Are you deciding between selling on Amazon vs Walmart and don’t know where to start? Firstly, it’s a great idea to sell on both platforms since that allows you to reach the largest number of customers. However, if you can only pick one, then we’ll help you do that by sharing the difference between the 2 platforms in this article.
Amazon has the biggest share of the e-commerce landscape, but in recent years Walmart has tripled in revenue. This means that it’s growing at a faster pace than Amazon, but it still has a long way to go.
Walmart Has Less Competition than Amazon
Firstly, Walmart is a significantly newer platform with fewer active sellers. This means that you’ll have an easier time competing to make sales. In fact, some product categories might be wide open for you to come in and start selling without facing competitors. This is a perfect set up for beginners that don’t have the experience to compete with established sellers.
In comparison, Amazon is fiercely competitive for multiple categories, which means you may need to use advanced strategies or put up with receiving a relatively small number of sales. However, this could change as Walmart becomes more popular, and you’ll see many of the successful sellers on Amazon transition to Walmart.
Amazon Has a Higher Sales Potential
Want to scale your business to the biggest heights possible? Then Amazon is arguably the best e-commerce platform out there. That’s because it has the lion’s share of the revenue as it’s popular worldwide and continues to grow.
Therefore, business owners hungry to get the most sales, even if it means high competition, will appreciate the advantages on Amazon vs Walmart. Also, Amazon has had the biggest sales number for multiple consecutive years. Many other platforms have tried to challenge Amazon as the top dog, with Walmart being one of the latest ones.
Walmart Has Less Freedom on Pricing
Walmart offers a low-price guarantee for many products, meaning you may be forced to sell at a lower price than you’d like. This makes it harder to profit from products that have a tight margin.
Whereas Amazon doesn’t have these restrictions, so you can charge the prices you want. Running a business on a platform that you don’t own can be tough when there are significant limitations such as the prices you can charge.
Amazon Has Higher Fees
The fees on Amazon can be overwhelming to learn since there are many different ones. Hence, you end up paying a lot more fees on Amazon vs Walmart. This can reduce your profitability and make it hard to justify bringing some products to market.
However, you can lower Amazon fees by setting up your business optimally. For example, you should only send stock to Amazon product warehouses that you intend to sell during the next month. Otherwise, the storage fees will begin to build up.
Instead of keeping large amounts of your stock at Amazon, you can rent a warehouse or a 3rd party logistics company. These options are usually cheaper than storing your products at Amazon for large time periods.
Physical Location Pickup
Customers can physically pick up their products from a nearby store at many more locations with Walmart than Amazon. That’s because Walmart has been in the physical retail game for much longer than Amazon.
Physical pick-up is a good option to provide customers with better customer service. Also, it can lower delivery costs, which may cause some customers to choose your service compared to others.
Amazon Prime
Customers with Amazon Prime may not even look at other e-commerce platforms because they get all of their goods from Amazon. Therefore, you’ll need to actively sell on Amazon if you want to fight for those customers.
Walmart doesn’t have a comparable subscription service with a membership of the same size. Also, Amazon Prime is one of the reasons why it’s difficult for other e-commerce platforms to overtake the giant.
More Support for Amazon
Overall, Amazon is the more popular e-commerce platform, so there is greater support. For example, software companies like Helium 10 and Jungle Scout primarily cater to Amazon sellers. It means that you can do better product and keyword research on Amazon.
Also, if you want to hire freelancers to complete tasks for your business, they will have more experience with Amazon. In fact, you may find that many freelancers have no experience with the Walmart marketplace.
It means that getting started on Walmart can be added since you’ll need to figure more things out on your own. Perhaps you can start selling on Amazon and then transition to Walmart with the lessons that you’ve learned.
Walmart Requires an Established Business
One of the key rules for sellers coming to Walmart is that they must have an existing business already generating sales. That’s because they don’t want to do business with new sellers starting out for the first time.
Therefore, if you’ve yet to sell your first product, then Amazon is the only choice you have. Once you have some selling history with even one product, you can move over to Walmart. This is another limitation, highlighting that Amazon is an easier platform to sell on.
Final Thoughts
To summarize, Amazon and Walmart both offer excellent e-commerce platforms for selling your products. However, Amazon has fewer restrictions and is the biggest marketplace online. Therefore, you can expect to get more sales on Amazon vs Walmart, and both platforms are compatible with virtual mailboxes.
However, the fees are bigger on Amazon, so you’ll need to factor that into your profitability calculations. Compare the factors in this article to help you make the right choice for your business phase.
