Walmart Marketplace has around 100 million unique monthly shoppers, which gives you a massive audience to sell your dropshipping products to.
Additionally, Walmart Marketplace sales are increasing each year, from over $500 million in 2014 to over $325 billion in 2024.
More customers are engaging in online shopping to find products that they like. To keep up with this trend, you can sell items on Walmart Marketplace and make a good profit.
In this article, we’ll guide you through what Walmart Marketplace is and how to become a seller on this platform. We’ll also discuss the pros and cons of selling on Walmart Marketplace so you can decide if it’s the right place for you to sell your dropshipping products.
What Is Walmart Marketplace?
Walmart Marketplace offers third-party sellers the opportunity to list products for sale on Walmart.com.
Similarly to Amazon, shoppers browse Walmart.com, find items they like, and buy your marketplace products.
Walmart does note that third-party seller products are Marketplace items, but most of its customer base isn’t aware that Walmart doesn’t actually sell these products.
Your listings will display alongside other Walmart Marketplace listings in the search results, so you’re still competing with other sellers—and Walmart—to sell top-quality products at great prices.
What to Expect as a Walmart Marketplace Seller
Walmart Marketplace charges you a referral fee to sell on the platform, but you get access to millions of customers and selling tools to boost your revenue.
In exchange, Walmart charges category-based referral fees based on primary product categories.
These fees range from 3% to 20% per transaction, although some have dollar amount minimums and maximums.
For example, goods in the apparel and accessories product category have a 15% fee, while jewelry has a 20% fee.
You pay Walmart fees every time you sell a product. The good news is that this is the only fee Walmart charges unless you’re also paying for Walmart fulfillment.
Unlike Amazon, you pay a flat percentage fee without additional hidden fees or add-ons.
Walmart usually processes payments on a weekly basis. It takes your gross online sales, subtracts the referral fee, and transfers the remainder to your bank account.
Keep in mind that payments are only processed when you ship the product, not when the customer places an order. If it takes a while to ship the product, it might take an additional week to see your payment.
How to Become a Walmart Marketplace Seller
Now that you know what to expect in terms of fees, let’s look at the steps you need to take to become a Walmart Marketplace Seller:
➡️ Submit your application
Fill out the application on the Walmart Marketplace website and ensure you complete each section completely and save as you go.
Next, click the “apply now” button to submit your application. You’ll receive a notification when your application is approved, and you can start setting up your profile.
➡️ Complete your registration
Once you receive approval, you’ll get a unique link to your email address. This will take you to the Walmart Marketplace and let you create a Partner Profile.
You’ll have to go through five steps to set up the financial part of your account, and Walmart won’t let you sell without you supplying this information.
The five steps include:
- Account creation.
- Partner registration.
- Taxes.
- Setting up your bank account.
- Completing shipping information.
➡️ Fill out your Partner Profile
When you’re completing your partner profile, you’ll have to verify your bank account. When you input your information, Walmart will deposit a penny in your bank account to ensure it’s legitimate.
If you see this deposit in your bank account, you can mark this section of your Partner Profile complete.
➡️ Upload your products
Once you’ve completed these steps, your profile will be active. This means you can now start posting products for sale.
You can begin by creating listings for each product, ensuring that you include high-quality photos and detailed product descriptions. Walmart Marketplace also allows you to add videos to your product descriptions.
➡️ Preview your products
Once you’ve loaded your products, you’ll want to preview each one to ensure it’s top-notch. This is also how you can make sure the information you’ve entered is accurate.
➡️ Launch your account
Now that Walmart Marketplace has verified your information and you’ve listed your products, you can launch your account.
It’s worth noting that your account won’t be published right away, as Walmart will first review your profile. If they’re happy with everything, your account will go live within 24 hours.
Pros and Cons of Walmart Marketplace for Dropshippers
Walmart Marketplace isn’t the only go-to for many eCommerce sales, but it’s growing in popularity. Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of running your dropshipping business through Walmart Marketplace:
✅ Pros
Here are some benefits of selling on this platform:
👍 A simple fee structure
Amazon charges monthly fees, but Walmart only charges referral fees when you make a sale.
Some of its fees might seem a little high, but as an online seller, not having add-on fees can make your business more profitable.
If you use Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) this will complicate your fee structure slightly.
Fulfillment cuts into your profits, so you have to be strategic about pricing your products to recoup the costs of both the referral fee and the fulfillment fee.
👍 Greater independence
Other online marketplaces have many rules regarding how to run your business on the platform. While Walmart has rules, it offers greater flexibility than other platforms.
For example, you can list any product you want on Walmart as long as it isn’t a prohibited item. There are also no inventory minimums or maximums, so you’re free to list all of your SKUs.
In terms of pricing, you’re free to set the retail price as long as it’s in line with Walmart policies. You may also have to follow the minimum advertised price (MAP) rules from your manufacturer.
This is the minimum price a manufacturer allows resellers and retailers to charge for their products.
Additionally, while you’re required to have a return policy, Walmart gives you complete control over it. You don’t have to follow Walmart’s return policies, giving you more freedom in managing returns. However, you do need to follow Walmart’s terms of service.
👍 Access to Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS)
Walmart launched fulfillment services in 2020, which operate very similarly to Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA).
You don’t have to worry about storing or shipping products to customers—when you pay for WFS, Walmart handles it for you. Fulfillment comes with many fees, but it does eliminate much of the hands-on work required for eCommerce businesses.
You ship your inventory to Walmart fulfillment centers, where their staff handles storage, picking, packing, and fast shipping for all orders.
WFS comes with several advantages, such as:
- Two-day shipping for customers in the contiguous U.S. (outside of peak season).
- Increased likelihood of earning the Buy Box, which is a specific section on an item page that contains the “Add to cart” button.
- Additional seller support.
- APIs and analytics to provide valuable insights.
- Walmart’s Seller Center to help you manage your store.
- New seller savings.
The downside is that Walmart doesn’t offer this for free. There are fees for fulfillment, storage, return shipping, and disposal. You can see a full list of fees on Walmart’s website.
👍 Less competition
More sellers are joining Walmart Marketplace every year, and there’s less competition on Walmart than on other platforms.
It’s harder to get approved as a Walmart seller, so the platform isn’t inundated with sellers the way Amazon is.
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❌ Cons
Let’s unpack some of the downsides to selling on Walmart Marketplace:
👎 A complex online application process
The approval process is possibly the biggest challenge for new Walmart Marketplace sellers. Walmart is very selective about who sells on its platform, so you must prove yourself before you can access your own Walmart seller account.
Approved sellers have to provide quite a lot of information to secure a Walmart retailer agreement, including your:
- Business address or corporate address.
- Business tax ID.
- Verified universal product code (UPC) information and a product catalog.
It isn’t unusual for the registration process to take a month, and you might not get approved at all.
If you do manage to get approval, you need to maintain certain quality metrics to continue selling on Walmart Marketplace.
Not only do you have to work hard to start selling, but you have to prove yourself to continue selling continually.
This is why it’s so important to have eCommerce experience before you go to Walmart Marketplace.
Walmart looks at your customer satisfaction scores, shipping timelines, and defect rates. It demands a high standard of performance, so if you have trouble keeping up, you may want to try selling on a different platform first if you’re just starting out.
It does offer useful features like a listing quality dashboard, so you'll have a lot of support to help you succeed.
👎 A comparatively small audience
Walmart Marketplace gets a decent amount of traffic, but not as much as Amazon and eBay.
Amazon is ranked number one in the top 1,000 eCommerce platforms, with over $400 billion in sales annually. On the other hand, Walmart Marketplace has made $82 billion in sales over the last year.
In the last month, Walmart.com had over 441 million visits. That’s a good amount of traffic, but Amazon had 2.3 billion visits, and eBay had 694.7 million.
Expanding to Walmart Marketplace can definitely increase your product sales, but keep in mind that traffic and sales could be lower than on other online marketplaces.
👎 Competitive pricing requirements
Walmart is an affordable retailer, so it cares a lot about low prices. To stay on its good side and offer the lowest prices possible, you need to follow two strict pricing rules, including their:
- Price Parity Rule: The Price Parity Rule prevents you from listing the same product at a lower cost on other marketplaces that you sell on—including your own website.
- The Price Leadership Rule: This rule closes a loophole in the Price Parity Rule. It prevents professional sellers from listing items if the same item is cheaper on another platform—regardless of whether you’re the seller or not.
These rules mean you have to carefully monitor not only your prices but also those of other sellers. This is tricky with millions of product listings on the web, but pricing automation solutions like Spark Shipping can help.
Tips For Selling on Walmart Marketplace
There are over 130,000 sellers on Walmart Marketplace for you to compete with. Here’s how you can stand out from the rest:
💡 Ship fast
Customers expect the products they order to be processed, packaged, and shipped quickly. If you want to thrive as a Walmart Marketplace seller, you have to prioritize fast shipping, which is ideally their two-day shipping option.
There are two main reasons why you should ship quickly:
- You don’t get paid until your products ship.
- Walmart monitors your shipping rate and considers it when determining whether you can continue selling on their marketplace.
💡 Monitor your pricing
As mentioned earlier, Walmart expects you to offer your products at a reasonable price. If you sell products similar to what Walmart already sells, you must keep your items priced closely to theirs.
Even if you sell more unique products, Walmart still expects you to offer reasonable prices. They’ve been known to remove third-party products from their site that don’t meet their pricing standards.
💡 Understand your audience
If you want to sell your products successfully on Walmart Marketplace, you need to publish listings that appeal to your audience. To do this, you must know and understand your audience.
You can do this by researching your audience’s demographics and preferences using tools like Google Trends, Market Explorer, and One2Target.
If you know your audience well enough, you’ll understand what needs to be included in your product listings to encourage shoppers to buy your items.
Start Selling On Walmart Marketplace Successfully
As a Walmart Marketplace seller, you have the opportunity to increase your revenue by selling on one of the largest online marketplaces.
Walmart Marketplace might not be the number-one eCommerce platform, but it’s growing in popularity with both online shoppers and marketplace sellers.
However, you need the right tools to manage the complexities of listing on Walmart and any other eCommerce platforms you sell through.
Spark Shipping automates back-end eCommerce tasks like inventory management, pricing, order fulfillment, and tracking to simplify your eCommerce business.
Experience our innovative solutions firsthand by requesting a Spark Shipping demo now to simplify your Walmart Marketplace setup.