may imagine, they offer thousands of different products in hundreds of different niches – although it may not be as extensive as Amazon – so whatever your niche is, I am sure you will find something to promote from the Walmart affiliate program.
Here are some of their most popular categories:
- Movies, Music & Books
- Home improvement
- Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry
- Baby & Toddler Items
- Sports & Fitness Equipment
- Craft and Hobbies
- and much more.
You can take a look at their website for more ideas/categories.
Walmart’s Affiliate Program Commission Rates
Here’s where things took a turn for the worse for me.
I’ve always been disheartened by the low commission rates Amazon offers and for some reason, I expected Walmart to be different. Sad to say;
Walmart is probably even worse than Amazon when it comes to their commission rates.
Here are some of the percentage rates for their major categories:
I am sure we can all agree that ~4% is not something we can get excited about.
With that said, if you can manage to drive a decent amount of traffic to Walmart’s website every month, I am sure you can at least make this a profitable venture for you (in spite of the low commission rates).
This is because just like with Amazon; the brand power Walmart ha – along with its optimized conversion funnels – does make up for the insanely low commissions being offered.
If the commission rates haven’t put you off just yet and you’re still considering becoming an affiliate, let’s now see…
How To Get Started As A Walmart Affiliate
All you would need to do to become a Walmart affiliate is simply visit their website and start the application process.
As with most affiliate program registrations, you will be asked for your name, address, location and even your URL (along with some of your traffic stats) so yes – you need to have a website to be able to join.
If you don’t have a website just yet, you can get one from here.
This will just take a few minutes to complete, and you will (likely) be approved in just a few hours
Once you are approved & you have your own affiliate links, it’s time to start making money and Walmart makes it easy with their selection of free affiliate marketing tools they provide.
Tools To Help You Make Money With Walmart
The Walmart affiliate program also offers a variety of tools which would help you drive customers to their website, these are:
Walmart SDK:
This tool allows you to embed products right into your content with a “Buy Now” button tagged with your affiliate link.
This obviously makes the buying process much simpler for customers which would, in theory, help you increase conversions (given you’re getting the right kind of traffic).
The last remaining step for him/her would be to visit the Walmart website and check out his cart.
Congratulations, you’ve just earned yourself a commission from Walmart.
The Walmart Chrome Extension:
This also is a great tool to leverage as a Walmart affiliate as it helps you find best selling products, much quicker.
To see how this plugin works, you can see this great video presentation on YouTube.
The Walmart WordPress Plugin:
If you are using WordPress (which you should be), you also get access to the Walmart WordPress plugin which will allow you to easily add links in your content from the Walmart website automatically tagged with your affiliate link.
Instead of manually searching for products on the Walmart site then linking to it from the website, the plugin will find products you’d want to promote based on the keywords you type in.
You can see here how the plugin works on their website >>
3 Ways To Promote The Walmart Affiliate Program
Now that you have signed up and you’re ready to start promoting Walmart to your readers, let’s look at some of the ways you can promote said products (& earn yourself a decent commission each month).
Do Product Reviews On Your Blog
One of the best ways I have found to make money as an affiliate marketer is by doing product reviews.
I have a great guide on how to make money with product reviews here. It also includes a free template that you can use to structure your reviews.
With some decent keyword research, a great review can easily rank in search engines since most likely the competition for specific product keywords won’t be too hard to beat, thus you are guaranteed some position in the SERPs.
With this method (even though I do not have any idea of your experience or niche) I can guarantee that sooner or later you will make money.
Email Marketing:
If you have an email list for your website with (at least) a few hundred subscribers, you are sitting on a goldmine – and you don’t even know it.
If you have an email list at your disposal already, I am sure you can creatively tie in a product to it and this would probably be the best fastest way to earn some commissions with Walmart.
All you would need to do is to look for a product – that would make sense to promote to your audience – and send an email about it. Ideally, you’d also do a review of the said product first so you can link people from your email to your review.
NB: If you don’t have an email list, you may want to check out Aweber.
Use Social Media:
This may be the least efficient way, but it doesn’t hurt to share a few links on social whilst you wait for your reviews to rank (and bring in visitors).
Social media can get you some sales but as I said, it’s probably the least effective (from my own experiences).
Also, keep in mind that most social networks do NOT allow affiliate links so linking to your review (instead of directly to Walmart) is your best bet here.
How Much Money Can You Make as a Walmart Affiliate?
Let’s crunch some numbers…
Even though the commission structure is very low, there really is no limit to how much money you can make by promoting Walmart to your readers.
For example, this patio fire grill (which is a great niche to get into btw), sells for $98 and you make 4% off that.
$98 x 4% = $3.92 commission.
Can you make one sale a day?
If you can make one sale, you can make 10.
Ten sales a day would equal to $39.20 a day, which is nearly $1200 a month just from promoting 1 item.
Also, remember that you can review & promote any (and all) the fire pits available on the Walmart website (some of which go for way more than $100).
While I advise you to stick with products that are $100 or over (just to make it worth your while), remember this;
It’s all about getting the right product in front of the right audience and scaling those results.
Even though the commission rates may be low, there is definitely money to be made as a Walmart affiliate, and if you do the work, the results will always follow.
Walmart Affiliates vs. Amazon Associates
One question I’m received many times in the comment section below is whether you should go with the Amazon Associates Program instead of the Walmart affiliate program.
I say; why not both?
Why not offer the same product from 2 different places and let the customer take his pick?
You can join both and promote both on your site (there are no limits or restrictions on how many affiliate programs you can join and promote).
If you’d like to know more about the Amazon Associates, you can see my review of it here.
Is The Walmart Affiliate Program Worth The Effort?
If you’re happy with the affiliate commission rates and it makes sense to promote Walmart products to the traffic you already have then yes; you should definitely join.
As I said already, the possibilities are endless and you are set to make good money if you know what you are doing.
Closing Thoughts
I hope you enjoyed this review/guide on how to become a Walmart affiliate.
If you are thinking of joining and have some questions, be sure to let me know in the comment section below. I’d be more than happy to help you find success as an affiliate marketer.
Good luck in all your endeavors.
