#274 – Walmart Talk – A Big Helium 10 Announcement

Amazon and Walmart often compete for the very same customers. They’re also both right there at the cutting edge of business innovation. Still, even though Walmart is an almost daily fixture in the lives of many, their e-commerce business takes a back seat to Amazon’s online power. But they’ve recently revamped their site and selling platform and have set their sights on Amazon’s dominance.

That’s why today on the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Chief Evangelist, Bradley Sutton welcomes Carrie Miller, our Brand Evangelist and Customer Advocate for the Walmart platform to give us the latest from Walmart ground zero.

Want to know how to get started selling on Walmart, or what’s the difference between selling there or on Amazon? What about working with images or using Walmart’s Listing Quality Score? Listen in to hear all this and more.

In episode 274 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Carrie discuss:

• 04:45 – Taking an Online Skateboard Company Online on Amazon
• 06:00 – Helium 10 was Carrie’s Secret
• 08:45 – Carrie’s Biggest Walmart Revelations
• 12:00 – Who is an Ideal Walmart Seller?
• 13:30 – Walmart is at Approximately 10% of Amazon but Trending Upwards
• 14:45 – How to Fulfil Your Amazon Orders
• 16:00 – Creating Listings on Walmart
• 18:15 – Walmart’s Listing Quality Score Helps You Optimize
• 20:45 – Working with Images on Walmart
• 22:30 – Don’t Wait Too Long to Try Walmart
• 24:45 – How to Identify a Good Walmart Product
• 26:30 – Helium 10 Launches New Tools for Walmart 
• 29:30 – Introducing Cerebro for Walmart
• 31:40 – Keeping Track of Your Walmart Metrics with Profits
• 34:30 – Looking at Walmart as a Completely New Platform is Key
• 36:45 – How to Reach Out to Carrie

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’ve got our first ever Walmart talk series episode, where we’re going to talk about selling on walmart.com. We’re going to go over some basic Walmart strategies plus announced new tools from Helium 10 for Walmart sellers. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

To network with other Walmart sellers, make sure join our brand new Facebook group called Helium 10 Winning with Walmart. You can actually just search for that on Facebook. Or you can actually go to h10.me/Walmartgroup, and you can go directly to that page. So make sure to join. You can tag me and Carrie with questions and ask questions of other Walmart sellers, or even share your own experiences in that Facebook group.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody. And welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free, unscripted, and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon or Walmart world. Oh, there is a little bit of a difference in my introduction there. I never added that little last part of in the Walmart world. So, we’re going to have kind of like our first mini series episode talking about– let’s call this Walmart talk. We have PPC talk episodes. Let’s call this Walmart talk where we’re going to talk about all things selling on walmart.com, which seems to be one of the hottest marketplaces for people to get on nowadays. But before we get into that, we have somebody for the first time on this show, Carrie. Carrie, how’s it going?

Carrie:

Hey, it’s going great. Thanks so much for having me.

Bradley Sutton:

Thank you for coming on. Now, Carrie you’re kind of like the newer kid on the block here, but this is definitely not your first rodeo as far as being in the e-commerce space. So, what I like to do whenever somebody internal or external is on the show for the first time I like getting a little bit of their histories. You’re actually one of my neighbors here. You’re probably less than 45 minutes away from my house here in Southern California. Is this where you were born and raised?

Carrie:

No. Well, I was born in Florida and lived there until I was 12 and then raised the rest of the time in San Diego. So yeah, for the most part, I’d say San Diego is my hometown.

Bradley Sutton:

Definitely used to sunny states here in United States, huh?

Carrie:

Yes. The best of both coasts, I think so.

Bradley Sutton:

There you go. Cool. Now, what was your major in college?

Carrie:

I majored in liberal arts and Spanish. Okay. And went to Pepperdine.

Bradley Sutton:

[speaking in Spanish]

Carrie:

[speaking in Spanish]

Bradley Sutton:

I might have to have you do some training videos in Spanish. I’ve totally forgot that you speak Spanish. That’s pretty cool. Now, did you ever get a job in that upon graduation?

Carrie:

I did. Actually, I lived in Argentina for a year and got really good at Spanish. And then I ended up becoming a teacher my first year out of college. I actually wanted to be an elementary teacher, but they weren’t hiring anywhere for elementary positions. And so everywhere I went, they were like, oh, well you can teach Spanish and you can teach Spanish. And I was like, well, I really do like Spanish. So, I ended up teaching Spanish for five years. So I definitely used, it was like Spanish one. So very, very basic Spanish.

Bradley Sutton:

Here in Southern California?

Carrie:

Yeah. I was at high school up in LA and then also a private school in San Diego for four years.

Bradley Sutton:

Which schools was that?

Carrie:

I taught at Agoura High School my first year. And then, I taught at Horizon prep, which is a private school in Rancho Santa Fe.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes. My kids are in the league that plays against Horizon for sports. So, I’m very familiar with horizon.

Carrie:

I was a coach there too, so maybe I ran into them.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you coach?

Carrie:

I coached basketball and I also coached volleyball.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh my goodness. Yeah. Maybe my daughter actually played against you one year. That would be crazy. Small world. Anyways, we’re not here to talk about high school basketball and Spanish and stuff, but I love getting the history of people because one thing I always try and stress on the show is we come from such wide variety of backgrounds, not just culturally, but just as far as our actual professional careers, but we all somehow end up together in the same e-commerce space. So, where did that transition actually happen for you? Like how did you go from teaching Spanish and coaching basketball to like, Hey, let me sell online?

Carrie:

Well, I actually didn’t go directly to selling online right after that. I was a trainer for a skincare company as well. One of my students, her mom recruited me to work for her. And so I was a trainer and I did sales for them for about five years. And I did some more sales for clear channel for a little bit, but my dad actually took over a company that was selling skateboards. And I ended up just looking at all of the sales on Amazon and realized, wow, we could definitely do way better. And I just went online and started learning how to sell on Amazon. And that was about 2015 and just started learning and started getting better. And I thought to myself, well, I could probably help other companies do this as well because I learned how to do it for my own. So, I started freelancing on free up. And so as a freelancer for a few years as well, and I worked with some big agencies. I worked for small sellers and I worked for sellers that were just kind of their own single sellers, maybe selling 2 million a month in sales. And so, I’ve had kind of a wide variety of experience and I learned a lot working with different people because they have different strategies and techniques that I learned. And then I also implemented my own and was able to test them out and see them work firsthand. So, that was kind of my introduction to e-commerce and I loved it.

Bradley Sutton:

Super cool. You’re actually an early adopter of Helium 10. I think you might’ve been using Helium 10 before me. Were you using it way back in like 2016 or around that?

Carrie:

Yeah. I was using it for keyword research and I used Frankenstein and Scribbles and I feel like it was kind of my secret because I had some of my clients, they wanted me to just tell them what my secrets were. And literally, my secret was I was using Helium 10 and getting great keywords and I was making sure they were all written in the listing and I made sure to check them off using the Helium 10 tools. And so, I always laugh about that because it just, it seems like there’s some big secret, but it’s really just diligence and doing the right thing in your listing.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, absolutely. How did your family or your dad’s business there, how has that grown over the last four years that he took it over? Is it mainly on Amazon? Is it like half on Shopify or what’s the diversification there?

Carrie:

It’s definitely grown quite a bit on Amazon, but we have a Magento site as well. It’s like Shopify, it’s a platform like Shopify. So, we have a Magento site and we sell quite a bit there and we also do a lot of wholesale, so we have a well-rounded business. So, it’s e-commerce and it’s wholesale. And so we have a lot of different things that we do. And we also kind of started at another brand that’s more on the apparel side and I have a Shopify site for that, that I built, which was really fun and a great learning experience. So, I’ve gotten experience with Shopify as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. So, like out of all the brands that you and your dad run, like what would you say across the different platforms? What’s your annual gross sales, would you say?

Carrie:

I believe it’s going to be about 2 million every year. So we’re, yeah. We’re about the 2 million mark. When I started, it was about $200 a month Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

A little bit of an increase. I like it. All right, now, we love talking about Shopify, we love talking about Amazon, but we’re actually going to talk about something that you recently haven’t had much experience on and that’s with Walmart. You were brought on here to be the brand evangelist, and it was funny, internally this position, when it opened up, we called it the– we need to hire a Walmart Bradley. Bradley doesn’t know anything almost about Walmart, but we need somebody to do what Bradley does for Amazon for kind of Walmart. So, you Carrie are the Walmart Bradley here, but you’ve been learning about the platform and about selling over the last few months that you’ve been here. And I just want to take some time to talk about your learnings, because I think a lot of people out there probably are in the same boat that you were when you first joined our companies, you personally hadn’t sold on Walmart. You knew what it was, but you didn’t know a lot of the ins and outs. So let’s just bullet point right now. Like, I don’t know, top five or top 10 list. Your biggest learnings about how selling on Walmart is different than selling on Amazon.

Carrie:

Okay. I think the first awakening was when I did the application process because I had kind of a blocker there and I put my application and I just didn’t hear back for a long time. I just didn’t hear back. And I found out it was because I actually had, somehow I think we must have applied a few years ago. I remember there was somebody reaching out to us and asking about selling on the Walmart platform, but we decided not to do it. And so I guess if you’ve applied in the past or something happened in the past where you were almost selling on Walmart or anything like that when you apply on walmart.com, you actually kind of go into this no man’s land where they don’t even respond to your application because they don’t see it. It’s some sort of glitch in the system. And so I was able to get it actually approved. And I think the biggest learning lesson is that you can actually go in and submit a ticket through email on Walmart. And we actually have a blog that we wrote about that. And it gives you information on how to contact them and make sure that they can see your application. You have to explain all the details and everything, but then I was able to get it approved. So, that was really great learning experience for me.

Bradley Sutton:

What would you have done differently? I know like we actually, because we’re kind of tight now with Walmart, we were able to go in back channels and get you unblocked, but obviously, not everybody works for Helium 10 and can just call up Walmart and do that. So like, what should somebody do if they don’t remember if they had applied before it sometime?

Carrie:

They can actually go into the support. Now, I was under the impression that you had to have an account in order to put in a ticket, but there is a way that’s mapped out on our blog actually that shows you the path that you can actually do a support ticket by email, and then you’ll email them and explain everything to them. And then that from there, they can help you and to get what your application into the right hands. And they can either approve it or deny it from there. So, that’s the best way to, I didn’t really realize that. Because I kept– whenever I was looking around, I was like, there’s only support if you log in. And there is a way to do it with just through email.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. So, guys, I would say everybody out there who’s selling on Amazon. It doesn’t cost money to apply, but is there a monthly fee, like how the Amazon plan is like $39 or something? Is there a monthly fee to sell on Walmart?

Carrie:

No, not that I’ve ever come across yet. I don’t think so, no.

Bradley Sutton:

So guys, if you’re out there and you haven’t applied– if you’re selling on Amazon already, start the process because sometimes it does take a little bit extra time, but what’s the website, do you know offhand with the website that people can go to get signed up?

Carrie:

You can go to a seller center. I usually just Google Walmart’s seller center application, and that’s how I get there.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, guys. So, there’s your step one for your to-do list after listening to today’s episode, if you’re driving, please don’t do it right now, but when you get back to your house, Google seller center, Walmart seller center, and start the application process if you’ve never applied before. And now, that being said, who would you say selling on Walmart is for?

Carrie:

I would say that it’s for people who have already been established in the e-commerce world, because first of all, you can’t even get accepted unless you are established as a seller. So, that’s going to be your first roadblock. If you’re a new seller, you really want to start on other platforms first and then apply it at Walmart. So basically it’s for people who want to expand their e-commerce business. There is a ton of opportunity right now on walmart.com that I didn’t realize before I started doing all of this. I think a lot of people didn’t realize that walmart.com is similar to Amazon in that it is a platform where you can sell your products. So, that’s been pretty eye-opening. They just passed a hundred thousand sellers this last July. And on Amazon, I think there’s like 9.7 million sellers or something crazy like that. So, there’s just a ton of opportunity on the walmart.com platform.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Now, in your experience or from the sellers that you’ve talked to, I know you’re just getting started with your own accounts on a Walmart, is there a rough ratio, like, Hey, I’m selling 20 units a day on Amazon. I can expect to sell one unit a day on Walmart or two, is there like a kind of like average day from sellers you’ve talked to in Walmart?

Carrie:

It really depends on the products that you’re selling, but I would say about 10% of Amazon traffic in general and maybe 10% of the sales. So, when you’re looking at something you want to kind of find products that are, or choose products of your own to have high search volumes because you’re going to calculate probably about 10% of those of the same amount of traffic going to Walmart at this point. Now, that’s growing. So, it’s going to just keep going on up and up and up from here, but that’s kind of where it’s at right now.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. It’s kind of almost like the old days of Amazon, like as far as the wild west.

Carrie:

Yes, it really is.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. Okay. So, one thing that I know I had a question about originally was I know now Walmart is building out there, I think it’s called WFS or which is basically their FBA and we’ll talk about that in a little bit, but back in the day in Walmart, it was almost strictly fulfilled by merchant. I don’t know what they call it, but we, Amazon sellers, know fulfilled by merchant. That means I’ve got the product in my warehouse and I’m shipping it out myself now. So that being the case, there’s a lot of Amazon sellers who strictly work with FBA, maybe they have a 3PL, maybe they don’t, but very few are like me where I’ve got a warehouse in the back of my house. And so I’m able to just ship FBM, anything at any time. And it’s like not even a hassle at all for me. So, for the Amazon seller out there who doesn’t have their own warehouse and who is a hundred percent using FBA, can they still do fulfilled by merchant on Walmart? Like using the Amazon– what is it called– multi-channel fulfillment? That’s not against the Walmart or Amazon rules to do that., right?

Carrie:

No. And in fact, they’ve partnered with deliver. So, deliver will actually do all that shipping for you. So, if you don’t end up doing the Walmart services, then you can also use deliver as well. And there’s a few others that you can utilize. So yeah, you can actually, yeah. There’s no problem for using another fulfillment, like a 3PL or something like that.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. That just makes it super easy. Guys out there, if you only got one or two or five or even 10 products on Amazon, don’t worry about, oh my goodness. I have to get a completely new stock and I’ve got to find a 3PL and I got to do this. I mean, if you just want to test it out, you just got to create the listings and if you get, if you don’t get orders well, great. There’s no, I mean, that’s bad, but Hey, you’re not out a big investment, but if you do get orders, you can just fulfill it directly from your Amazon inventory. Now, that being said, we don’t want to make it seem like there’s this button you can push and then magically your Amazon listing show up in a Walmart. Let’s talk a little bit about the difference between creating listings on Walmart with Amazon because if I’m not mistaken, that is like probably one of the biggest differences there is, right?

Carrie:

Yeah. There’s definitely a lot of differences. I think the first thing is maybe even just in the title itself, a lot of Amazon sellers will stuff the title with a bunch of keywords and you want to– you’ll actually get penalized. If your title is too long and you have too much stuffed in there. The cool thing about Walmart is it has an optimization score your seller center account on Walmart. So, you can actually go in and see what they want you to optimize and the things that they want you to fill in so that people can better find your product. So in that regard, it’s a bit easier because you know what they’re looking for. And then you kind of get to understand what kinds of things you need to put in each section. So, that’s extremely helpful. You’re going to want to focus on main keywords. So, we use a lot of long tail keywords on amazon.com, but you want to use for walmart.com, a lot of main keywords and main, just bigger search volume terms first, and make sure you have all of those written in there. And you want to write some of the most important ones multiple times. So, you kind of want to categorize like, okay, maybe these are my top few keywords that are the most important. I’m going to put those in there a few times. And you kind of itemize them by the search volume and relevance because relevancy is huge for Walmart. You really want to make sure they’re relevant because I know on Amazon, you can really put any anything in there, but Walmart wants to make sure that you’re very, very relevant for the customer’s experience.

Bradley Sutton:

And there’s a lot more like the last time I checked, tons more fields that you have to fill out, like on Amazon, you got the title, you got the bullet points, you got the search terms. And then you’ve got the description. And then if you want to maybe a couple others, like, Hey, let me put the color type, but like, it’s not even required. But on a Walmart, there’s a lot more required. And then even the ones that aren’t required, don’t you get like penalized if you don’t fill it out, like you might not even get indexed for keywords, if you don’t fill out everything or how does that work?

Carrie:

Yeah. You’ve got to fill in all the attributes. So, it’ll actually show you on that listing quality score. It will show you, okay. You need to fill in this attribute or whatever it is that you’re missing. And so you can go back in and make sure to optimize everything so that they do make it easy in that you don’t have to guess what they want you to fill in. They’ll tell you, but it does change from time to time. I have heard that from sellers. So, you’ve got to kind of keep checking back on your listing to make sure that you’re filling in because they add different categories or different things on there, that they want you to fill that out, if you haven’t been checking back on your listing, you wouldn’t notice. So, you want to make sure to keep monitoring your listings to do that.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. Good to know. Now, you talked about, Hey, there there’s an application process. And then once you get approved, what fill in that gap there for when I get approved to sell on Walmart, to making that listing, is it just a matter of I go in there and create a listing and just try and work out all of these fields? Or are there some other things I need to set up on the backend when I first get started selling on Walmart?

Carrie:

Well, you can set up your fulfillment by Walmart fulfillment services. That’s probably something if you wanted to utilize that, but you got to set up your shipping and everything like that. And you’re really pretty good to go right away if you want to if you’re quick about it.

Bradley Sutton:

Anybody can do the Walmart– when we say Walmart fulfillment services, that’s basically their FBA, right?

Carrie:

Yeah. It’s their FBA. Now, I’m not sure if everyone gets accepted, but you can, like, I have a button on there to apply to the services. So, I can report back to get more information about whether or not everybody qualifies for it, but you can definitely apply right away.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. Now, going back to the listing, I remember I forgot what I was trying to create one listing. It might’ve been the Project X coffin shelf. I’m not sure, but I even had like it in the title and I was not indexed. I couldn’t get indexed for that keyword. So, does that mean that my listing quality score was too low, and that’s why I couldn’t get indexed for that keyword even those are in my title?

Carrie:

It could mean that you’re in the wrong category. So, if you’re in the wrong product category, there’s certain keywords that are attributed to certain product categories. So, it’s kind of tricky in that. So, you kind of have to test it and see, okay, am I showing up in these? And you might have to decide, am I in the right category? What’s going on here? So, I do believe we are showing up for the coffin shelf now, though.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, that’s good. Now for images, if I recall, I actually used the URLs of my Amazon listing images to do it, but correct me if I’m wrong, but like you can’t–can you upload images directly to the listing like you can on Amazon? Or do you have to use a URL of either Amazon or have some kind of hosting service for your images?

Carrie:

So, you can do that, but you can’t upload the spreadsheet, bulk uploads unless you do that. So, you really want to be able to utilize those bulk uploads, because there’s a lot of things in there that you can only do with the upload. So, it’s really important to get that in there. And I actually used AWS for our– I actually read all of that because I didn’t want to just directly link to the Amazon listings. Because you never know what could happen. Where they’re just like, oh, sorry, we’re not allowing that anymore because it’s connected to Amazon. So, I felt like it was a good solid setup to do it in AWS, Amazon web services. And we have all the photos posted there and then they’re up on Walmart. Also, what was really helpful for me doing that is I had to re-upload the listing a few times and other, if I would’ve just done it manually, I would have had to upload those images every single time. But with this spreadsheet, I just, all the images URLs were already in that bulk upload. So I could just re-upload it everything. And I have heard other sellers say things, your listing might get taken down or there’s some sort of glitch or something like that, and you have to re-upload everything. So if you have your file ready to go, you can just upload it again, super easy. You don’t have to worry about redoing the images and what order were they in and all of that it’s already just saved and it makes your life so much easier.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Now guys, and just another reason, like I said, I wanted you guys to apply for Walmart and actually, you shouldn’t delay too much because we’ve had the Project X coffin shelf up for probably almost two years coming up on two years by the end of this year. And I tried to get the Walmart listing done like six months ago, but then lo and behold, somebody, some random person went and had made our coffin shelf listing, I guess they were probably like drop shipping it from Amazon or something. But it we’ve just had a heck of a time trying to take that listing over because they had done the images all wrong. Like the main image was like the back of the coffin shelf that shows the hanger. I’m like, what nonsense person would do this? And I’m like, all right, Walmart, this is my product. This is our listing. Look, we had this on Amazon and I just could not get it done. So guys, like if you wait too long to get up on Walmart and you are successful on Amazon, what might happen is just some random person out there, like a dropship or something might create your listing. And then now when you come in to try and take that listing over, you might have some difficulties. Did you ever get that fixed Carrie, or did we end up having to make a brand new coffin shelf listing?

Carrie:

We did the brand new coffin shelf listing. However, if you get brand registered on Walmart, then things get a little bit easier that way. So we haven’t done that yet. So, we’ll have to stay tuned for the brand registry process but that should help you. And then if you can prove that you are the owner of the GTI, and then you can take it over as the main owner. So there are steps that you can take on Walmart. But we just, we went kind of around it and we have our new listings up so that we could get things moving faster.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Cool. All right. We’re talking to a big part of our audience who are probably already selling on Amazon. Maybe they make out one product, they got 10 products, they got 20 products, but there’s customers out there who are or listeners out there who maybe they’ve got 200. They’re big time sellers, they’ve got 200 products, they’ve got 400 products. So they, it might be a pretty big undertaking to go ahead and create 200 or 400 Walmart listings. I would imagine that they might want to prioritize what they apply. I would probably say that eventually they probably should put all their SKUs on Walmart, but since they have so many Amazon SKUs, how would a bigger company go out and do some research to see– you know what I need to prioritize these 30 SKUs because these have a bigger potential on Walmart.

Carrie:

I would make sure to look for the kind of higher traffic ones first and go from there because Walmart does have a little bit less traffic. So focusing on those higher traffic ones also take a look at the price. Walmart does like the lower priced deals. So if you’re– I would suggest checking to make sure whatever you move over is going to be profitable. What’s interesting though, is I actually saw some listings on Walmart. They were actually higher in price than Amazon, which I didn’t expect. So kind of just analyzing that kind of the profitability of it, and the search volume first, and seeing where the highest potential is, and just maybe start with the top 10% of those top 10% search volume and profitability.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. All right. Now, speaking of things like search volume and stuff like that, I’m sure people are, the next question is, well, how do I even do research and things like that on Walmart. So actually, by the time this episode comes out, I mean, right now when we’re recording this, it’s already out to Helium 10 elite members, but we are announcing right here, guys that Helium 10 now has Walmart marketplace capabilities with some of our tools. So what are the tools that are going to be available to two different customers? And again, right now, for sure, if you’re an elite member, you’ve got full access to these tools, but depending on when you guys are listening to this, if you’re listening to it the day it comes out, or maybe a month later, you also might– if you’re a platinum or diamond member, you guys might have access to it too, but let’s talk about our phase one Helium 10 tools that will be for Walmart. What’s the first one?

Carrie:

The first one is X-ray, which is awesome. So, we have X-ray for Walmart, it pulls up all kinds of great relevant information. So, that will be a helpful tool for anyone who has a lot of products to kind of see how competitive their niches in terms of which those top products that they decide they want to move over and whether or not there is an opportunity for them.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, currently on X-ray like we don’t yet have sales estimates for the Walmart, right?

Carrie:

No, but that is in the works, we’re working on that.

Bradley Sutton:

But then like, the cool thing, I think when I was testing it out a while back, was we actually show if that products on Amazon and then we were actually showing the Amazon estimated sales, right, on there?

Carrie:

Yeah. So, the Amazon estimated sales are on there. And there’s a bunch of other things that you can take a look at on there. Like for example, it shows you the percentage of Walmart fulfillment services and you are actually prioritized if you use the two day shipping options, and you have that fast Walmart fulfillment services. So, you can see how many of the sellers with that keyword are using that already. You can see the average listing optimization scores. So, if there’s a low listing optimization score, there’s definitely holes there where you can have some good opportunities. So, there’s a lot of different data points on X-ray that you can utilize to make a good decision for whether or not you should move the product over.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. What else does the Walmart X-ray have that that’s unique, that people aren’t used to, like, that’s one of them how you can see the Amazon sales there. Are there any other columns that you can think of that are different than what everybody’s used to using X-ray on Amazon?

Carrie:

They have listed on the x-Xray you can see the Amazon average price as in compare it to the Walmart average price. So that’s really helpful. And one thing that I think is really interesting, it’s kind of our way of figuring out who’s a one-piece seller and who’s a three-piece seller is you can actually see if they’re gift eligible and usually if they’re gift eligible, then that means they’re one piece seller. So, if you’ve got a ton of one piece sellers that might be quite competitive because Walmart does work with a lot of brands and they tend to kind of give them a little bit of a boost there. So, that might be something to think about. It also show you if there’s rich media. So rich media is basically like the enhanced brand content that we have, but they have quite a bit more options on Walmart. So, it will let you know if there’s rich media or not. So, I think those are some of the main features that are really helpful. And you can see a lot of the Amazon bestseller ranks on the Walmart page. So a lot of people, what they’ve been doing in the past is they go to Walmart and then they go back to Amazon and then they go back to Walmart. And then back to Amazon, what’s really helpful here is you get to pull all the Amazon data alongside the data for Walmart, right side by side. So you don’t have to go back and forth. So it’s all on one page right in front of you.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Cool. All right. So there’s X-ray, what’s the other tool that we have launched?

Carrie:

So the other tool is Cerebro. So, Cerebro for Walmart is up. So, you basically can go ahead and do the same thing. Like we do a reverse ASIN on Amazon. It’s a reverse product ID on Walmart. So you can do one search at a time. So if you wanted to find one competitor, or you can also compare multiple sellers, just like you do on the Cerebro for Amazon. So, you can compare multiple Walmart sellers, you can see the relevancy of those keywords for that niche. There’s a lot of really great info on Cerebro for you to utilize for Walmart.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Yeah. Magnet as well. So, that helps to see like some long tail keywords, it helps to see where your competitors are ranking for. And I know we’re working on different ways to get some estimations on Walmart search volume, but whether we have the Walmart there or not, the helpful thing is we show the Amazon search volume as well, which is it’s not like a one-to-one basis people search a little bit differently on Walmart than Amazon, but it’s not too different. Speaking of, this kind of has to do with Cerebro, but it’s just a general Walmart thing. What’s the interesting thing you found out recently about how, if something is showing up in sponsored results and organically, we’re talking about the same keyword.

Carrie:

Yeah, that’s the most interesting thing. So if you search, maybe you searched dog toys, right. And you have a dog toy listing. If you do a sponsored ad on that keyword for that search term, you will only show up for one or the other. So if you’re doing sponsored, you’ll show up for sponsored, and if you’re not doing sponsored ads, then you’ll show up for organic, but you will not show up for both. So, that was something that’s very new for me, especially because I usually like to watch my organic rank increase on Amazon while I’m launching a product and doing sponsored ads. So, it’s definitely going to be a different strategy because you’re going to have to kind of maybe stop PPC for a little bit to see where you’re at and then go back and forth like that.

Bradley Sutton:

One more tool we have launched, right, for Walmart?

Carrie:

Yes. We have Profits for walmart.com. So that’s a really helpful, just especially I’ve heard returns can be kind of difficult with Walmart. So, it helps you to keep track of your profits, your sales, your returns, all of that in the Profits tool.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And guys, around the corner, we want to hear from you, what are the next tools you want. I know we’re working on Index Checker and Keyword Tracker and things like that, Helium 10 house over 30 tools. And this is only about seven or eight that we’re launching the first go round. So be sure to let us know, to customer support, which tools you want next, that you’re used to on Amazon, that you’d love to have functionality for on Walmart. And then also to give it a try, these tools are all in beta guys. We’re just launching it. Even whether it’s an elite or diamond or platinum is going to be in beta for a while because we need you guys to test it out and tell us what you like about it, what you don’t like, what you like to see in future iterations, make sure to give your feedback. If people want to submit their ideas, as far as what they would like to see different or what new things they would like for our Walmart functionality, how can they do that on the Helium 10 dashboard?

Carrie:

The Helium 10 dashboard, you can go up to the top of their little question mark right next to the Facebook icon. And then you’re going to click share your ideas and you can share them right there, or contact support if you need help with anything else.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, going back to just general Walmart things here, have you dove into at all, like how PPC works. You kind of touch on a little bit about the ranking there, but like, do you have anything to say about as far as some differences you’ve seen with how PPC works on Walmart as opposed to Amazon?

Carrie:

It’s pretty basic there. I’ve been trying to follow and figure some things. So they have the DSP as well for big brands only. So, I’ve been trying to look at placements and things like that, but it’s pretty basic right now. And I’ve also heard it’s very cheap right now. So, definitely a good time to get in there because it’s very, very affordable to get in that PPC competition.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Cool. What are the things can you tell us about Walmart? I mean, almost a lot of this is new to me since I haven’t personally been selling on Walmart too much, but what can you tell us about some differences or things that people need to know?

Carrie:

There’s rich media, you’re going to have to find a hosting place to host your rich media. So that’s basically your enhanced content or A-plus content on Amazon. So, you want to make sure to host that. And there’s just a lot of different options for rich media, which is really cool. You want to make sure your images are high quality, just like Amazon. There’s a lot of similarities, but I would suggest thinking of it in terms of Walmart and strategies you can implement in Walmart, kind of like approach it at a complete new, like a clean slate instead of just taking your Amazon knowledge and trying to switch it over, you do have a good background, but this is a new platform and you’re going to find new strategies and new things to learn. So, that’s something I’ve learned about Walmart is I’ve got to kind of change my mindset and think about this new platform and not try to push my ideas that the way it works from Amazon. So like for example, the ranking, I didn’t know that you want, you show up for one either sponsored or organic. Okay. That’s completely different. So, we’ve got to think about– we’ve got to think about that differently now. So, I think those are the biggest things about Walmart that I’m learning is just think about it and approach it differently. But it is pretty similar at the same time.

Bradley Sutton:

And we’ve talked mainly about Amazon sellers who want to just take their product they already made and just take advantage of they’ve already done all the legwork, they’ve got the packaging, they can just start cross-selling it on Walmart, but you know of sellers who actually do research first on Walmart and launched stuff on that platform, not even having never launched it on Amazon first, right?

Carrie:

Yeah, I do. And they’ve done extremely well on walmart.com. There’s so much opportunity like that.

Bradley Sutton:

How did they do that? Like how do they know that you know what, I don’t even need market research on Amazon or just knowing that I’m successful Amazon? I know that I can be successful in this product if I have a Walmart only SKU.

Carrie:

You actually can utilize a lot of Amazon data to figure that out. So, again, like just some of the strategies I mentioned earlier when we were talking when you’re looking at search volume, you want to go high search volume products and take into account maybe that Walmart’s going to be about 10% of the search volume, look and see how much competition you have with one piece sellers for certain products. How many people are using rich media, how many people are using the Walmart fulfillment services? How many– what is the price on Amazon compared to Walmart? You can utilize a lot of the Amazon data to make your decisions still, while we’re continuing to refine the information we get for Walmart.

Bradley Sutton:

So, Carrie again, you’re new to the team, but you’re already like full on. You’re in our Freedom Ticket extra programs. So, if people have Walmart questions and you guys are in the freedom ticket extra program, Carrie is on there at least once a month, she’s probably going to be doing some live videos in the beginning in our Facebook group. So, if you’re not a member of Freedom Ticket, actually you can sign up at helium10.com/FTX, and then all of those feature requests and things like that. Carrie actually looks at those as well. So, if you guys want to reach out to Carrie or give her some feedback on things, make sure to use that idea request a submission form there that she referenced, and then she will definitely check all those out. So, Carrie, what’s the next few months look like for you? Like, are you getting your family’s company all set up on Walmart so we can–

Carrie:

Yeah. I’m looking to move some products over and also just looking for new opportunities in addition to what we already have because I think that I’m just kind of approaching Walmart as like a whole new, a brand new opportunity and just seeing what I can do and not kind of, I’m not putting myself in a box. I’m just the sky’s the limit, so I’m going to go for it and whatever I see as an opportunity,

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. I love it. All right. Thank you so much for coming on to our very first ever Walmart talk episode here, you guys have a better name for it. Like Walmart Wednesdays or so, or something. Let us know in the comments if you’re watching this on the website. So Carrie, thank you so much for joining the team and coming on here to talk about Walmart and learning something that I know very little about, and we’ll definitely be reaching out to you in the coming months to get some more updates on Walmart.

Carrie:

Thanks so much for having me.

---

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Today, we’ve got our first ever Walmart talk series episode, where we’re going to talk about selling on walmart.com. We’re going to go over some basic Walmart strategies plus announced new tools from Helium 10 for Walmart sellers. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton: To network with other Walmart sellers, make sure to join our brand new Facebook group called Helium 10 Winning with Walmart. You can actually just search for that on Facebook. You can actually go to h10.me/Walmartgroup, and you can go directly to that page. Make sure to join. You can tag me and Carrie with questions and ask questions of other Walmart sellers, or even share your own experiences in that Facebook group.

Bradley Sutton: Hello, everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon or Walmart world. So, we’re going to have kind of like our first mini series episode talking about– let’s call this Walmart talk. We have PPC talk episodes. Let’s call this Walmart talk, where we’re going to talk about all things selling on walmart.com, which seems to be one of the hottest marketplaces for people to get on nowadays. But before we get into that, we have somebody for the first time on this show, Carrie. Carrie, how’s it going?

Carrie: Hey, it’s going great. Thanks so much for having me.

Bradley Sutton: Thank you for coming on. Now, Carrie you’re kind of the newer kid on the block here, but this is definitely not your first rodeo as far as being in the e-commerce space. So, what I like to do whenever somebody internal or external is on the show for the first time I like getting a little bit of their histories. You’re actually one of my neighbors here. You’re probably less than 45 minutes away from my house here in Southern California. Is this where you were born and raised?

Carrie: No. Well, I was born in Florida and lived there until I was 12 and then raised the rest of the time in San Diego. So yeah, for the most part, I’d say San Diego is my hometown.

Bradley Sutton: Definitely used to sunny states here in the United States, huh?

Carrie: Yes. The best of both coasts, I think.

Bradley Sutton: There you go. Cool. Now, what was your major in college?

Carrie: I majored in liberal arts and Spanish. Okay. And went to Pepperdine.

Bradley Sutton: [speaking in Spanish]

Carrie: [speaking in Spanish]

Bradley Sutton: I might have to have you do some training videos in Spanish. I’ve totally forgotten that you speak Spanish. That’s pretty cool. Now, did you ever get a job after graduation?

Carrie: I did. Actually, I lived in Argentina for a year and got really good at Spanish. And then I ended up becoming a teacher my first year out of college. I actually wanted to be an elementary teacher, but they weren’t hiring anywhere for elementary positions. So everywhere I went, they were like, “Oh, well you can teach Spanish.” And I was like, “Well, I really do like Spanish.” So, I ended up teaching Spanish for five years. I definitely used it, it was a Spanish one. So very, very basic Spanish.

Bradley Sutton: Here in Southern California?

Carrie: Yeah. I was at high school up in LA, and then, also a private school in San Diego for four years.

Bradley Sutton: Which schools was that?

Carrie: I taught at Agoura High School my first year. Then, I taught at Horizon prep, which is a private school in Rancho Santa Fe.

Bradley Sutton: Yes. My kids are in the league that plays against Horizon for sports. So, I’m very familiar with the horizon.

Carrie: I was a coach there too, so maybe I ran into them.

Bradley Sutton: What did you coach?

Carrie: I coached basketball and I also coached volleyball.

Bradley Sutton: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Maybe my daughter actually played against you one year. That would be crazy. Small world. Anyways, we’re not here to talk about high school basketball and Spanish and stuff, but I love getting the history of people because one thing I always try and stress on the show is we come from such wide variety of backgrounds, not just culturally, but just as far as our actual professional careers, but we all somehow end up together in the same e-commerce space. So, where did that transition actually happen for you? How did you go from teaching Spanish and coaching basketball to, “Hey, let me sell online?”

Carrie: Well, I actually didn’t go directly to selling online right after that. I was a trainer for a skincare company as well. One of my students, her mom, recruited me to work for her. I was a trainer and I did sales for them for about five years. I did some more sales for Clear Channel for a little bit, but my dad actually took over a company that was selling skateboards. I ended up just looking at all of the sales on Amazon and realized, “Wow, we could definitely do way better.” I just went online and started learning how to sell on Amazon. That was about 2015 and I just started learning and started getting better. I thought to myself, “Well, I could probably help other companies do this as well because I learned how to do it on my own.” So, I started freelancing. As a freelancer for a few years as well, and I worked with some big agencies. I worked for small sellers and I worked for sellers that were just kind of their own single sellers, maybe selling 2 million a month in sales. I’ve had a wide variety of experience and I learned a lot working with different people because they have different strategies and techniques that I learned. I also implemented my own and was able to test them out and see them work firsthand. So, that was kind of my introduction to e-commerce and I loved it.

Bradley Sutton: Super cool. You’re actually an early adopter of Helium 10. I think you might’ve been using Helium 10 before me. Were you using it way back in like 2016 or around that?

Carrie: Yeah. I was using it for keyword research and I used Frankenstein and Scribbles and I feel like it was kind of my secret because I had some of my clients, they wanted me to just tell them what my secrets were. And literally my secret was I was using Helium 10 and getting great keywords and I was making sure they were all written in the listing and I made sure to check them off using the Helium 10 tools. I always laugh about that because it just, it seems like there’s some big secret, but it’s really just diligence and doing the right thing in your listing.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah, absolutely. How did your family or your dad’s business there, how has that grown over the last four years that he took it over? Is it mainly on Amazon? Is it like half on Shopify or what’s the diversification there?

Carrie: It’s definitely grown quite a bit on Amazon, but we have a Magento site as well. It’s like Shopify. It’s a platform like Shopify. So, we have a Magento site and we sell quite a bit there and we also do a lot of wholesale, so we have a well-rounded business. So, it’s e-commerce and it’s wholesale. We have a lot of different things that we do. And we also kind of started at another brand that’s more on the apparel side and I have a Shopify site for that I built, which was really fun and a great learning experience. So, I’ve gotten experience with Shopify as well.

Bradley Sutton: Nice. So, out of all the brands that you and your dad run, what would you say across the different platforms? What’s your annual gross sales, would you say?

Carrie: I believe it’s going to be about 2 million every year. So we’re, yeah. We’re about the 2 million mark. When I started, it was about $200 a month on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton: A little bit of an increase. I like it. All right, now, we love talking about Shopify, we love talking about Amazon, but we’re actually going to talk about something that you recently haven’t had much experience on and that’s with Walmart. You were brought on here to be the brand evangelist, and it was funny, internally this position, when it opened up, we called it the– we need to hire a Walmart Bradley. Bradley doesn’t know anything about Walmart, but we need somebody to do what Bradley does for Amazon for Walmart. So, you Carrie are the Walmart Bradley here, but you’ve been learning about the platform and about selling over the last few months that you’ve been here. And I just want to take some time to talk about your learnings, because I think a lot of people out there probably are in the same boat that you were when you first joined our companies, you personally hadn’t sold on Walmart. You knew what it was, but you didn’t know a lot of the ins and outs. So let’s just bullet point right now. Like, I don’t know, top five or top 10 list. Your biggest learnings about how selling on Walmart is different from selling on Amazon.

Carrie: Okay. I think the first awakening was when I did the application process because I had kind of a blocker there and I put my application in and I just didn’t hear back for a long time. I just didn’t hear back. And I found out it was because I actually had, somehow I think we must have applied a few years ago. I remember there was somebody reaching out to us and asking about selling on the Walmart platform, but we decided not to do it. And so I guess if you’ve applied in the past or something happened in the past where you were almost selling on Walmart or anything like that, when you apply on walmart.com, you actually kind of go into this no man’s land where they don’t even respond to your application because they don’t see it. It’s some sort of glitch in the system. And so I was able to get it actually approved. And I think the biggest learning lesson is that you can actually go in and submit a ticket through email on Walmart. And we actually have a blog that we wrote about that. And it gives you information on how to contact them and make sure that they can see your application. You have to explain all the details and everything, but then I was able to get it approved. So, that was a really great learning experience for me.

Bradley Sutton: What would you have done differently? I know like we actually, because we’re kind of tight now with Walmart, we were able to go in back channels and get you unblocked, but obviously not everybody works for Helium 10 and can just call up Walmart and do that. So like, what should somebody do if they don’t remember if they had applied before sometime?

Carrie: They can actually go into the support. Now, I was under the impression that you had to have an account in order to put in a ticket, but there is a way that’s mapped out on our blog actually that shows you the path that you can actually do a support ticket by email, and then you’ll email them and explain everything to them. And then from there, they can help you and to get your application into the right hands. And they can either approve it or deny it from there. So, that’s the best way to, I didn’t really realize that. Because I kept– whenever I was looking around, I was like, there’s only support if you log in. And there is a way to do it just through email.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. So guys, I would say everybody out there who’s selling on Amazon. It doesn’t cost money to apply, but is there a monthly fee, like how the Amazon plan is like $39 or something? Is there a monthly fee to sell on Walmart?

Carrie: No, not that I’ve ever come across yet. I don’t think so, no.

Bradley Sutton: So guys, if you’re out there and you haven’t applied– if you’re selling on Amazon already, start the process because sometimes it does take a little bit extra time, but what’s the website, do you know offhand with the website that people can go to get signed up?

Carrie: You can go to a seller center. I usually just Google Walmart’s seller center application, and that’s how I get there.

Bradley Sutton: Alright, guys. So, there’s step one for your to-do list after listening to today’s episode. If you’re driving, please don’t do it right now, but when you get back to your house, Google seller center, Walmart seller center, and start the application process if you’ve never applied before. And now, that being said, who would you say selling on Walmart is for?

Carrie: I would say that it’s for people who have already been established in the e-commerce world, because first of all, you can’t even get accepted unless you are established as a seller. So, that’s going to be your first road block. If you’re a new seller, you really want to start on other platforms first and then apply it at Walmart. So basically it’s for people who want to expand their e-commerce business. There is a ton of opportunity right now on walmart.com that I didn’t realize before I started doing all of this. I think a lot of people didn’t realize that walmart.com is similar to Amazon in that it is a platform where you can sell your products. So, that’s been pretty eye-opening. They just passed a hundred thousand sellers this last July. And on Amazon, I think there’s like 9.7 million sellers or something crazy like that. So, there’s just a ton of opportunity on the walmart.com platform.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Now, in your experience or from the sellers that you’ve talked to, I know you’re just getting started with your own accounts on a Walmart, is there a rough ratio, like, Hey, I’m selling 20 units a day on Amazon. I can expect to sell one unit a day at Walmart or two, is there a kind of like average day from sellers you’ve talked to in Walmart?

Carrie: It really depends on the products that you’re selling, but I would say about 10% of Amazon traffic in general and maybe 10% of the sales. So, when you’re looking at something you want to kind of find products that are, or choose products of your own to have high search volumes, because you’re going to calculate probably about 10% of those of the same amount of traffic going to Walmart at this point. Now, that’s growing. So, it’s going to just keep going on up and up and up from here, but that’s kind of where it’s at right now.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. It’s kind of almost like the old days of Amazon, like as far as the wild west.

Carrie: Yes, it really is.

Bradley Sutton: Interesting. Okay. So, one thing that I know I had a question about originally was I know now Walmart is building out their, I think it’s called WFS or which is basically their FBA and we’ll talk about that in a little bit, but back in the day in Walmart, it was almost strictly fulfilled by merchant. I don’t know what they call it, but we, Amazon sellers, are now fulfilled by merchants. That means I’ve got the product in my warehouse and I’m shipping it out myself now. So that being the case, there’s a lot of Amazon sellers who strictly work with FBA, maybe they have a 3PL, maybe they don’t, but very few are like me where I’ve got a warehouse in the back of my house. And so I’m able to just ship FBM, anything at any time. And it’s like not even a hassle at all for me. So, for the Amazon seller out there who doesn’t have their own warehouse and who is a hundred percent using FBA, can they still be fulfilled by merchants on Walmart? Like using Amazon– what is it called– multi-channel fulfillment? That’s not against the Walmart or Amazon rules to do that., right?

Carrie: No. And in fact, they’ve partnered to deliver. So, delivery will actually do all that shipping for you. So, if you don’t end up doing the Walmart services, then you can also use delivery as well. And there’s a few others that you can utilize. So yeah, you can actually, yeah. There’s no problem using another fulfillment, like a 3PL or something like that.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. That just makes it super easy. Guys out there, if you only got one or two or five or even 10 products on Amazon, don’t worry about, oh my goodness. I have to get a completely new stock and I’ve got to find a 3PL and I have to do this. I mean, if you just want to test it out, you just have to create the listings and if you get, if you don’t get orders well, great. There’s no, I mean, that’s bad, but Hey, you’re not out a big investment, but if you do get orders, you can just fulfill it directly from your Amazon inventory. Now, that being said, we don’t want to make it seem like there’s this button you can push and then magically your Amazon listing shows up in a Walmart. Let’s talk a little bit about the difference between creating listings on Walmart with Amazon, because if I’m not mistaken, that is probably one of the biggest differences there is, right?

Carrie: Yeah. There’s definitely a lot of differences. I think the first thing is maybe even just in the title itself, a lot of Amazon sellers will stuff the title with a bunch of keywords and you want to– you’ll actually get penalized. If your title is too long and you have too much stuffed in there. The cool thing about Walmart is it has an optimization score for your seller center account on Walmart. So, you can actually go in and see what they want you to optimize and the things that they want you to fill in so that people can better find your product. So in that regard, it’s a bit easier because you know what they’re looking for. And then you kind of get to understand what kinds of things you need to put in each section. So, that’s extremely helpful. You’re going to want to focus on main keywords. So, we use a lot of long tail keywords on amazon.com, but you want to use for walmart.com, a lot of main keywords and main, just bigger search volume terms first, and make sure you have all of those written in there. And you want to write some of the most important ones multiple times. So ,you kind of want to categorize like, okay, maybe these are my top few keywords that are the most important. I’m going to put those in there a few times. And you kind of itemize them by the search volume and relevance, because relevancy is huge for Walmart. You really want to make sure they’re relevant because I know on Amazon, you can really put anything in there, but Walmart wants to make sure that you’re very, very relevant for the customer’s experience.

Bradley Sutton: And there’s a lot more like the last time I checked, tons more fields that you have to fill out, like on Amazon, you got the title, you got the bullet points, you got the search terms. And then you’ve got the description. And then if you want to maybe a couple others, like, Hey, let me put the color type, but like, it’s not even required. But at Walmart, there’s a lot more required. And then even the ones that aren’t required, don’t you get penalized, if you don’t fill it out, like you might not even get indexed for keywords, if you don’t fill out everything or how does that work?

Carrie: Yeah. You’ve got to fill in all the attributes. So, it’ll actually show you on that listing quality score. It will show you, okay. You need to fill in this attribute or whatever it is that you’re missing. And so you can go back in and make sure to optimize everything so that they do make it easy in that you don’t have to guess what they want you to fill in. They’ll tell you, but it does change from time to time. I have heard that from sellers. So, you’ve got to kind of keep checking back on your listing to make sure that you’re filling in because they add different categories or different things on there, that they want you to fill that out, if you haven’t been checking back on your listing, you wouldn’t notice. So, you want to make sure to keep monitoring your listings to do that.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. Good to know. Now, you talked about, Hey, there’s an application process. And then once you get approved, what fills in that gap there for when I get approved to sell on Walmart, to make that listing, is it just a matter of I go in there and create a listing and just try and work out all of these fields? Or are there some other things I need to set up on the backend when I first get started selling on Walmart?

Carrie: Well, you can set up your fulfillment by Walmart fulfillment services. That’s probably something, if you wanted to utilize that, but you got to set up your shipping and everything like that. And you’re really pretty good to go right away if you want to, if you’re quick about it.

Bradley Sutton: Anybody can do Walmart– when we say Walmart fulfillment services, that’s basically their FBA, right?

Carrie: Yeah. It’s their FBA. Now, I’m not sure if everyone gets accepted, but you can, like, I have a button on there to apply to the services. So, I can report back to get more information about whether or not everybody qualifies for it, but you can definitely apply right away.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Now, going back to the listing, I remember I forgot what I was trying to create. It might’ve been the Project X coffin shelf. I’m not sure, but I even liked it in the title and I was not indexed. I couldn’t get the index for that keyword. So, does that mean that my listing quality score was too low, and that’s why I couldn’t get an index for that keyword even those are in my title?

Carrie: It could mean that you’re in the wrong category. So, if you’re in the wrong product category, there’s certain keywords that are attributed to certain product categories. So, it’s kind of tricky. So, you kind of have to test it and see, okay, am I showing up in these? And you might have to decide, am I in the right category? What’s going on here? So, I do believe we are showing up for the coffin shelf now, though.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, that’s good. Now for images, if I recall, I actually used the URLs of my Amazon listing images to do it, but correct me if I’m wrong, but like you can’t–can you upload images directly to the listing like you can on Amazon? Or do you have to use a URL of either Amazon or have some kind of hosting service for your images?

Carrie: So, you can do that, but you can’t upload the spreadsheet, bulk uploads, unless you do that. So, you really want to be able to utilize those bulk uploads, because there’s a lot of things in there that you can only do with the upload. So, it’s really important to get that in there. And I actually used AWS for our– I actually read all of that because I didn’t want to just directly link to the Amazon listings. Because you never know what could happen. Where they’re just like, oh, sorry, we’re not allowing that anymore because it’s connected to Amazon. So, I felt like it was a good solid setup to do it in AWS, Amazon web services. And we have all the photos posted there and then they’re up on Walmart. Also, what was really helpful for me doing that is I had to re-upload the listing a few times and other, if I would’ve just done it manually, I would have had to upload those images every single time. But with this spreadsheet, I just, all the images URLs were already in that bulk upload. So I could just re-upload everything. And I have heard other sellers say things, your listing might get taken down or there’s some sort of glitch or something like that, and you have to re-upload everything. So if you have your file ready to go, you can just upload it again, super easy. You don’t have to worry about redoing the images and what order they were in and all of that it’s already just saved and it makes your life so much easier.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. Now guys, and just another reason, like I said, I wanted you guys to apply for Walmart and actually you shouldn’t delay too much because we’ve had the Project X coffin shelf up for probably almost two years coming up on two years by the end of this year. And I tried to get the Walmart listing done like six months ago, but then lo and behold, somebody, some random person went and had made our coffin shelf listing, I guess they were probably like drop shipping it from Amazon or something. But we’ve just had a heck of a time trying to take that listing over because they had done the images all wrong. Like the main image was like the back of the coffin shelf that shows the hanger. I’m like, what nonsense person would do this? And I’m like, all right, Walmart, this is my product. This is our listing. Look, we had this on Amazon and I just could not get it done. So guys, like if you wait too long to get up on Walmart and you are successful on Amazon, what might happen is just some random person out there, like a dropship or something might create your listing. And then now when you come in to try and take that listing over, you might have some difficulties. Did you ever get that fixed Carrie, or did we end up having to make a brand new coffin shelf listing?

Carrie: We did the brand new coffin shelf listing. However, if you get a brand registered on Walmart, then things get a little bit easier that way. So we haven’t done that yet. So, we’ll have to stay tuned for the brand registry process but that should help you. And then if you can prove that you are the owner of the GTI, and then you can take it over as the main owner. So there are steps that you can take on Walmart. But we just, we went kind of around it and we have our new listings up so that we could get things moving faster.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. Cool. All right. We’re talking to a big part of our audience who are probably already selling on Amazon. Maybe they make one product, they get 10 products, they get 20 products, but there’s customers out there who are, or listeners out there who maybe they’ve got 200. They’re big time sellers, they’ve got 200 products, they’ve got 400 products. So they, it might be a pretty big undertaking to go ahead and create 200 or 400 Walmart listings. I would imagine that they might want to prioritize what they apply. I would probably say that eventually they probably should put all their SKUs on Walmart, but since they have so many Amazon SKUs, how would a bigger company go out and do some research to see– you know what I need to prioritize these 30 SKUs, because these have a bigger potential on Walmart.

Carrie: I would make sure to look for the kind of higher traffic one’s first and go from there because Walmart does have a little bit less traffic. So focusing on those higher traffic ones also take a look at the price. Walmart does like the lower priced deals. So if you’re– I would suggest checking to make sure whatever you move over is going to be profitable. What’s interesting though, is I actually saw some listings on Walmart. They were actually higher in price than Amazon, which I didn’t expect. So kind of just analyzing that kind of the profitability of it, and the search volume first, and seeing where the highest potential is, and just maybe start with the top 10% of those top 10% search volume and profitability.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. All right. Now, speaking of things like search volume and stuff like that, I’m sure people are, the next question is, well, how do I even do research and things like that on Walmart. So actually, by the time this episode comes out, I mean, right now when we’re recording this, it’s already out to Helium 10 elite members, but we are announcing right here, guys that Helium 10 now has Walmart marketplace capabilities with some of our tools. So what are the tools that are going to be available to two different customers? And again, right now, for sure, if you’re an elite member, you’ve got full access to these tools, but depending on when you guys are listening to this, if you’re listening to it the day it comes out, or maybe a month later, you also might– if you’re a platinum or diamond member, you guys might have access to it too, but let’s talk about our phase one Helium 10 tools that will be for Walmart. What’s the first one?

Carrie: The first one is X-ray, which is awesome. So, we have X-ray for Walmart, it pulls up all kinds of great relevant information. So, that will be a helpful tool for anyone who has a lot of products to kind of see how competitive their niches are in terms of which top products that they decide they want to move over and whether or not there is an opportunity for them.

Bradley Sutton: Now, currently on X-ray like we don’t yet have sales estimates for Walmart, right?

Carrie: No, but that is in the works, we’re working on that.

Bradley Sutton: But then like, the cool thing, I think when I was testing it out a while back, was we actually showing the products on Amazon and then we were actually showing the Amazon estimated sales, right, on there?

Carrie: Yeah. So, the Amazon estimated sales are there. And there’s a bunch of other things that you can take a look at there. For example, it shows you the percentage of Walmart fulfillment services and you are actually prioritized if you use the two day shipping options, and you have that fast Walmart fulfillment services. So, you can see how many of the sellers with that keyword are using that already. You can see the average listing optimization scores. So, if there’s a low listing optimization score, there’s definitely holes there where you can have some good opportunities. So, there’s a lot of different data points on X-ray that you can utilize to make a good decision for whether or not you should move the product over.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. What else does the Walmart X-ray have that’s unique, that people aren’t used to, that’s one of them how you can see the Amazon sales there? Are there any other columns that you can think of that are different from what everybody’s used to using X-ray on Amazon?

Carrie: They have listed on the x-Xray you can see the Amazon average price as in compare it to the Walmart average price. So that’s really helpful. And one thing that I think is really interesting, it’s kind of our way of figuring out who’s a one-piece seller and who’s a three-piece seller is you can actually see if they’re gift eligible and usually if they’re gift eligible, then that means they’re one piece seller. So, if you’ve got a ton of one piece sellers that might be quite competitive, because Walmart does work with a lot of brands and they tend to kind of give them a little bit of a boost there. So, that might be something to think about. It also shows you if there’s rich media. So rich media is basically like the enhanced brand content that we have, but they have quite a bit more options on Walmart. So, it will let you know if there’s rich media or not. So, I think those are some of the main features that are really helpful. And you can see a lot of the Amazon bestseller ranks on the Walmart page. So a lot of people, what they’ve been doing in the past is they go to Walmart and then they go back to Amazon and then they go back to Walmart. And then back to Amazon, what’s really helpful here is you get to pull all the Amazon data alongside the data for Walmart, right side by side. So you don’t have to go back and forth. So it’s all on one page right in front of you.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Cool. All right. So there’s X-ray, what’s the other tool that we have launched?

Carrie: So the other tool is Cerebro. So, Cerebro for Walmart is up. So, you basically can go ahead and do the same thing. Like we do a reverse ASIN on Amazon. It’s a reverse product ID on Walmart. So you can do one search at a time. So if you wanted to find one competitor, or you can also compare multiple sellers, just like you do on the Cerebro for Amazon. So, you can compare multiple Walmart sellers, you can see the relevancy of those keywords for that niche. There’s a lot of really great info on Cerebro for you to utilize for Walmart.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Yeah. Magnet as well. So, that helps to see like some long tail keywords, it helps to see where your competitors are ranking for. And I know we’re working on different ways to get some estimations on Walmart search volume, but whether we have the Walmart there or not, the helpful thing is we show the Amazon search volume as well, which is it’s not like a one-to-one basis people search a little bit differently on Walmart than Amazon, but it’s not too different. Speaking of, this kind of has to do with Cerebro, but it’s just a general Walmart thing. What’s the interesting thing you found out recently about how, if something is showing up in sponsored results and organically, we’re talking about the same keyword.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s the most interesting thing. So if you search, maybe you searched for dog toys, right. And you have a dog toy listing. If you do a sponsored ad on that keyword for that search term, you will only show up for one or the other. So if you’re doing sponsored, you’ll show up for sponsored, and if you’re not doing sponsored ads, then you’ll show up for organic, but you will not show up for both. So, that was something that’s very new for me, especially because I usually like to watch my organic rank increase on Amazon while I’m launching a product and doing sponsored ads. So, it’s definitely going to be a different strategy because you’re going to have to kind of maybe stop PPC for a little bit to see where you’re at and then go back and forth like that.

Bradley Sutton: One more tool we have launched, right, for Walmart?

Carrie: Yes. We have Profits for walmart.com. So that’s really helpful, just especially I’ve heard returns can be kind of difficult with Walmart. So, it helps you to keep track of your profits, your sales, your returns, all of that in the Profits tool.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. And guys, around the corner, we want to hear from you, what are the next tools you want. I know we’re working on Index Checker and Keyword Tracker and things like that, Helium 10 houses over 30 tools. And this is only about seven or eight that we’re launching the first go round. So be sure to let us know, to customer support, which tools you want next, that you’re used to on Amazon, that you’d love to have functionality for on Walmart. And then also to give it a try, these tools are all in beta guys. We’re just launching it. Even whether it’s an elite or diamond or platinum is going to be in beta for a while because we need you guys to test it out and tell us what you like about it, what you don’t like, what you like to see in future iterations, make sure to give your feedback. If people want to submit their ideas, as far as what they would like to see differently or what new things they would like for our Walmart functionality, how can they do that on the Helium 10 dashboard?

Carrie: The Helium 10 dashboard, you can go up to the top of their little question mark right next to the Facebook icon. And then you’re going to click share your ideas and you can share them right there, or contact support if you need help with anything else.

Bradley Sutton: Now, going back to just general Walmart things here, have you dove into at all, like how PPC works. You kind of touch on a little bit about the ranking there, but like, do you have anything to say about as far as some differences you’ve seen with how PPC works on Walmart as opposed to Amazon?

Carrie: It’s pretty basic there. I’ve been trying to follow and figure out some things. So they have the DSP as well for big brands only. So, I’ve been trying to look at placements and things like that, but it’s pretty basic right now. And I’ve also heard it’s very cheap right now. So, definitely a good time to get in there because it’s very, very affordable to get in that PPC competition.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Cool. What are the things can you tell us about Walmart? I mean, almost a lot of this is new to me since I haven’t personally been selling at Walmart too much, but what can you tell us about some differences or things that people need to know?

Carrie: There’s rich media, you’re going to have to find a hosting place to host your rich media. So that’s basically your enhanced content or A-plus content on Amazon. So, you want to make sure to host that. And there’s just a lot of different options for rich media, which is really cool. You want to make sure your images are high quality, just like Amazon. There’s a lot of similarities, but I would suggest thinking of it in terms of Walmart and strategies you can implement in Walmart, kind of like approach it at a complete new, like a clean slate instead of just taking your Amazon knowledge and trying to switch it over, you do have a good background, but this is a new platform and you’re going to find new strategies and new things to learn. So, that’s something I’ve learned about Walmart is I’ve got to kind of change my mindset and think about this new platform and not try to push my ideas that the way it works from Amazon. So like for example, the ranking, I didn’t know that you want, you show up for one either sponsored or organic. Okay. That’s completely different. So, we’ve got to think about– we’ve got to think about that differently now. So, I think those are the biggest things about Walmart that I’m learning. Just think about it and approach it differently. But it is pretty similar at the same time.

Bradley Sutton: And we’ve talked mainly about Amazon sellers who want to just take their product they already made and just take advantage of they’ve already done all the legwork, they’ve got the packaging, they can just start cross-selling it on Walmart, but you know of sellers who actually do research first on Walmart and launched stuff on that platform, not even having never launched it on Amazon first, right?

Carrie: Yeah, I do. And they’ve done extremely well on walmart.com. There’s so many opportunities like that.

Bradley Sutton: How did they do that? Like how do they know that, you know what, I don’t even need market research on Amazon or just knowing that I’m a successful Amazon. I know that I can be successful in this product if I have a Walmart only SKU.

Carrie: You actually can utilize a lot of Amazon data to figure that out. So, again, like just some of the strategies I mentioned earlier when we were talking, when you’re looking at search volume, you want to go high search volume products and take into account maybe that Walmart’s going to be about 10% of the search volume, look and see how much competition you have with one piece sellers for certain products. How many people are using rich media, how many people are using the Walmart fulfillment services? How many– what is the price on Amazon compared to Walmart? You can utilize a lot of the Amazon data to make your decisions still, while we’re continuing to refine the information we get for Walmart.

Bradley Sutton: So, Carrie again, you’re new to the team, but you’re already like full on. You’re in our Freedom Ticket extra programs. So, if people have Walmart questions and you guys are in the freedom ticket extra program, Carrie is on there at least once a month, she’s probably going to be doing some live videos in the beginning in our Facebook group. So, if you’re not a member of Freedom Ticket, actually you can sign up at helium10.com/FTX, and then all of those feature requests and things like that. Carrie actually looks at those as well. So, if you guys want to reach out to Carrie or give her some feedback on things, make sure to use that idea and request a submission form there that she referenced, and then she will definitely check all those out. So, Carrie, what’s the next few months look like for you? Like, are you getting your family’s company all set up on Walmart so we can–

Carrie: Yeah. I’m looking to move some products over and also just looking for new opportunities in addition to what we already have, because I think that I’m just kind of approaching Walmart as like a whole new, a brand new opportunity and just seeing what I can do and not kind of, I’m not putting myself in a box. I’m just the sky’s the limit, so I’m going to go for it and whatever I see as an opportunity,

Bradley Sutton: I love it. I love it. All right. Thank you so much for coming on to our very first ever Walmart talk episode here, you guys have a better name for it. Like Walmart Wednesdays or so, or something. Let us know in the comments if you’re watching this on the website. So Carrie, thank you so much for joining the team and coming on here to talk about Walmart and learning something that I know very little about, and we’ll definitely be reaching out to you in the coming months to get some more updates on Walmart.

Carrie: Thanks so much for having me.