Does Walmart Have an Affiliate Program?

Are you considering becoming a Walmart affiliate? If that’s the case, you should get as informed as possible about the Walmart affiliate program before you decide to join it. 

We’ve put together a Walmart affiliate program review so that you learn whether it’s the right option for you, or you should use something else. 

Walmart affiliate program review

  1. What products can you promote?

You can earn a Walmart affiliate commission by promoting almost any type of product, but there are some limitations. The variety of products that are available on the site makes this program better than Target, but just a little worse than Amazon. 

  1. Walmart affiliate rates

At the time we’re writing this article, Walmart’s commissions are actually better than those of its main competitor, Amazon. And that’s because Amazon drastically slashed their affiliate rates a couple of months ago.

Rates vary from 1 to 4% for a variety of departments, from baby and beauty to books, clothing, contact lenses, gifts, health, and everything else you might imagine. 

  1. Applications can get rejected

There are a few boxes that you must tick in order to be able to join this program. First of all, the majority of your traffic needs to come from North America, and something that’s very important is that your site needs to be family-friendly.

Needless to say, no blog or website that doesn’t have any recent posts published is going to get accepted. Walmart also has a plugin for WordPress websites, but it doesn’t seem to work, and based on the info that we have found about it, it was updated about 5 years ago. 

What’s weird is that even though the cookie lasts for 3 days (unlike that of Amazon, which lasts for 24 hours), most affiliates report having low earnings using this program, and that’s only if they get accepted. There are a lot of sites getting rejected and Walmart isn’t exactly clear about the reasons this happened. 

  1. Chrome extensions

Walmart has 2 Chrome extensions that you can use to discover and then recommend products on your website. There’s a ‘deals extension’ that helps you find promotions to offer to your visitors. This is a 3rd party extension, though, and it relies on the Special Feeds API.

The other extension is Walmart for Chrome, and this one has an excellent search ability. This is the official Walmart extension, and it’s made specifically for generating banners or links that are automatically embedded with your affiliate ID as you browse the website and find the products you want to promote. 

  1. API

Like Amazon, Walmart has an API available, but there are actually 5, not just 1. There’s a Datafeed API that you can use to check on the price and availability of products, the Special Feeds API that we’ve already mentioned, a classic Search API, a Product Lookup API (based on its ID) and a Taxonomy API. 

  1. Pros and cons

As you can expect, there are both advantages and disadvantages to using Walmart’s affiliate program. One of the pluses is that everyone in North America has heard about Walmart, so it’s a brand that people trust. That’s why they might be willing to purchase something using their website.

On top of that, there are literally millions of products from their site that you can promote, and they have a variety of tools that you can use for the promotion (many banner ads). 

Moreover, they regularly organize giveaways and contests and are pretty decent when it comes to keeping in touch with their affiliates

The downside is that their commissions could be better, but that’s a complaint you’re going to hear about virtually any affiliate program that exists today. Some of Walmart’s affiliate tools aren’t that good, and many of them are actually dated. It also takes some time before they pay the commissions, which is another drawback. 

  1. Walmart affiliate program vs. Amazon Associates

While Walmart has better affiliate rates nowadays, people don’t use the site as much as the affiliates might hope. 

Amazon is still the widest used website for online shopping, so, unfortunately, you’ll have to decide between making less money with Walmart (but benefit from bigger commissions) or less money with Amazon (since they have low commissions, but you’ll probably get more clicks and sales). 

Amazon converts the best of the two. On the other hand, Walmart’s cookie lasts for 72 hours. 

In the end, we’d suggest that you look for a different affiliate program altogether, based on your specific niche. There are lots of alternatives out there. Also, don’t forget that you can use both Walmart and Amazon, but you can’t use Amazon’s API (since they don’t want you to recommend another retailer). 

Want to learn more about affiliate marketing and SEO? We have several plans and courses available. Feel free to get in touch using the button below.

 

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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years. In this time I have gained extensive knowledge in the subject of SEO and have build up a wealth of experience in SEO and other digital marketing services.

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Craig Campbell

I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.

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