Amazon sellers are navigating an increasingly complex landscape as the marketplace continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. With escalating competition, a more congested marketplace, rising fees, and more stringent policies, it’s becoming a tougher arena. Moreover, as Seller Support grapples with these expanding challenges, maintaining a thriving business on this ecommerce giant, while still promising, is progressively demanding.

At the same time Walmart Marketplace has been on the rise, quietly becoming the biggest threat to Amazon with speedily scaling sales and revenue numbers. It’s enough to make any ecommerce seller turn their head. As a result, the scale of ecommerce sellers focused on selling on Walmart vs. Amazon has tipped. Currently, Walmart Marketplace is the new frontier for sellers, seeing a steady uptick as business owners hope to diversify their sales channels, reach new customers, and drive greater profits.

While expanding your business onto a new platform might be daunting, now is the right time to join other Amazon sellers on Walmart Marketplace if you’re hoping to get ahead of the competition. In this blog, we’ll give an overview of why Amazon sellers should seek to expand onto Walmart Marketplace, what makes the growing platform unique, and how to easily get started.

The importance of selling on multiple ecommerce platforms

In the past few years, ecommerce has seen immense growth across all platforms. While this unprecedented growth has proved beneficial in driving sales for many Amazon sellers, it has also generated immense competition in the marketplace. In order to remain competitive and continue growing their business in an increasingly saturated marketplace, Amazon sellers are looking for unique ways to increase sales and profit margins. As Walmart Marketplace continues to grow in traction, it has become a natural next step for successful sellers looking for new avenues to increase sales.

Diversifying your ecommerce sales channels with multi-marketplaces selling is often the easiest strategy for growing your business without internal changes. While financial growth often depends on expediting your cash conversion cycle, Amazon sellers on Walmart Marketplace are opening their businesses up to an entirely new potential customer base. At the same time, you’ll be improving your financial agility by diversifying streams of income. Multi-marketplace sales helps to ensure that you always have a cash flow buffer against potential disruptions on any single platform–which is especially critical due to the rising number of Amazon seller account suspensions. Even as one account faces challenges, another marketplace is likely to remain up and running, inevitably helping to mitigate the impact on your revenue.

Advantages of selling on Walmart vs. Amazon marketplace

Did you know that Walmart Marketplace is the second largest marketplace for ecommerce sellers? According to Walmart , in 2021 they had 120 million unique monthly visitors to their ecommerce website, compared to Amazon’s 200 million. That’s a lot of potential for you to reach new customers and drive greater sales, especially because many of these shoppers may be looking for alternatives to the Amazon marketplace. This means that you’ll be putting your products in front of an entirely new audience with almost nothing to lose. Plus, with the growing Walmart + subscription for shoppers, they can benefit from the same 2-day shipping and discounted prices as Amazon Prime members.

Although Amazon’s marketplace is well-known and comfortable, Walmart Marketplace offers many unique and different advantages to sellers. Since the marketplace is still seeking to establish itself as a competitor to Amazon, Walmart Marketplace is continuously evolving with features and perks to draw sellers, including:

Onboarding

The barrier to entry for an ecommerce marketplace has the potential to make or break your selling experience. Thanks to heavy automation, Amazon can offer new sellers a seamless onboarding experience. No lengthy application or delays for approval, simply open an “Individual” or “Professional” seller account and pay the monthly subscription fee. However, Amazon is just as quick to remove and suspend sellers as they are to approve them. And, while it may take mere minutes to open up your Amazon seller account, understanding and adapting to Amazon’s vast rules and policies, as well as keeping up with new requirements, can present an intense learning curve. Requirements are constantly evolving across Amazon’s 100,000+ product categories–often causing headaches for new and old sellers alike. 

In contrast, new Walmart sellers face a much more rigorous application and onboarding process but often benefit from greater stability once established. All new Walmart sellers must submit an application, including: 

• Business verification documents (W9, EIN, business license).
• Proof of prior online sales history and experience.
• Product catalog and supplier details.
• Ability to meet extensive performance metrics.

Walmart thoroughly vets each application, assessing product quality, order accuracy potential, seller stability, and a variety of other factors. Manny applicants get rejected if there are deficiencies to stand out in Walmart’s priority categories or any degree of quality risk. The application experience can stretch 6 to 8 weeks from the initial submission to final approval. 

Once approved as a Marketplace Retailer, Walmart also imposes listing hurdles like: 

• Requiring 5-10 sample products to list upfront. 
• UPCs on every single SKU. 
• Stricter shipping policies, including name-brand packaging restrictions. 

In return for this extensive application process, Walmart Marketplace offers remarkable listing clarity and policy stability, as well as dedicated Walmart reps to handle any challenges that sellers face. Walmart Marketplace Walmart also ensures that all category rules are consistently enforced– despite thousands of SKUs, you won’t encounter surprises once officially selling on the platform. 

Walmart vs Amazon Seller Fees

It’s well known that Amazon sellers face a multitude of fees, depending on what services they take advantage of, to host their business on the ecommerce marketplace giant. All sellers pay for a monthly subscription to the marketplace, either as an “Individual” at $0.99 per month for up to 40 orders or as a “Professional” at 439.99 for unlimited orders. On top of this, Amazon collects referral fees for product sales ranging on average from 8-15% of the total sales price. Additionally, some product categories require a per-item “variable closing fee” or around $1.80 per sale. 

If you opt to utilize Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) additional charges will also apply to each sale: 

• FBA Pick and Pack Fees: Charged per unit based on size and weight.
• FBA Weight Handling Fees: Charged per unit based on weight.
• FBA Storage Fees: Around $2.40 per cubic foot of storage space (higher during Q4 peak – can get up to $4.80 per cubic foot depending on how long inventory remains on shelves.) 
• FBA removal Order Fees: If inventory doesn’t sell and must be removed or returned. 

Many optional add-on programs and features–including coupon creation, reverse logistics, and image services–will incur additional fees for Amazon sellers. Sellers should review all policies carefully to avoid surprise charges and expenses that eat into profit margins.

On the other hand, one of the most attractive features of Walmart Marketplace for Amazon sellers looking to expand into new marketplaces is that it has very limited selling fees. While there are still fees associated with services on the platform (including referral and fulfillment fees), there is no “Pro-Seller” fee, unlike Amazon. This provides a welcome change for Amazon sellers used to monthly subscription fees that cut into profits.

One additional cost component that is unique to Walmart listings, however, is the UPC requirements. All Walmart Marketplace listings require GTIN barcodes/UPCs to help distinguish products. If your products don’t already have UPCs you’ll have to purchase them or obtain exemptions–potentially eating into margins for new sellers. 

Less Competition

While Amazon may continue to outrank Walmart Marketplace in terms of unique monthly visitors, Amazon sellers on Walmart Marketplace are facing significantly less competition. Compared to Amazon’s 1.9 million sellers, Walmart Marketplace has just over 100 thousand, meaning higher average page views for your products and better chances at converting. This is also true in regards to Walmart advertising compared to Amazon advertising. With greater saturation of the Amazon marketplace, Amazon advertising has inevitably seen price inflation, especially regarding PPC campaigns.

This lack of competition is due, in part, to Walmart Marketplace’s comparatively new presence in the ecommerce landscape–meaning that if you hope to take advantage of it, there is no better time to expand than right now. However, competition on the marketplace is also influenced by seller eligibility on Walmart vs. Amazon. While anyone can sell on Amazon, regardless of experience, Walmart Marketplace has an application based system that takes into consideration your location, sales history, and success. Overall, if you’re able to sell on Walmart Marketplace you’ll be able to experience the perks of being a big fish in a little pond.

Experience and expertise

Although Walmart Marketplace has several key differences from Amazon, both are built largely off of third-party sellers. As a result, there are many similarities, especially when it comes to product listings, third-party fulfillment services, and customer engagement. When comparing selling on Walmart vs. Amazon, it’s important to recognize the advantages that come with leveraging one platform to help kickstart the other. 

Amazon sellers on Walmart Marketplace have the unique advantages of experience and expertise in building product listings, advertisement campaigns, and generating reviews. While you may have to adjust to the nuances of Walmart Marketplace, seasoned sellers have the ability to quickly imitate their Amazon product listings–meaning that you can be up and running on the new platform quickly. At the same time, Amazon sellers are already well-equipped with the tools and software they need to collect customer information and maintain compliance with marketplace policies, allowing direct engagement, segmented and personalized advertising efforts, and an improved experience overall. 

While new ecommerce sellers on Walmart Marketplace may be able to learn policies and guidelines quickly, seasoned Amazon sellers simply have to adapt and reconfigure in order to succeed. 

Fulfillment Methods 

Similarly to Amazon, Walmart Marketplace sellers are typically third-party sellers accustomed to handling their own shipping and fulfillment processes. To compete with Amazon FBA though, as well as drive a new stream of revenue, Walmart has recently released Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS). Although extremely limited in scope currently, Walmart Fulfillment Services allows approved sellers to ship pallet loads of inventory to designated warehouses. When an order arrives, Walmart will pick, pack, and ship orders directly to customers in Walmart-branded packaging. This process is almost identical to Amazon FBA, though currently on a much smaller-scale. 

Walmart Marketplace has also approved several alternative fulfillment partners that new sellers can leverage for Prime-like shipping, even if they don’t currently qualify for WFS. These partners include ShipHero, ShipBob, ShipHype, Rakuten Super Logistics, and more. For items not managed under WFS, Walmart also offers special badges to sellers who can meet 2-day shipping timelines using 3PL services or fulfillment by merchant strategies.

Potential for products in brick and mortar stores

Since Walmart has such a well-established retail presence, it’s very likely that standout sellers who begin sales on Walmart Marketplace will eventually be invited to have a place in brick and mortar stores. While ecommerce is becoming more and more popular with consumers, in-person stores continue to rake in over 75% of retail sales in the United States.

Although Walmart has yet to announce this, experts say that there is very real potential for this sort of expansion–especially as Walmart Marketplace sellers gain traction and establish solid reputations. Long time retail competitor, Target , has even begun to do this with Shopify merchants well-established on their own ecommerce marketplace. This would open up an entirely new market for ecommerce sellers, exposing your products to a new audience, and establishing even greater brand recognition and trust with consumers.

Pricing

No matter what digital marketplace you’re selling on, pricing optimization is integral to outselling your competition. However, each marketplace has a unique algorithm to determine the “Buy Box” winner. 

Amazon

On Amazon, pricing strategies are complicated for sellers by the Buy Box strategy, which takes into consideration other factors including: 

• Amazon Prime qualification 
• Amazon FBA participation 
• Total cost of price and shipping for customers
• Seller record 

Every seasoned Amazon arbitrage or wholesale seller understands that the Buy Box competition is extreme, with over 2 million active sellers fighting for the coveted “Add to Cart” button on product pages. However, optimized pricing to win the Buy Box is often at odds with Amazon seller’s ideal profit margins, forcing down the list price as sellers vie for control. 

Walmart

As you can imagine, since Walmart Marketplace has significantly less sellers than Amazon, the competition for the Buy Box is much more manageable. However, Walmart prohibits third-party repricing software that automatically adjusts offer pricing. This means that while there’s less cutthroat pricing wars, sellers are forced to be a lot more diligent to secure the best pricing. 

Walmart sellers can adjust their pricing for products manually once per day. At the same time, Walmart’s marketplace operations team carefully monitors seller pricing across all listings in order to maintain strict policies around pricing compliance. This includes: 

• Price Parity Rule: If a Walmart seller lists a product for a lower price on another website or marketplace, the Walmart listing gets removed. 
• Price Leadership Policy: If ANY competing seller lists an identical product at a drastically lower price on Walmart or another marketplace, Walmart will force you to match it or remove your listing. 

Customer Service

Although Amazon sellers have learned to deal with the challenges of Amazon Seller Central and Seller Support, that doesn’t mean it’s a pleasant experience. While Amazon provides unmatched customer service for customers, including free 2-day shipping and hassle-free returns or exchanges, they have often fallen short when it comes to handling challenges that sellers face. In fact, Amazon has even put pressure on sellers to embrace that same customer-obsessed mindset, suspending Amazon sellers who fall short of customer expectations too often. 

On the other hand, since Walmart is one of the largest retailers in the world, with one of the best reputations, Walmart Marketplace has already established incredible infrastructure in the online world. As part of that infrastructure, the marketplace offers excellent support to sellers and customers, alike. From tracking tax collections for sellers to managing your inventory in-app, Walmart Marketplace offers active customer support service 24/7 through Walmart Seller Center. However, no customer can’t have it all. While the prices of Walmart Marketplace sellers is often unbeatable, there are often longer waiting periods for questions to be answered, shipping, and returns. As long as pricing stays highly competitive, Walmart customers remain happy and less friction exists in customer service for sellers. 

Affording Expansion: Amazon Sellers on Walmart Marketplace

In 2021, Walmart Marketplace’s income nearly doubled, reaching $43 billion in US Sales. In the following years, the new ecommerce marketplace’s sales have only grown, ensuring that there is immense opportunity for sellers who are willing to forge ahead with expansion. The key is finding the capital to take advantage of all the potential. That’s where Viably comes in.
Viably is the predictive banking platform built for ecommerce sellers. By connecting your commerce and banking data, Viably helps sellers gain fast access to capital, see their money movement and financial health in real time, while forecasting ahead to help map goals for growth.